Orb Sceptre Throne (Novels of the Malazan Empire #4) in The Bridgeburners

Jun 12, 2012 Ben rated it it was ok

I really wanted to rate this book higher than I did, but at the end of the day this was the most disappointing book I have read of the whole Malazan series, and Esslemont's least inspiring book to date.

Ever since discovering Steven Erikson over a decade ago, he has been one of my favourite authors. Naturally, when someone else swims in the same pool it very hard not to draw comparisons, and differences in writing styles are particularly evident, and sometimes not flattering. However, Esslemont h I really wanted to rate this book higher than I did, but at the end of the day this was the most disappointing book I have read of the whole Malazan series, and Esslemont's least inspiring book to date.

Ever since discovering Steven Erikson over a decade ago, he has been one of my favourite authors. Naturally, when someone else swims in the same pool it very hard not to draw comparisons, and differences in writing styles are particularly evident, and sometimes not flattering. However, Esslemont has previously done a decent job of adding to the Malazan tapestry and creating his own niche. In previous books he mainly focused on areas which had been avoided by Erikson, and generally tried to introduce new characters. This gave him his own voice, his own vision and helped to let us enjoy his books as his own author. Sadly, this was not the case with Orb Sceptre Throne.

Set mostly in Darujistan, a city which we have visted many times during the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, and naturally we encounter characters we have met before. The fact that these characters have been written about and described by others before, is not really the problem here (though, I must admit, I got nowhere the joy of reading the Kruppe sections as I did those penned by Erikson). Rather it was just that a lot of these characters seemed to be introduced and used, simply because they had been before. Were they simply handy characters to make use of, or was it felt that to have a story set in Darujistan and not use these characters would be a lack, or was it just that Esslemont wanted to give the fans what he thought they wanted? Whatever the case, the result falls rather flat and the most memorable and best written parts of the story centre around the original characters.

In addition, there are many meanders and turns to the story, including one entire arc, which seem to serve little or no purpose to the story itself. It can be supposed that the arc is a part of a continuing backstory that Esslemont is weaving, which started in Night of Knives and continued on with Return of the Crimson Guard. It is nice that he is connecting his books together with some threads, but this felt forced and frankly in some places rather baffling. In another example of this somewhat random and very loose nature to the book, we have a section where Esslemont describes the hills east of Darujistan and describes their haunted nature and hints at the monster which dwells there - only to then make it pretty obvious to any reader of the world that he is commenting on the presence of the Toblakai, Karsa Orlong and his witch companion, Samar Dev. Yet, the two do not feature in the story, they have no bearing in the story, they are not mentioned in the story again, and in fact... the whole passage adds absolutely nothing to the tale at all, other than to add some confusion as to why he mentioned them.

All this would still have left me with giving the book at least a three star rating, but sadly the main plot of the book is not really that exciting. I was not really gripped with any sense of anticipation or thrill of excitement. Not so much really surprised me, though at the same time too much left me feeling dissatisfied with the lack of explanation. To be sure there were some fun scenes, and there was detail added to the world... but as an interesting book in its own right with a decent plot, sadly not.

Hopefully Blood and Bone will be considerably better and hopefully Esslemont's editor will have had a much greater input in it than this rambling let-down.

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