The Kharkanas Trilogy

About The Kharkanas Trilogy

The Kharkanas Trilogy is Steven Erikson's prequel to the Malazan Book of the Fallen, plunging deep into the ancient history of the Tiste people thousands of years before Gardens of the Moon. Where the main sequence throws readers into the middle of an already-vast world, Kharkanas builds from the ground up: this is the fall of a civilization, the internal war that fractures the Tiste into Andii, Liosan and Edur, and the tragic, self-destroying court politics that produce the god-figures and legendary names later Malazan readers already know as ancient history.

Forge of Darkness (2012) opens in the city of Kharkanas itself, as the sorcerer Draconus forges the sword Dragnipur and the realm's fragile peace curdles into betrayal, while Mother Dark's growing remove from her people sets the stage for civil war. Fall of Light (2016) carries that war into open conflict, following the poet Rise Herat, the disgraced Anomander and his brothers, and a widening cast as Kharkanas tears itself apart. A third volume, Walk in Shadow, is in progress but not yet published.

This is dense, deliberately slower, more philosophical Erikson than the original ten-book sequence -- long on courtly dialogue and grief, light on the battlefield set-pieces the main series is known for. It rewards Malazan veterans most: characters and events here recontextualize things only hinted at in Book of the Fallen, though the trilogy can technically be read as a freestanding tragedy about a civilization's collapse.

How to read this series

Read Forge of Darkness then Fall of Light in publication order -- there are only two published volumes, with Walk in Shadow still being written. This trilogy is a prequel set roughly 300,000 years before the main Malazan Book of the Fallen sequence, and while it can technically be read on its own, it is written for readers who already know the ten-book series: names, factions and objects introduced here (Dragnipur, the Tiste split into Andii/Liosan/Edur, figures who become gods and legends) land with far more weight if Book of the Fallen comes first. Newcomers to Malazan should start with Gardens of the Moon, not here.