So, this might be a bit of a weird one, but let’s see where my head takes me. First off let’s start by saying that this was the first time that I wasn’t binging one of those immense volumes and just taking several one or two week long breaks to read other books inbetween. As a result it took me about 4 months to finish the volume. There were two main reasons for this: As I am getting close to being caught up to the series I wanted to try to somewhat get used to not being able to binge the whole thing and the other reason simple was that I still wanted to read a Malazan book a month.

I think my general investment in this volume might have suffered from this and there were definite signs of burnout. I quite often was not looking forward to reading a chapter which was shocking since I loved The Wandering Inn so far and there also wasn’t really a logical reason for it since when I actually sat down to read I absolutely was enjoying myself, most of the times even a lot. It was just getting there felt like a chore sometimes. I think a major contributing factor to this is just the length of some of those chapters. Like if you have to, in the most extreme cases, commit 2-3 hours to read a single chapter, it can already feel quite dreadful. And I’m also fairly certain that the average length of these chapters has been the highest it’s ever been and that definitely nagged a little bit on me. I am also saying this with a huge amount of love for the series in general and I am so glad that it exists but it definitely can be a taxing endeavor.

So with these “me problems” and my sometimes struggling to get through the volume out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff. And there is plenty of it. 

Right from the beginning the volume kicks off very strong and just gives you this super nostalgic and comfy feeling like you are being back among treasured friends whereas large parts of that actually was absent during volume 8 which certainly gave us a different tone from the rest of the series. And I’d say that general feeling is present throughout most of the volume (until it gets pretty fucking dark in the end but more on that later).

The series has so many named characters at this point that it can get hard to keep track. The author also has a tendency to explore each and everyone's backstory pretty extensively. That in turn leads to a lot of different characters getting a chance in the spotlight (with V being my favorite this volume) while other previous major characters are just sidelined and you absolutely have to be on board with that. It did lead to some minor annoyances to me with this volume and in general I would say it was way more positive and I enjoyed most of the new characters put in the spotlight. I guess my biggest gripe with this is that my favorite side story (D - for early readers) on the one hand got my favorite chapter of this entire volume but in the grand scope of overall words it was just a tiny bit of time committed to this part of the story and it just left me wanting more.  

That leads me directly to my next point and that is just the frequency of “big highlight chapters”, which I thought just wasn’t there. Like on average the general level of each chapter is most likely quite a bit higher than it has ever been but it just lacked these huge emotional moments that we got plenty of in volume 8. Multiple times in volume 8 I went out of a chapter and thought: “That might have been the best TWI chapter ever!!!” And well, I had that feeling like twice ,maybe three times considering the climax, in volume 9. :/

Speaking of the climax. This was without a doubt the best it’s ever been. I mean it’s long (like 250k words) but it didn’t feel bloated (I guess there was a little bit of backstory for what felt like not terribly relevant characters in the final chapter that I could have lived without but it wasn’t a big deal). The conclusion to this epic volume went to some pretty dark places and as a whole the thing was just a huge game changer. The closest comparison would be the climax to volume 7 certainly in terms of implication to the whole series. And while that one felt like it dragged sometimes, I didn’t get the feeling with volume 9’s. And while the game changer in volume 7 made me feel very skeptical for the rest of the series, this one has me excited about what’s to come next. I truly hope that it delivers upon its promises because after volume 7 I was hugely surprised at how well everything worked in volume 8 and I am somewhat scared (most likely for no reason) that I will get the complete opposite reaction for volume 10.

Most likely I will start chipping away at volume 10 pretty soon because I am just very curious at "where we are going from here" and also I still have in mind to get caught up by the end of the year and I only have like a meager slightly over 1 million words left for that (not considering what pirateaba will write during that time of course ;) ).

As always I urge everyone to try this series and see if it is for you. There is truly nothing like it and you can read it all for free on the website.