Scourge of the Betrayer

Really liked it.
This is what the Malazan books should have been. It has a similar theme (a group of self-sustaining elite, rather renegade soldiers used by a rather evil Empire to bring trouble against innocent, or not so innocent, neighbours - the Ottoman Empire sprang to my mind) and so is the approach: the reader is thrown directly into it with no knowledge and for quite a long while just goes with it (about 60% of the book, after which it is truly excellent and hints to a very original world).
What it does well and Erikson did bad is NOT to overwhelm the reader with a tonne of unnecessary details, but trickle it at a reasonable pace.
Sometimes too reasonable (quite slow to be honest), which is why I will not go for a full 5, another slight problem being that the battles are tactically sound, but too protracted and amply described till bordering boredom. But I am confident this series is going straight for full 5s next, so I will read the rest and anything else written by Salyards, whose fan I therefore declare myself.