Steven Erikson - Memories of Ice - Review

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Memories of Ice – by Steven Erikson

Third book in the Tales of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series

Rating (for the illiterate): * * * * * (5 out of 5)

Short Review (for the impatient):
Yet another awesome entry in the epic Malazan series. Hard work, but worth it. If you liked the others, you'll want to read this too.

Long Review (for the curious or bored):
Contrary to what it may seem at this stage, I do not give out 5 star ratings lightly. There are probably only 20 –30 books out of all the books I have ever read that I could give this rating to. It just so happens that the more I read of Erikson’s amazing series, the more these are becoming some of my favourite books ever.

Summing up the plot of this book is tough for two reasons. One, I don’t want to give away any spoilers and two, there is so much going on that it is hard to put into a few words. I guess the easiest way to summarise things is to say that the book revolves around that old classic plot device: the city siege. In fact, this book has two epic (I must be careful not to overuse that word) sieges, both of which rival Tolkien’s siege of Minas Tirith for drama and power. These two sieges are part of an overall story of conflict between Malazan forces and a mysterious new imperial power called the Pannion Domin.

Of course, this is Erikson, so there is a heck of a lot more going on than just a couple of big battles. We get the usual assortment of brand new and old favourite characters. Once again, a big part of Erikson’s genius is how he manages to bring each of his many characters to life even though none of them occupies a large amount of text. A great example of this is the Grey Sword, Shield Anvil Itkovian. This guy is a fantastic character despite being only one of more than 50 personalities in the story and only appearing in isolated section of narrative. Another example is the wonderful Lady Envy. There’s even the uber-fighter Seguleh (plural) who make an impact even though they almost never speak. If you are looking for character ideas for role-playing games, this book is full of them.

More importantly, for those of you have read the first two books in the series, Memories of Ice reveals a bit more of the history and background to this increasingly complicated world and the races that inhabit it. We find out more of the tragic tale of the T’lan Imass and the Jaghut. We meet another elder race, the K’Chain Che Malle. We learn a bit more about the ultra-cool Anomander Rake. We learn a lot more about the Deck of Dragons and the divine hierachy (although much of this still pretty mysterious to me). If you have any sort of interest in anthropology or archaeology, you will relish Erikson’s detailed desciptions of the history of this land and the inter-connecting forces that have shaped it.

Overall, this is epic (sorry) fantasy at, what I believe, to be its very best. This series just gets better and better the more I read.

 

Another very good review, HB. Now, I can't wait to get to this one as well. This one sounds quite interesting, and somewhat different than Deadhouse Gates, the one I'm currently working on. But as of yet, I have not seen Memories in any of the bookstores here.

 

I love how have used the phrase "working on" to describe what you are doing with this book. That is a much better description that "reading".

I still find it odd that these books seem to be so hard to find in the USA. They are all over the place in NZ (my local library has multiple copies of each book) and we're usually pretty slow to get stuff like this.