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Toll the Hounds
- The Malazan Book of the Fallen 8
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 44 hrs
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Toll the Hounds
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Publisher's Summary
Random House presents the audiobook edition of Toll the Hounds: The Malazan Book of the Fallen 8 by Steven Erikson, read by Michael Page.
In Darujhistan, the saying goes that Love and Death shall arrive together, dancing....
It is summer, and the heat is oppressive, yet the discomfiture of the small rotund man in the faded red waistcoat is not entirely due to the sun. Dire portents plague his nights and haunt the city's streets like fiends of shadow.
Assassins skulk in alleyways, but it seems the hunters have become the hunted. Hidden hands pluck the strings of tyranny like a fell chorus. Strangers have arrived, and while the bards sing their tragic tales, somewhere in the distance can be heard the baying of hounds. All is palpably not well. And in Black Coral, too, ruled over by Anomander Rake, Son of Darkness, something is afoot - memories of ancient crimes surface, clamouring for revenge, so it would seem that Love and Death are indeed about to make their entrance....
This is epic fantasy at its most imaginative, storytelling at its most exciting.
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What listeners say about Toll the Hounds
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Langer MD
- 2019-04-13
Superb Writing. Awful Reader
Erickson writes beautifully. A true wordsmith. His prose is poetic, every word carefully chosen. His story is full of pathos and humor. This would easily rate 5 stars but for Michael Page's performance. He has added another annoying voice to his repertoire of growls and bad ethnic accents...a whiny narrator voice that he uses about 20% of the time. Just read! Still glad I purchased this book.
8 stars out of 10.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Stephen
- 2022-12-21
Weakest Malazan entry so far.
Struggled to make it through this one... First 35 hours was a slog.
The climax (last ~5hrs) was really good though and if I could rate that separately I'd give it a 5/5.
Erikson really turned every character into a philospher in this one, every character was waxing poetic about the meaning of life and death and blah blah blah.
Overall, this was the weakest Malazan book so far.
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The voice acting was inconsistent here too. The voices for certain characters switch multiple times over the course of the book which makes it hard to know who's speaking at times.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Kris Ward
- 2019-08-26
I hope this was a one-off blip....
Like most of the series, the end is intense and fun. However, the forty hours spent getting there were gruelling this time. A lot of time spent listening to characters (or the narrator) wax philosophical. Very dull, and the new characters are not at all interesting.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Adam Parisien
- 2021-12-17
Good and Bad: Mixed Malazan
This one is hard to rate. I’ve generally been positive in my reviews so far, but Toll the Hounds is hard to place. It is both the very best and very worst of what Erikson has to offer as an author.
First, the good. This book does an amazing job of weaving together a lot of intertwining plot lines, and wrapping up a lot of character arcs from previous books. It somehow balances petty drama with god-level confrontations, and the stakes never seem to fall despite this. The climax of this book is one of Erikson’s best. I would have given the story only 2 stars, but the climax brings it up to 3. The action is as fun as always. And everything the book does well it does REALLY well.
I also really like the timeline. While other Malazan books take months to conclude their stories, this one takes maybe 10-14 days from what I can tell (the length of the Gedderone Fete), which is a neat way to handle it. With that in mind, it fits very well between Reaper’s Gale and Dust of Dreams / Orb Sceptre Throne.
However, I think this is one of (if not the) hardest of Erikson’s novels to get through. I know a few people and have heard of many more on Reddit who have gotten this far into the series and this book finally defeats them. I think this is because of how self indulgent this book is. Erikson always likes to lay on the inner contemplation and thematic monologues, but it feels out of control with this one. During almost every single scene for the first 3/4 of the book whichever perspective character you are reading about is reflecting and monologuing and navel gazing. It just makes this book extremely tedious, and the themes almost get heavy handed because of it. If I remember correctly, Dust of Dreams is the same way too, and it is unfortunate that there are 2 novels like this in a row. That makes it difficult to appreciate the climax of the series (The Crippled God) when it is so hard to get to.
As well, something that really bothered me the first time I read this book was how unfinished the plot lines feel. I mentioned that some character arcs are wrapped up well, but there are others that feel incomplete, and there are a lot of plot lines introduced in this book (or that had been led up to in previous books) that just seem to fizzle out. The reason for that is because it is really concluded in Ian Esslemont’s novel, Orb Sceptre Throne. Which is really a bad thing to hear if you haven’t read the other 3 Esslemont Novels up to this point, because either you will have to catch up now (they’re needed to build up to Orb Sceptre Throne) or be left with some serious cliffhangers that will never be resolved by Erikson. So I’m actually taking points away for that. I really like Orb Scepter Throne and will be reading it next, but my first time through these books that left a really sour taste in my mouth.
Narration is great, although I noticed they didn’t edit in the correct pronunciation of Soletaken this time, which is always jarring.
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