My only regret, and I appreciate it may have been a little dry, was we didn't get a little more context on the Jhistal and it's exact perversion. 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.

Malzan is my all-time favourite series, the worldbuilding, characters, the magic system, and the pure scope of it all that Steven Erikson and Ian C Esslemont has created is just phenomenal. We span large amounts of time in short summary paragraphs and skip over entire battle or momentous events without really any personal investment. Granted, Deadhouse Landing has started the Tay-arc and already portrayed him as something of a socially inept recluse.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.

He now lives in Fairbanks, Alaska, with his wife and children and is currently working on his PhD in English Literature. In all the other entries of this series, it made sense and they were important in the unfolding of events.Eventually with the help of some other readers we settled on Forge of the High Mage, and I was happy with that. Despite these complaints, the book itself is perhaps my favorite of any Esslemont has ever written and has made up for a lot of the issues I had with Kellanved's Reach, despite it carrying a few of it's flaws over.