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Dancer's Lament
- Path to Ascendancy, Book 1
- Narrated by: John Banks
- Series: Malazan Empire: Path to Ascendancy, Book 1
- Length: 16 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fantasy
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Publisher's Summary
Esslemont's all-new prequel trilogy takes readers deeper into the politics and intrigue of the New York Times bestselling Malazan Empire. Dancer's Lament focuses on the genesis of the empire, and features Dancer, the skilled assassin, who, alongside the mage Kellanved, would found the Malazan empire.
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What listeners say about Dancer's Lament
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Performance
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- Telorast
- 06-06-16
Ahhhh...
Ian Esselmont has hit his stride both as a writer and a story teller. Dancer's Lament begins a rich development of Malazan history without coming across as a prequel. The relationships of the characters are unexpected and complex. The book stands on it's own without suggesting that the characters have a future in an epic series, so I believe it would be a great choice for someone who has never heard of Malazan Book of the Fallen. For those who have read and reread MBotF, what can I say... It's sweet.
The reader, John Banks, is just right. Great voices with just the right emphasis in the right places. My only complaint is the voice of Koroll. I found it difficult to listen to when he talked very long, which fortunately was not very often. Otherwise, excellent.
24 people found this helpful
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- Kirsten P Camp
- 06-01-16
Good Start
I enjoyed this book. It really kept me interested. The story wasn't too long and still you get enough depth of the characters and what is going on. Can't wait for the next book.
9 people found this helpful
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- david a. pollard
- 06-05-16
I love these stories!
The worlds created by Ian C. Esslemont and Steven Erickson are beyond amazing! Every one of them have been intriguing, entertaining, captivating, and down right awe inspiring.
6 people found this helpful
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Performance
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- Omy Sadat
- 06-23-16
Lots of action and really funny!
It answers a hundred questions from the book of the fallen story, it poses a thousand new ones. From start to finish it was hard to put down.
4 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-15-16
The birth of an empire
While I've enjoyed Erikson's Karkhanas (sp?) story, I never really cared about Anomander Rake's, and the Tiste Andii's, history. However, in a literary world with so many well written friendships/partnerships, one of my favorite has always been Shadowthrone and his Rope. While the two are woven throughout the Malazan Book of the Fallen, you don't really get an in-depth look at their relationship, and most of what you do get barely skims the surface of a much deeper, but only ever implied, back story. I was very excited to see their beginnings, and this beginning does not disappoint.
7 people found this helpful
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- Sailfish
- 07-04-16
A bit slow starting out but gets better
This story has a large number of story arcs that make it difficult to get a grasp on where the overall story is going. However, if one stays with it, the various threads do begin to tie together and coalesce at the end.
Even so, there was a large amount of time spent on character interaction and backstory such that maintaining one's interest level often became a challenge.
I will say that the writing was above par and the narrator's performance was worthy.
10 people found this helpful
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- Dave
- 08-17-16
Great story, bad narrator
I really enjoyed this book, but the narrator made me cringe. Either they didn't explain to him how to pronounce many names from the Malazan world correctly or he just made it up as he went along. He's also a bit overly dramatic in places.
6 people found this helpful
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- Alexandra Izaguirre
- 09-30-20
beautiful
another amazing book and the narrator was spectacular always. The malazan books are so amazing and I love how huge this world is.
1 person found this helpful
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- Paul
- 11-25-19
Juvenile
Basically a YA novel or poorly written fan fiction set in the Malazan universe. Entire book has massive logical holes and simplistic characters and writing. Young Kellanved seems to be a poor imitation of Iskaral Pust, and characters that should be bad ass or at least competent based on their background or history routinely make ridiculous decisions, walk into obvious traps, or fail at basic tasks. None of which seems to advance the story or create lasting consequences for anyone in any way. For example, Dancer who is supposedly a highly trained killer who was taught by the greatest master assasin on the continent, went on to create his own secret society of master assassins,
and become literally the god of assassins. But somehow manages to get his teeth kicked in by low level street thugs about 4 times in the first 4 hours alone. Or Silk who is apparently a high mage of a shadow warren, and part of an elite cadre of super mages but whose biggest trick is to flash light so bright sometimes people get blinded maybe. These nonsensical main characters are then backed by a cast of shallow, soft mirrors of Erikson characters. Like the apparently battlehardened veteran engineer officer, who verbally assaults Silk in true malazan marine fashion (despite the book being set 100+ years before they even existed) and then in her next breath wines in all seriousness about who will take care of those bad guys he just blinded. Full of contradictory statements and it seems like the author lacks a basic understanding or even awareness of the worldbuilding that Erikson took ten books to expand. It's a cute little scratch for the malazan itch but isnt anywhere near comparable to the original series and Esslemont should have left this story to Erikson to tell. At least he would have done it the justice that these two characters deserve. The whole thing feels like a cheap imitation written by someone who hadnt even read the original series.
1 person found this helpful
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- Jeremy R.
- 08-23-19
Just enough to keep me interested
This was an ok book, The story of the assassin was enough to keep me interested and want to continue to listen to the book. In fact I will be buying book 2 to find out what happens to him.
I was not able to keep track of who was who until the end of the book, this is mainly due to the author using odd names for characters and groups.
1 person found this helpful