Toll the Hounds: Book Eight of The Malazan Book of the Fallen
After the action-packed [b:The Bonehunters|478951|The Bonehunters (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #6)|Steven Erikson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1399934281s/478951.jpg|3898723] and [b:Reaper's Gale|459064|Reaper's Gale (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #7)|Steven Erikson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1356447867s/459064.jpg|4379974], Toll the Hounds fell a little flat for me. However, there were some brilliant moments, the standouts being the meeting of two insane characters, and this:Sadness was, she well knew, not something that could be cured. It was not, in fact, a failing, not a flaw, not an illness of spirit. Sadness was never without reason, and to assert that it marked some kind of dysfunction did little more than prove ignorance or, worse, cowardly evasiveness in the one making the assertion. As if happiness was the only legitimate way of being. As if those failing at it needed to be locked away, made soporific with medications; as if the cause of sadness were merely traps and pitfalls in the proper climb to blissful contentment, things to be edged round or bridged, or leapt across on the wings of false elation... Sadness belonged. As rightful as joy, love, grief and fear. All conditions of being.