Blood and Bone

Blood and Bone is the fifth of Ian C. Esslemont's Novels of the Malazan Empire, shifting the action to the fever-hot continent of Jacuruku and the vast, semi-mythic jungle of Himatan. It is among the more self-contained entries in Esslemont's Malazan sequence, though it deepens threads running through the larger world.

The novel interweaves several expeditions converging on the jungle: the arrogant Thaumaturg army bent on subjugation, the Crimson Guard, desert tribes united under a mysterious Warleader, and a young woman named Saeng who can commune with spirits. At the heart of it all sits Ardata, the enigmatic goddess whose realm blurs the line between the living world and the beyond.

Steven Erikson has called it his favorite Malazan novel by Esslemont. Atmospheric and often brutal, Blood and Bone is dense epic fantasy that trades open battlefields for the claustrophobic, hallucinatory menace of the jungle, and assumes readers are already invested in the Malazan world.