Dancer’s Lament (Path to Ascendancy, #1)
Dancer’s Lament by Ian C. Esslemont
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars.
My first 5-star rating this year, and it’s a Malazan book.
I love the world of Malazan, and the Malazan Book of the Fallen stands as my favourite grimdark fantasy series. However, these are not books which one can pick up to read for ‘fun’. Not only were the worldbuilding complex and the cast of characters extensive, but the prose was also dense and philosophical. Moreover, the narrative frequently messaged dark and bleak themes. To be honest, it felt like work sometimes to read MBOTF, albeit work that I thoroughly enjoyed.
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