Malazan Book of The Fallen

Malazan Book Of The Fallen

The Malazan Book of the Fallen is an epic fantasy series written by Canadian author Steven Erikson, published in ten volumes beginning with the novel Gardens of the Moon, published in 1999. The series was completed with the publication of The Crippled God in February 2011. Erikson's series is complex with a wide scope, and presents the narratives of a large cast of characters. Erikson's plotting presents a complicated series of events in the world upon which the Malazan Empire is located. Each of the first five novels is relatively self-contained, in that it resolves its respective primary conflict; but many underlying characters and events are interwoven throughout the works of the series, binding it together.

The Malazan world was co-created by Steven Erikson and Ian Cameron Esslemont in the early 1980s as a backdrop to their GURPS roleplaying campaign. In 2005, Esslemont began publishing his own series of five novels set in the same world, beginning with Night of Knives. Although Esslemont's books are published under a different series title – Novels of the Malazan Empire – Esslemont and Erikson collaborated on the storyline for the entire fifteen-book project and Esslemont's novels are considered as canonical and integral to the series as Erikson's own.

The Malazan series is often compared both to Glen Cook's The Black Company series (to whom the seventh book is dedicated) and George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. By 2006, the series had sold 250,000 copies.