Malazan updates

Here's some tidbits all related to the gargantuan Malazan project.

First off is the synopsis/blurb for Stonewielder by Ian C. Esslemont, author of Night of Knives and Return of the Crimson Guard. The book is still scheduled for a release this year. This was posted first by Pat at Pat Fantasy Hotlist (here). Greymane, the continent of Korel and the stormriders.... sounds very promising! Here you go :

Greymane believed he'd outrun his past. He now ran a school for swordsmanship in Falar and was looking forward to becoming fat and lazy. With him was Kyle, though the plains youth was not quite so contented with civilian life outside the mercenary company the Crimson Guard. Yet it is not so easy to disappear when you are an ex-Fist of the Malazan Empire, especially one denounced and under a death-sentence from that very Empire.

For there is a new Emperor on the throne of Malaz, and his thoughts turn to the lingering drain of blood and treasure that is the failed invasion of the Korel subcontinent. In the record vaults beneath Unta, the Imperial capital, lie the answers to that disaster. And out of this buried history surfaces the name Stonewielder.

In Korel, Lord Protector Hiam, commander of the Stormguard, faces the potential annihilation of all that he loves as with the blood of his few remaining men and a crumbling stone wall that has seen better days, he labours to stave off the sea-borne Stormriders who would destroy his lands.

Meanwhile, religious war has broken out all across these lands as the local cult of the Blessed Lady, who has stood firm for millennia against the assaults of the Stormriders, seeks to stamp out all rivals; a champion refuses to stand against the alien 'Riders' and takes up arms in rebellion; and a local magistrate innocently pursuing the mystery of a series of murders is brought to the very heart of a far larger and far more terrifying ancient crime that has stained the entire subcontinent.

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I already posted the tentative map of the Malazan world (sometimes called Wu) and you can find it in the index. However, as was reported by Adam at The Wertzone (here), someone at the Cartographer Guild striked again! After making beautiful renderings for the maps of A Song of Ice and Fire and A Land Fit for Heroes (The Steel Remains), here's the Malazan world in all it's glory (as Adam mentioned, the map is a bit outdated...) :

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Finally, a word again from the man himself, Steven Erikson. He posted another entry for his "Notes on a Crisis" on Life as a human, this time about his motivations and more specifically the character of Badalle (from the Snake in Toll the Hounds). He explains his inspiration for the character who was called by some the "poet bitch". I admit that I didn't really liked that story arc and this protagonist in particular. Not sure if this reconcile me with her...