Now I’m full of anticipation and excitement for whatever comes out first, the next book in this series or whatever Mr. I can't give away too much due to spoilers, but let's just say I was hoping for some serious land and ship battles but again they all happened mostly off page. I was quite disappointed by the previous book, Kellanved’s Reach was far too short and spread across too many plotlines, but Forge of the High Mage is a great comeback to proper Malazan form.

Surprisingly, Forge of the High Mage is exactly what the title says, the forging of the High Mage Tayschrenn into the formidable and intimidating figure seen in MBotF. slight spoilers here but i adored how dancer was handled in his reunion to ullara, especially considering the underlying tension with lasseen that makes the ultimate outcome that much more understandable. Since the main Malazan armies are otherwise engaged in Quon Tali, a collection of orphaned units and broken squads has been brought together under Fist Dujek - himself recovering from the loss of an arm - to fight this new campaign. Only snafu was the absolute sudden unexplained and glaring omission of a character on page 111 who should have had an explanation for his unresolved absence. Granted, Deadhouse Landing has started the Tay-arc and already portrayed him as something of a socially inept recluse.

Lot's of old and new faces come into the mix, with multiple plot points converging in typical and exciting Malazan fashion. The one good thing I can say about the book is that it reads well and is almost a page-turner so despite some misgivings, it didn't turn into a slog at all and is relatively short for a Malazan novel.

It just seemed like it didn't fit as I've never seen the word used (before or after, timeline wise) in Malazan world. As mentioned, Forge of the High Mage frequently features showdowns, sometimes between some of the most powerful beings in the Malazan Universe. Hopefully there will be a couple more novels in this series so I sincerely hope that he bumps the quality back up to normal.

Esslemont also admits he fell behind in the writing because he "found it difficult to do justice to the project and so it slowed down.