STEVEN ERIKSON is the pseudonym of Canadian novelist Steve Rune Lundin, best known for his ongoing fantasy series Malazan Book of the Fallen, beginning in 1999 with Gardens of the Moon. Trained as an archaeologist and anthropologist, Erikson is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is a World Fantasy Award-nominated author. SF Site has called the series “the most significant work of epic fantasy since Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.” Known for his portrayal of multidimensional characters, he said in an interview conducted by suite101.com, “It’s often commented that my stuff is all shades of gray rather than black and white, but that’s not the same as saying every character is similarly gray—the effect is an overall one rather than a specific one. Most of the characters I come up with have pretty fixed notions of right and wrong, they have a moral center, in other words, whether consciously recognized or not. But in coming at something from more than one side, the reader is left free to choose which one they’ll favor.” Erikson now lives in Cornwall, England.

Five riders drew rein in the pass. Slumped in their saddles, they studied the valley sprawled out below them. A narrow river cut a jagged scar down the middle of a broad floodplain. A weathered wooden bridge sagged across the narrow span, and beyond it squatted a score of buildings, gray as the dust hovering above the dirt tracks wending between them.