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Toll the Hounds

Toll the Hounds

Epic FantasyFantasy
Pages
1280
Published
2008
Language
English

Synopsis

Darujhistan again — the city that opened the series returns for one of its most sprawling explorations. Hood, the God of Death, is doing something unprecedented: gathering his power. In the streets of Darujhistan, a killer hunts and a group of unlikely allies converge on a mystery that reaches back ten thousand years. And far to the north, on the Pannion Domin's former ground, Anomander Rake — Son of Darkness, lord of the Tiste Andii, ancient beyond reckoning — prepares to make a sacrifice that will reshape the Malazan world forever. Toll the Hounds is the most atmospheric and digressive book in the series, its narrator Kruppe spinning the tale as if it were legend rather than history, and it is deliberately structured like a slow-building storm. Its final hundred pages are among the most devastating in fantasy literature.

Prose complexity
7/10

Vibe

DarkGrittyAtmospheric
Unreliable NarratorMultiple POVsSacrifice

Genres

Epic Fantasy Fantasy High Fantasy Adventure Dark Fantasy

About the author

S
Steven Erikson

Steven Erikson was born Steve Rune Lundin in Toronto in 1959 and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He trained as an archaeologist and anthropologist — completing fieldwork on Indigenous sites in the Canadian Shield — before earning a graduate degree through the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He writes under a pen name adopted to avoid confusion with the American novelist Steve Erickson. The world of the Malazan Book of the Fallen has its origins not in a manuscript but in a tabletop roleplaying campaign....

Characters

Anomander RakeProtagonist

Son of Darkness and Lord of the Tiste Andii, wielder of the black sword Dragnipur. His legacy shapes the novel from its opening pages, building toward the climactic, voluntary sacrifice that ends his story.

KruppeSupporting

The garrulous Darujhistani fence who narrates the novel in the cadence of legend rather than history — his comic excess masking a narrator carrying more grief than he lets on.

Nimander GolitSupporting

Anomander Rake's son, leading a small band of young Tiste Andii survivors of Drift Avalii toward Black Coral and a reckoning with the father he barely knows.

DitchSupporting

A mage bound within Dragnipur, dragging the sword's damned wagon through its prison-realm as a storm of Chaos closes in behind the endless procession of the condemned.

Crokus YounghandSupporting

Once a young thief in Darujhistan, now going by the name Cutter after years as a hired blade abroad; he returns to the city haunted by loss and searching for purpose.

All characters in Toll the Hounds

Frequently asked questions

  • Is Toll the Hounds confusing?

    More than most entries in the series — it is narrated by Kruppe, an unreliable and garrulous character, and deliberately mimics the feel of oral legend. Many readers find it rewards a second read.

  • Does Anomander Rake die?
  • What is the Hood subplot about?

    Hood, the God of Death, is divesting himself of his role — a thread that connects to the larger divine convergence driving the final two books.

  • Why does Darujhistan return?

    The city from Gardens of the Moon serves as the series' emotional anchor — returning to it in book 8 creates a structural echo that pays off many threads planted in the first book.

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