Dancer's Lament: Path to Ascendancy, Book 1

Dancer's Lament contains all the usual flavors of the Malazan world; a slow build or convergence of powers as myriad threads come together in large scale confrontation. Power drawing power. It is alive with ancient entities and rich backgrounds. It is the second earliest series set within the Malazan world (I think) but nothing is lost by reading another series first, especially as there is so much already published. Indeed if you have already read other Malazan books you would be able to enrich this one when key characters appear or when you recognize warrens or techniques. The magic system is one of the most interesting I have come across and Ian C Esslemont is fantastic in that almost nothing is explained, instead you learn as the story unfolds. It is one of the greatest strengths of these books. In each one I read I feel like an explorer. This book gives background on two of the most central characters of later books in particular, as well as telling an intriguing tale in itself. I found it contained less humor than some of the others. I'm ambivalent about that. Sometimes I found the humor in the others funny but sometimes it verged on the absurd. It is a little more straightforwards. Again, this wasn't exactly a good or bad point. The other books can be quite convoluted. There is less of a purpose here than in other books. The tale told revolves around our "heros" and how they get their start. It will pick up steam (in terms of the impact of the book in the macro scale within this world) in latter books within this series based on what we already know they accomplish but this book is just setting the scene as apposed to other series within this world which are mostly based around actions which form part of very long term and wide ranging strategy. As a balance to this, there is perhaps more of a personal aspect to this book. There is certainly just as much action as you could want on a individual level. I would recommend this book to those who enjoy epic fantasy, mildy gritty fantasy, or those who have liked other books within this world. It is an excellent read. Again, this is a little bit simpler than I am used to with these but not necessarily in a bad way. The price is reasonable considering the length and quality but its no bargain.

I have read a couple of the original Malazan books but not the bulk, and I found this to be a well-written and enjoyable book. The story has enough twists and turns to keep you interested and the writing itself is engaging and creative enough to keep you moving. There were a couple of places where I felt the character's actions were slightly outside of their motivations but that didn't happen enough to make me frustrated. The ending didn't quite blow me away but as it's the first in a trilogy that can come with the territory. Happy to move on to the next book.

I bought this some time ago, when it was first published. Now that books 2 and 3 were in hand, I decided to read this book ‘again’ as a refresher, only to realize I never read it before. What an amazing treat it turned out to be! This book rivals the original ten books by SE, almost like Midnight Tides without the ponderous/tragic parts. Being a backstory has its constraints but this book masterfully circumvents these constraints without spoilers or repetition. The improvement in writing style is remarkable; the book flows without any hiccups, there is not a single boring section and all the characters, not just the two main scoundrels, are well fleshed out. And Dancer’s POV was hilarious, done far better than I thought possible given the grim characterization in the “main” story arc. This book was jaw dropping, really didn’t expect it to be this good. People who have read all the other Malazan books will have plenty to fondly reminisce but for those lucky bastards who have never read them, this can be a standalone book/series or a great start to this story without significant spoilers.

Book is very Malazan in that it is very matter of fact in its World building. You see the world as they see the world. I found this to be much more focused and intimate as opposed to Gardens of the Moon and it's far flung Adventure. Author's style is very much his own yet retains the spirits of the world. Extremely well done in that regard. If you love malazan you should at least like this.

Unlike the other Malazan novels that I have read (ie. Book of the Fallen), any Fantasy Reader could pick this book up and enjoy it. Moveover, it is a prequel and might even be a better place for a new reader to start off from. Let's face it, as an introduction to Malazan, 'Gardens of the Moon' can be pretty difficult to follow - like getting thrown into a meat grinder. In 'Dancer's Lament', the pace of the action is well handled - building strong characters and then ramping up to a climactic but largely unpredictable finale. If you are a fan of Brent Weeks' (Night Angel) writing style or Scott Lynch's (Gentlemen Bastards), you will like this book. If you are already a Malazan fan but have not read Esslemont, think of this as a Bauchelain & Korbal Broach story... with Cotillion thrown in to keep things real.

