Tens of thousands of many years of glaciers is melting, and the land of Assail, long a byword for menace and inaccessibility, reaches last yielding it is secrets. Tales of gold discovered in the region’s north circulate atlanta divorce attorneys waterfront dive and sailor’s tavern and now adventurers and fortune-seekers have set sail in search of riches. And everything they need to guide them are legends and garbled tales from the risks that rest in wait around – hostile coasts, areas of snow, impassable barriers and unusual, terrifying about Assail: A Novel of the Malazan Empire animals. But all accounts concur that the people of the north fulfill all trespassers with the sword – and really should you make it, beyond are rumoured to lurk Elder monsters out of history’s very beginnings.

Into this turmoil ventures the mercenary company, the Crimson Guard. Not drawn by contract, but by the guarantee of answers: answers that Shimmer, second in command, feels should not be sought. Also heading north, as part of an uneasy alliance of Malazan fortune-hunters and Letherii soldiery, comes the bard Fisher kel Tath. With him is usually a Tiste Andii who was simply found washed ashore and cannot keep in mind his past and yet commands far more power than he should. It is also rumoured that a warrior, bearer of a sword that slays gods and who once fought for the Malazans, is also journeying that method. But far south, a female patiently guards the shore. She awaits both allies and opponents. She is Silverfox, newly incarnate Summoner of the undying army of the T’lan Imass, and she will do anything to avoid the renewal of an ages-old crusade that could lay waste to the complete continent and beyond. Casting light on mysteries spanning the Malazan empire, and offering a glimpse of the storied and epic history that shaped it, Assail brings the epic story of the Empire of Malaz to a thrilling close.