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666 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published April 1, 1999
“Too many regrets. Lost chances—and with each one passing the less human we all became, and the deeper into the nightmare of power we all sank.”
“He’s loyal to an idea, and that’s the hardest kind to turn.”
“No matter how benign the original rulers, no matter how generous the nobility, the word of Empire, weighted by might, twisted the past into a tyranny of demons.”
“Only if you fail at all else, son. Taking up the sword is the last act of desperate men. Mark my words and find yourself a more worthy dream.”
“Ambition is not a dirty word. Piss on compromise. Go for the throat.”- Steven Erikson
"Anomander Rake, Lord of the Tiste Andii, who are the souls of Starless Night. Rake, the Mane of Chaos. That’s who the Moon’s lord is, and you’re pitting four High Mages and a single cadre against him."
Anomander Rake's skin was jet-black, befitting Gothos' descriptions, but his mane flowed silver. He stood close to seven feet tall. His features were sharp, as if cut from onyx, a slight upward tilt to the large vertical-pupiled eyes.
A two-handed sword was strapped to Rake's broad back, its silver dragonskull pommel and archaic crosshilt jutting from a wooden scabbard fully six and a half feet long. From the weapon bled power, staining the air like black ink in a pool of water.
“Ambition is not a dirty word. Piss on compromise. Go for the throat.”
“Too many regrets. Lost chances—and with each one passing the less human we all became, and the deeper into the nightmare of power we all sank.”
“High house shadow, and a knife in the dark. A new game's begun, or the old one's just turned.”
“Toc the Younger, last representative of the Claw on Genabackis, one-eyed and half his face scarred by fire.”
“Anomander Rake, Lord of the Tiste Andii, who are the souls of Starless Night. Rake, the Mane of Chaos.”
"Now these ashes have grown cold, we open the old book.
These oil-stained pages recount the tales of the Fallen,
a frayed empire, words without warmth. The hearth
has ebbed, its gleam and life's sparks are but memories
against dimming eyes - what cast my mind, what hue my
thoughts as I open the Book of the Fallen
and breathe deep the scent of history?
Listen, then, to these words carried on that breath.
These tales are the tales of us all, again yet again.
We are history relived and that is all, without end that is all."
Whiskeyjack, a man pushed to the edge, or, rather, the edge creeping on him on all side, a crumbling of belief, a falling of faith, leaving as his last claim to humanity his squad, a shrinking handful of the only people that mattered any more. But he held on, and he pushed back - pushed back hard.
Quick Ben and Kalam, seeking to take responsibility from their sergeant's shoulders. It was their only means of loving the man, though they'd never put it in such terms.
Mane of Chaos. Anomander Rake. Lord of the black-skinned Tiste Andii, who has looked down on a hundred thousand winters, who has tasted the blood of dragons, who leads the last of his kind, seated in the Throne of Sorrow and a kingdom tragic and fey - a kingdom with no land to call its own.
''Now these ashes have grown cold,
we open the old book.
These oil-stained pages recount the tales of the Fallen,
a frayed empire, words without warmth.
The hearth has ebbed, its gleam and life's sparks are but memories against dimming eyes - what cast my mind, what hue my thoughts as I open the Book of the Fallen and breathe deep the scent of history?
Listen, then, to these words carried on that breath.
These tales are the tales of us all, again yet again.
We are history relived and that is all, without end that is all.''
''Ambition is not a dirty word. Piss on compromise.
Go for the throat.''