It's hardly surprising that Dancer's Lament, Ian C Esslemonts latest installation in the Malazan-universe, also is his best. At least this shouldn't come as a surprise to any of us who've followed Esslemonts contributions to the Erikson-Esslemont-world with great interest. For if there's anything to be said about Esslemonts writing then it is that it's been improving greatly with every book he's written. From the debute with Night of Knives twelve years ago, which honestly is a badly authored book, he's taken great leaps with every new publication - and Dancer's Lament is another great leap in the right direction. In this very book, I feal that the greatest leap comes in regard to character personalities, which previously has been one of Esslemonts weaknesses. Most - or date I say all? - charactes in this book feel alive, and enjoy getting to know them. Quicks and oddities and all. Quirks and oddities, most of all. Still, there are a few things which Esslemont could improve on. One is his occational inability to motivate why certain characters do as they do. I suspect this is due to his will to force characters into certain situations or encounters, which in themself are thrilling, but which feel somewhat out of place when the characters end up there for no seaming reason. That being said this is solid good read, which makes me long for the sequal.

A superb tome and a wonderful start to this arc of history. The origin story of the three most central and among the most intriguing characters in the Malazan universe is wonderfully handled and consequently, ever the more satisfying. Some ancillary characters, especially Nightchill have excellent cameos and I can't to see more of them. Esselmont has a generally different tone and voice than Eriksson and suits the younger characters and their journey much better. The tone is somewhat lighter, as much as the Malazan world can be, though that is perhaps inevitable, with someone as odd as Wu being the center of the plot! Can't wait for the next installment!

Well written and you must pay attention. Deep plots. Well deserved five stars. Looking forward to the rest of the series.

Ahh Dancer... I always wondered how he ended up partnered with that conniver. Now I know! This book is a straight up tale about Dancer and Kelvaned. It doesn't have as many side plots going on as some of the books do. I hope there is a continuation but it helped put things into perspective for me concerning their relationship in the Malazan books. As always this world is immersive and I am so happy they took their imagination to paper.

The product was very good.. The quality of the book is good and in a very low price. The story is marvellous and hard to put down. This is a story about the one of the main Anti-hero of malazan series, Cottilion or Dancer. The characterisation of this is very good and the story is easier than The malazan book of fallen series. Totally a goodread.

Dancer's Lament, the newest instalment in the Malazan World of Steven Erikson and Ian C. Esslemont, may well be one of their best books. The book covers the backstory of two of the most intriguing characters from the Malazan Book of the Fallen, and is set in time before the events of the Malazan Series, before the Malazan Empire spread out to conquer most of the known world. It's a fresh start, a new story in an old world, which is more streamlined and coherent than the massive set of intertwining story arcs of the Malazan BotF, but no less entertaining, intriguing and deep. Very well-written and filled to the brim with great characters, difficult decisions and deadly magic, this book is not only a must read for fans of the Malazan Book of the Fallen, but also a good starting point for newcomers to this amazing and outstanding Fantasy world.

I'm definitely not the only person that read Malzan book of the fallen series that would like to says the biggest of thank you to Ian for writing the very things that needed to be written to fill in many of the mysteries Steven left us with from start to finish lol it puts me in mind of 4,5,6 coming out first in star wars movies . Both you guys are some of the best authors I've read on par with Hamilton for creating such an eminence world of wonder that I'd recommend to every fantasy fan and I'll even say I'm yet to read anything I'd say is better and I've read thousands of books and authors, feist, Jordan, Sanderson, endings, gemmell,herbit, Anderson, Asimov, Anthony Ryan, Peter V Brett, Sarah J mass, Julian May, George Martin (hardest to read 1st book ever game of thrones) Peter Hamilton, Matthew Reilly, and so many more I've probably forgotten as many books as I've read anyway thanks again and BTW this is the first review I've ever done

