Forge of the High Mage

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Forge of the High Mage is a book that I have been eagerly awaiting since I finished my early review copy of Kellanved’s Reach in January 2019. But two can play at that game, for the Emperor sails towards Falar aboard his flagship Twisted - a vessel that is itself thought to be not entirely of this world . One question I was left with was the amount of time passing between the start of this series and the beginning of the Malazan Book of the Fallen. I didn’t expect this volume to be so Tayschrenn centric, but it does such a fantastic job revealing the underpinnings of this enigmatic man.

This must be an interesting consideration for an author when creating drama for particular scenes in prequels to a popular series. As for this book, Kellanved and especially Dancer are, for me, ones of the most unforgettable and outstanding characters not only in this series, but in all epic fantasy universe. The book had originally been scheduled to be published in 2020, but a number of factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic, led to a long delay. Our main character, who takes centre stage in this Malazan tale, is a young High Mage Tayschrenn, leads the Malazan infantry alongside High Fist Dujek to reach Falar, he is untested and doesn't realise how powerful a mage he is until he comes up against very powerful elder magics.

Forge of the High Mage is a book that I have been eagerly awaiting since I finished my early review copy of Kellanved's Reach in January 2019. Esslemont confirms that the title indicates a change in direction from the first three books, which focused on Kellanved and Dancer.

I also can't help but wonder if he might eventually become someone we already know from the main Book of the Fallen Series? If you don't like the main Malazan books you might still like the Path to Ascendancy books because they are lighter and faster paced but I think a lot of the fun of these prequel books are knowing what these characters will do later on and seeing them develop so reading Path to Ascendancy without that context seems pointless. The entire novel is a series of short scenes, swapping back and forth between around a dozen characters. His novels - beginning with Night of Knives - are all set in the fantasy world of Malaz that he co-created with Steven Erikson. We span large amounts of time in short summary paragraphs and skip over entire battle or momentous events without really any personal investment.

Whereas Dancer’s Lament only featured three point-of-view perspectives, Forge of the High Mage has approximately a dozen. Other characters from the past get some great page time to flesh them out and further imperial politics (plus a little from the Guard) are also given more context. Die meisten Charaktere sind dem Leser schon bekannt und der Leser des Book of the Fallen weiß natürlich wo die Geschichte hinführt, aber einige Lücken werden zufriedenstellend gefüllt und auch die ein oder andere Unklarheit im Gesamtbild wird beseitigt. Finally, it is worth noting that there are a couple of big-name cameos in Forge of the High Mage with characters who are not directly involved in the action taking place (yet). This led me to reflect, are these set pieces truly engrossing me as much as they could as I know which characters survive (having read eighteen Malazan books so far) and have already concluded who I should be rooting for prior to these exchanges?

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.I think Kellanved having command of the hounds and the T'lan Imass but gaining this off screen was a bit of a shame because these are things that naturally would've been interesting. 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. He'll never reach the heights of Steven Erikson but not all Malazan books have to be 1000-page tomes full of philosophy. The great thing is we still have two ongoing series from Erikson and at least another 2 books left in this series. Here, then, in the tracts of the Ice Wastes and among the islands of Falar, the Empire of Malaz faces two seemingly insurmountable tests - each one potentially the origin of its destruction.

I felt like his original 6 were a little gimmicky - like seeing the rest of the Star Wars universe you always wanted to see but then realize it was better keeping it mysterious. These present a varied mix of interesting characters whose thoughts and feelings we are given witness to. Most people have stopped that (not all, for some reason) and now you can enjoy his books and let them shine for what they are.Great book, perfect ICE novel and it sets up the next one (the events at Aren) nicely by showing a few of those characters and most likely the man who will face Daseem. If you've read Malazan and you like it, there's no reason not to read this book as long as you've read the three previous ones in this cycle. Dancer's Lament was the first book in the 'Paths to Ascendancy' sequence (which continues the story of the turbulent early history of this epic imagined world) while Forge of the High Mage is the fourth.