The return of the mercenary company, the Crimson Guard, cannot attended at a worse time to get a Malazan Empire exhausted by warfare and weakened by betrayals and rivalries. Indeed, there are those who wonder if the Empress Laseen might not be losing her grasp on power as she encounters raising unrest as conquered kingdoms and principalities feeling freedom once more.

Into the seething cauldron of Quon Tali-the Empire’s heartland-marches the Guard. With their return comes the memory of about Come back from the Crimson Guard their hundred-year-old vow: undying opposition to the existence from the Empire-and yet all is not well with the Guard itself. Components within its élite, the Avowed, possess set their places on far greater power. You will find historic entities who also seek to further their own arcane ends. And what from the swordsman known as Traveller who, with his friend Ereko, has truly gone searching for a confrontation from which none have got ever returned.

As the Safeguard prepares to wage war, so Laseen’s own generals and mages, the ‘Old Hands’, grow impatient at what they observe as her mismanagement of the Empire. But could Laseen have outwitted all of them? Could she become using the uprisings to acquire and finally remove these last irksome survivors from the days of her illustrious forerunner, Kellanved?

Epic and involving, Return from the Crimson Safeguard can be an enthralling new chapter in the tumultuous background of the Malazan Empire.