I usually feel a faint masochistic thrill when starting a new Steven Erikson novel – not just because of the sheer size and weight of each such tome (especially in hardback), but because I know that I will usually spend the first third of the book frantically trying to work out what the hell is going on, how it related to what happened in the preceding book and who everyone is. As an experience, an Erikson novel could be compared with a series of The Wire – you don’t necessarily know what’s going on all the time, especially at the beginning, but you enjoy it anyway, and then suddenly it all starts to make sense, and then it’s wonderful, enthralling, compelling and utterly unlike any other fantasy you could ever read.

There are many writers pushing the boundaries in the fantasy scene at the moment, a number of who I have reviewed here on Bookgeeks – K.J.Parker, Richard Morgan, Joe Abercrombie – but Erikson is in a league of his own. The breadth of his vision, the complexity of the underlying mythos, the myriad interweaving plotlines, coupled with the fact that Erikson can really write, make this a richer fantasy experience than any other.

The schemes of the Crippled God are drawing more and more Ascendants and mortals in to oppostion, but as usual with Erikson it’s often hard to tell whose side certain people are on. The main focus of Reaper’s Gale is the Letherii Empire, where Rhulad Sengar, Tiste Edur Emperor of a Thousand Deaths, occupies the throne, being driven gradually insane by the cursed sword that can bring him back to life. The Tiste Edur are being corrupted and perverted by the materialistic Letherii people, and in effect their occupation is in name only, while life continues as before for the people of the Empire. Rhulad is obsessed with two things: treachery among his own Tiste Edur, and finding champions to fight and kill in the arena. Thus, the fleet that we encountered in The Bonehunters returns, bearing, among others, the Jhag, Icarium Lifestealer, and the formidable Teblor warrior Karsa Orlong, both destined to face Rhulad in combat.

Erikson saves some of his best comedic characters for the Letherii: the likes of blanket-attired, roof-dwelling Tehol Beddict and his manservant Bugg (aka Mael, Elder God of the Sea), along with sidekicks like Ubala Pung and Ormly of the Rat-Catcher’s Guild (who don’t so much catch rats as govern them) are often laugh out loud funny, even Pratchett-esque. Tehol and Bugg are continuing with their longstanding plan to destabilise the Letherii financial system by taking coin out of circulation and undermining confidence, and you sense Erikson’s feelings about the unfettered excesses of free-market capitalism may be being given expression in these aspects of the story.

Elsewhere in the Empire, Letherii control is deteriorating – the ancient tribe of the Shake are reclaiming their independence, while the Awl, who are due to be the latest tribe that the Letherii destroy in the name of expansion, are resurgent under the leadership of the enigmatic Redmask and his two accompanying K’Chain Che’Malle guardians, whose motivations are distinctly opaque. We follow a series of encounters between Redmask and a combined Letherii / Tiste Edur force that ends with a bloody sluaghter on a dried up lake bed and some surprising revelations.

Through this increasingly unstable continent, a party of unlikely companions seek a magical artefact, a Finnest, which binds the soul of the Tiste Edur god Scabandari Bloodeye. Among them are Fear Sengar, brother to the Emperor; the ex-slave Udinaas, first encountered in Midnight Tides; and the sinister Silchas Ruin of the Tiste Andii, god-like and capable of taking on the form of a dragon. Also abroad, travelling through the magical warrens and holds, and setting out with different goals, are the great friends Trull Sengar and the T’Lan Imass Onrack the Broken, and the High Mage Quick Ben, a much-loved character first encountered in the very first book of the series, Gardens of the Moon. The two groups are destined to cross paths, and not all will survive the encounter.

The complex situation in the Empire is thus highly combustible, and the spark is duly provided in the form of the Bonehunters, the dispossessed Fourteenth Army of the Malazan Empire. They have followed the Ltherii fleet back to Lether to seek revenge for the slaughter of Malazan citizens, and set about infiltrating marines all along the coast, who immediately use their deadly Moranth munitions to teach the Edur a new way of fighting. The soldiers include many favourite characters: Sergeant Fiddler, Sergeant Gesler, Stormy, the incorrigible drunkard Sergeant Hellian, and their motley bands of heavy infantry and squad mages. Erikson’s equal opportunities policy has always meant there are as many women as men in the armies he describes, and despite the bewildering number of named characters (more than any other writer would dare to create, you suspect), the passages featuring the Malazan army are always irreverent, often lewd, and peppered with the black humour of professional soldiers who are desperate to find a cause to fight for (or perhaps just to find someone to blow up!).

Erikson succeeds in tying all of these plot strands together in a very convincing manner with a series of impressive set-piece encounters, and many storylines that have been running for several books are brought to some kind of conclusion. However, this being Erikson, new avenues open up, and the fundamental story, the quest of the Crippled God for supremacy, has some way to go. New avenues for future books are opened up – who was Redmask? What is Icarium’s destiny? What of the Shake and the Tiste Andii? Where will the Bonehunters go next?

If you have got as far in the Malazan Book of the Fallen as this volume, a review is probably irrelevant to you – you know what to expect from Erikson, and whether you find it overwhelming or enthralling (or both), you can rest assured that this book delivers. Although there are a few plotlines which feel incidental to Reaper’s Gale, no doubt their relevance will be revealed in time, and overall, once you re-immerse yourself in Erikson’s world(s), in the sheer quality of his writing, you are reminded that there is no-one else even remotely capable of doing fantasy like this. Despite its flaws, a masterpiece.

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