Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #2)

by Steven Erikson

Look for the most disordered collection of tents and foul-smelling vapors aswarm with mosquitoes and gnats and you’ll have found Malazan Engineers. And in that quarter you’ll find soldiers shaking like leaves, with splash-burn pockmarks, singed hair and a dark, manic gleam in their eyes.

The second book is better than the first. I'm in for the series.