Toll The Hounds

For what seemed like the three longest days ever, I waited for my new copy of Toll The Hounds by Steven Erikson, the eighth book in the series of The Malazan Book of The Fallen (the same series that Gardens of the Moon is from) Finally one day I came home from school to find the brown ups package sitting at the door just waiting for me. I quickly opened it up, and went on to drool over the spectacular cover art of the book. At 830 pages Toll the Hounds is the second largest novel so far in the series right behind Reaper's Gale's 834 pages. The book starts off with bringing the reader back to Darujhistan, the city of blue fire, a place that Steven has not visited heavily as a main theater of action since Gardens of the Moon, book one. After a few days of reading I'm on page 108, and nothing of to much importance has really occurred so far except for the return of Cutter, Crokus Younghand, to Darujhistan. So far a section of reading from the book that I thought was interesting was on page 91, " A blow to the side of his head and he rolled suddenly awake, both knives coming into his hands and blades scraping across the gritty flagstoned floor beneath him. His shoulder struck a wall and he blinked in the gloom." This passage describes the awakening of Ralick Nom, a master assassin that vanished at the end of Gardens of The Moon. This is a very significant passage cause it shows that Ralick is back and still the same assassin as he was before he vanished. This is shown when Erikson says , "he rolled suddenly awake, both knives coming into his hands," this just shows how even though Ralick has been asleep for years he still is an assassin by nature. With Ralick back in Darujhistan things are bound to get crazy. Within the local assassins guilds a shadowy cult focused on the worship of Ralick Nom has arisen, but been quickly banned by guild masters, and now that Ralick is actually back in the city a bloody assassin's war is bound to erupt.