The continent of Quon Tali is divided into a morass of squabbling city-states, the days of the Talian Hegemony long past. But, in the south, the Kingdom of Kan is on the move. Its armies are moving on Li Heng, the great crossroads city at the heart of the continent. The Protectress of Heng and her powerful (but eccentric) cadre of mages are prepared to stand against them, but they are distracted by the arrival of a bizarre mage, a skilled assassin hungry to make a name for himself and a warrior of preternatural skills dedicated to the service of the God of Death. Unbeknown to all, these three will take a broken continent and forge out of it one of the greatest empires ever known. The Malazan universe of fantasy novels (which now number twenty-one) has attracted a reputation for being unapproachable and difficult to get into, with the traditional first novel in the setting, Gardens of the Moon, having a confusing opening and little in the way of exposition. Some readers are fine with that, but many are not. Since then, authors Steven Erikson and Ian Cameron Esslemont have mused on other ways to get into the series (you can arguably start with Deadhouse Gates or Night of Knives instead, or even Midnight Tides, but all have arguments against them). Erikson even tried to create an alternate entry point with Forge of Darkness (the first in the Kharkanas prequel trilogy) but only succeeded in creating a book that only makes sense if you've read the rest of the series first. Dancer's Lament, on the other hand, is the first book in the series since Gardens that I would feel really comfortable suggesting that people start with. Unlike most Malazan novels, which are enormous, sprawl in lots of directions, have huge casts of characters (which sometimes completely change from one volume to another) and feature dense and sometimes obtuse writing, Dancer's Lament is tight, focused, relatively straightforward and relentless in pace. It has all the strongest hallmarks of the Malazan series - impressive sorcery, intriguing (but never overwrought) worldbuilding, good humour and the use of compassion as an overriding theme - whilst dumping most of the negatives. Or, to put it more primitively, Dancer's Lament is all killer, no filler. The tightness comes from there just being three POV characters. Dorin Rav is an assassin beyond compare looking for fame and fortune. Malazan veterans will know him, of course, as Dancer, but in this book he's just a young man with real skill but who sometimes gets in over his head. Silk, one of the mages of Li Heng, is an arrogant and apparently amoral fop who comes to realise, in his darkest hour, how much this city and his employer has come to mean to him. Iko, a Kanese Sword-Dancer, is a formidable warrior who has invested so much time in her fighting skills that she has neglected her personal ones, and has trouble forming bonds with her fellow warriors as a result. Silk and Iko appear in other books (Iko under a different name, and it's fun for old hands to try to work out who she is), but here they're presented as newcomers and youngsters trying to find their way in the world. The book takes place a century or so before the events of Gardens of the Moon and the central plot is refreshingly simple: Li Heng is under siege, the city's rulers are trying to repulse the attack, the attackers are trying to take the city and a whole bunch of other people are caught in the middle, most notably Dorin Rav who is navigating his way through the city's underworld in search of profit. The problem is that Dorin keeps tripping over his conscience, spending too much time worrying about the friends he's made on the way and is constantly distracted by a crazy mage he bumped into on the plains and now can't seem to avoid coming into contact with. The common complaint about prequels is that they're either not telling us anything we don't know or they're going out of their way to create new stories which don't gel with what's gone before. Dancer's Lament skirts this problem quite straightforwardly. His earlier novel Return of the Crimson Guard features sections about one of the conflicts that is mentioned in this novel, but it turns out that a lot of those reports are erroneous or conflate two separate conflicts into one and it's entertaining seeing the "real" events unfold in this book. It also helps we're in a period of time a while before our protagonists even arrive on Malaz Island, so there's a lot of room to manoeuvre. Indeed, getting to know characters like the Protectress when we know what her ultimate fate is can add a bit more resonance to events. Of course, it might be that "what is commonly known" may not turn out to be the truth at all. Esslemont has a more direct and sparse prose style than Erikson, which has sometimes made his books feel like a light salad compared to Erikson's four-course meals. Not so here, where Dancer's Lament leaps off the page with verve and confidence. The characters are vivid and feel real (Erikson's depiction of characters - even the same ones - can sometimes feel remote and alienating in contrast) and we come to care about even minor bit players such as the bird-keeping girl Ullara (a damaged, philosophical character who sometimes feels like she's been parachuted in from a China Mieville novel) and the various soldiers manning the walls of the city. There are some negatives, but these are minor. Esslemont's brisk and energetic style in this book is very refreshing for the series but it leads to the opposite of the usual problem: if most Malazan novels could stand to lose a few dozen pages of repetitive and laboured introspection, Dancer's Lament sometimes feels too short and some storylines feel like they could have been expanded and spread out a bit more. The distribution of chapters between characters also feels a bit too uneven, with Iko sometimes vanishing for large chunks of time and the plots of the various city mages not really going anywhere (although some of them will be picked up chronologically later on, particularly in Return of the Crimson Guard, which revisits Li Heng at the height of the Malazan Empire). This does make the world feel alive and still changing and evolving outside of the focus of the main plot, however. Dancer's Lament (****½) is, overall, a fast and satisfying read, the best Malazan novel in quite a while. It is available now (UK, USA). Its sequel, Deadhouse Landing, was published last month. The third book in the Path to Ascendancy series has the working title Kellanved's Reach and should be out in late 2018 or early 2019.