I thought they were both great, although I have a slight preference for Dancer's Lament.

I'm a huge fan of Erikson's books: I've, of course, read the whole Malazan Book of the Fallen, plus the novellas. I'll get around to the Kharkanas trilogy when Erikson announces he's working on the third book. I have no interest in starting it at the moment, given that he's said he's working on the Karsa series instead right now --- and I am so excited for that series to begin.

But in contrast, I really haven't always enjoyed Esslemont's contributions to the series. I despised Night of Knives, found Assail and Orb Scepter Throne boring, and Blood and Bone might be one of my least favourite fantasy books ever. But I really, really loved Return of the Crimson Guard, and I thought Stonewielder was solid.

Part of the problem I thought was that as much as I loved Erikson's style, I loved it only because Erikson was a master of it. It seemed to me that Esslemont was imitating it and it didn't play off as well.

Dancer's Lament, in contrast, was such a departure from the normal Malazan style, and I thought it fit Esslemont so much more naturally. Here was a rather short novel -- with only three point-of-view characters, although there was a fourth who got about only a dozen pages dedicated to her in total. Even better, there was clear character development, and Dancer especially became a really vivid personality. (He was always "special" and compelling in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, too, so it was nice to see him come alive in this series.) I can't emphasize how great a departure I thought this was from the weaker part of Esslemont's Novels of the Malazan Empire series, in which, from my recollection, basically only the Crimson Guard characters got any character development (and certainly not all of them).