‘This masterwork of the imagination may be the high watermark of epic fantasy’ GLEN COOK Here begins the brutal but compelling sixth chapter in Steven Erikson’s masterly epic fantasy, The Malazan Book of the Fallen . . . . . . the Seven Cities rebellion has been crushed.One last rebel force remains, holed up in the city of Y’Ghatan under the fanatical command of Leoman of the Flails. The prospect of laying siege to this ancient fortress makes the battle-weary Malaz 14th Army uneasy. For it was here that the Empire’s greatest champion Dassem Ultor was slain and a tide of Malazan blood spilled.It is a place of foreboding; its smell is of death.Yet this is but a sideshow. Agents of a far greater conflict have made their opening moves. The Crippled God has been granted a place in the pantheon, a schism threatens and sides must be chosen. But whatever each god decides, the rules have changed – irrevocably, terrifyingly.It seems the gods are disinclined to be kind and the first blood to be drawn will be in the mortal world . . .‘It’s not just the vast imaginative sweep but the quality of prose that lifts this Malazan sequence . . . our author makes you work hard . . . it’s well worth it’ SFX‘The most significant work of epic fantasy since Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant’ SF SITE **Cover may vary**