Ian C Esslemont has 6 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.8★ across 96 ratings. The most-rated is Orb Sceptre Throne.
Orb Sceptre Throne
Summary
The tumult of great powers colliding has passed, and the city of Darujhistan and its citizens can at last get on with what matters: trading, bickering, politicking and enjoying all the good things in life. However, not all are ready to leave the past behind. A treasure hunter digging amongst the burial grounds that surround the city is about to uncover a hidden crypt. He will open the last of a series of sealed vaults - the one that no other dared touch - and in so doing set free something so terrifying that the knowledge of its interment may have been systematically wiped from all history. Fortune hunters are also at work far to the south. When a fragment of Moon's Spawn, once the home of Anomander Rake, Son of Darkness, crashed into the Rivan Sea, it created a chain of small islands. Legends and rumours already surround them. The most potent of these is that here is hidden the Throne of Night, claimed by some to be the seat of Mother Dark herself. Either way, all who seek this ancient artefact - renegade mages, hardened mercenaries, even a Malazan army deserter - believe it will bestow unlimited power upon the eventual possessor. The stakes are high, greed is rife, betrayal inevitable, and murder and chaos lie in wait....
©2016 Ian C. Esslemont (P)2016 Random House Audiobooks
Return of the Crimson Guard
Summary
The return of the mercenary company the Crimson Guard could not have come at a worse time for the Malazan Empire. Drained by constant warfare, betrayals and rivalries, many see the grip of Empress Laseen weakening. Conquered kingdoms and principalities test their old independence. Into this fermenting civil war on Quon Tali - the empire's homeland - comes the Guard and the ingrained memory of their vow of undying opposition to the existence of the empire. Yet rivalries and betrayals plague the Guard as well - elements of its elite, the Avowed, scheme to open paths to even greater power. Ancient, powerful entities, Ascendants, also seek to exploit all sides to further their own arcane ends. Meanwhile, a swordsman called Traveller and his companion, Ereko, move from one strange encounter to another on a mysterious path that will lead the swordsman to a confrontation from which none has ever returned. As the Crimson Guard gathers itself for its assault on the empire, the empress faces more immediate threats. Feeding her wars has bled dry provincial garrisons across Quon Tali, and now regional nationalists see their chance to break free. Behind their insurrections stand the veteran commanders of Laseen's predecessor, Emperor Kellanved. These powerful generals and mages, the Old Hands, have lost patience with what they see as Laseen's mismanagement and have chosen one of their own to replace her. Yet there are hints that Laseen may be using the uprisings to draw out and finally eliminate these last irksome survivors of her predecessor's rule....
©2016 Ian C. Esslemont (P)2016 Random House Audiobooks
Stonewielder
Summary
Greymane believed he'd outrun his past. With his school for swordsmanship in Falar, he was looking forward to a quiet life, although his colleague, Kyle, wasn't as enamoured with life outside the mercenary company, the Crimson Guard. However, it seems it is not so easy for an ex-Fist of the Malazan Empire to disappear, especially one under sentence of death from that same Empire. For there is a new Emperor on the throne of Malaz, and he is dwelling on the ignominy that is the Empire's failed invasion of the Korel subcontinent. In the 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 holds dear. With few remaining men and a crumbling stone wall that has seen better days, he confronts an ancient enemy: the seaborne Stormriders have returned. Religious war also threatens these lands. The cult of the Blessed Lady, which had stood firm against the Riders for millennia, now seeks to eradicate its rivals. And as chaos looms, a local magistrate investigating a series of murders suddenly finds himself at the heart of a far more ancient and terrifying crime - one that has tainted an entire land.... Stonewielder is an enthralling new chapter in the epic story of a thrillingly imagined world.
©2010 Ian C. Esslemont (P)2016 Random House Audiobooks
Blood and Bone
Summary
In the western sky, the bright emerald banner of the Visitor descends like a portent of annihilation. On the continent of Jacuruku, the Thaumaturgs have mounted another expedition in a bid to tame the neighbouring wild jungle. Yet this is no normal wilderness. It is called Himatan, and it is said to be half of the spirit realm and half of the earth. And it is said to be ruled by a powerful entity whom some name the Queen of Witches and some a goddess: the ancient Ardata. Saeng grew up knowing only the rule of the magus Thaumaturgs - but it was the voices from that land's forgotten past that she listened to. And when her rulers launch their invasion of this jungle, those voices send her and her brother on a desperate mission. To the south the desert tribes are united by the arrival of a foreign warleader, a veteran commander in battered ashen mail men call the Grey Ghost. This warrior leads these tribes on a raid unlike any other, deep into the heart of Thaumaturg lands, while word comes to K'azz and mercenary company the Crimson Guard of a contract in Jacuruku. And their employer? Could it be the goddess herself?
©2016 Ian C. Esslemont (P)2016 Random House Audiobooks
Assail
Summary
Tens of thousands of years of ice is melting, and the land of Assail, long a byword for menace and inaccessibility, is at last yielding its secrets. Tales of gold discovered in the region's north circulate in every waterfront dive and sailor's tavern, and now adventurers and fortune seekers have set sail in search of riches. And all they have to guide them are legends and garbled tales of the dangers that lie in wait - hostile coasts, fields of ice, impassable barriers and strange, terrifying creatures. But all accounts concur that the people of the north meet all trespassers with the sword - and 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 promise 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 a Tiste Andii, who was found washed ashore and cannot remember his past yet commands far more power than he really 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 way. But far to the south, a woman patiently guards the shore. She awaits both allies and enemies. She is Silverfox, newly incarnate Summoner of the undying army of the T'lan Imass, and she will do anything to stop the renewal of an ages-old crusade that could lay waste to the entire 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.
©2016 Ian C Esslemont (P)2016 Random House AudioBooks
Night of Knives
Summary
It gave the Empire its name, but the tiny island and city of Malaz is now a sleepy, seedy back-water port. However this night things are a little different. This night its residents are bustling about, barring doors and shuttering windows. Because this night a once-in-a-generation Shadow Moon is due and threatens the good citizens of Malaz with demon hounds and other, darker, beings.... And it was also prophesied that on this night the Emperor Kellanved, missing for all these years, will return. As factions within the greater Empire battle over the imperial throne, the Shadow Moon summons a far more alien and ancient presence for an all-out assault upon the island. Indeed the cataclysmic events that happen this night will determine the fate of the Malaz and of the entire world beyond.
©2016 Ian C Esslemont (P)2016 Random House AudioBooks