The Bonehunters (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #6)

by Steven Erikson

the decrepit remnants of what had once been a thriving community. Intent on its own destruction, even then, though no doubt few thought that way at the time. The forest must have seemed endless, or at least immortal, and so they had harvested with frenzied abandon. But now the trees were gone, and all those hoarded coins of profit had slipped away, leaving hands filled with nothing but sand.

The gentler and kinder the god, the more harsh and cruel its worshippers,