There is an inexorability to the dying that is more powerful than anything Hood, the king of House Death – possibly, paradoxically, the least intimidating (and sympathetic) of the ascendants – can do. (Terry Pratchett's Death, on the other hand would be much more understanding, I suspect. Forgive me, Steven, but there is nothing your Hood can do to supersede Pratchett's Death as the real one in my head.)
The gods in this world are not omnipotent. And we soon realise that they are only a little more powerful than the humans, and the barriers between mortals, immortals and ascendants are not so much walls as much as thin lines that are regularly stepped across by the ambitious. (In fact, the last emperor of the Malazan Empire and his assassin seem to have ascended to become the big-wigs of House Shadow, just to escape being assassinated by the new Empress.)
The Empress is a (so far) shadowy figure; we learn of her only via other characters, tantalising fragments that help build up her mystique, rather than make her more tangible – no doubt at her own instigation. We know she was the head of the Claw (the deadly Malazan assassin squad) before she took over the throne. We know she is skilled enough at intrigue to pre-empt and dissuade attempts on her life and her power, to make all the most powerful people we have met so far wary of her. We know that even the immortals regard her as a viable threat to their freedom. (In one extremely poignant scene, the ascendant Anomander Rake explains to his ally (and ascendant) Caladan Brood that the reason for their antagonism to the empire is that they like a certain amount of chaos, to them it is freedom, while to the Empress and her kind, the immortals' freedom threatens the ordered well-being of their human citizens. Plus, he adds wryly, they are automatically antagonised by the very fact that it is someone else, not them, who will rule the new stability.) It is a legitimate fear – he unravelling history shows us countless examples of new beings destroying the old ones in their search for a peaceful existence.
But we soon realise that some of this is coming to a head. Knowing the world as we do, it is unlikely that there will be a happy end where the High King is restored and everyone will live a peaceful rural existence, or even that there will be world peace. Since there was never a paradise, there is none to go back to. There is after all, no true evil to be defeated – all the combatants are equally confused, hurt, and vulnerable.
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