I see.

I have to say I enjoyed CoT a lot more on my last reread, but one of the most enjoyable books in the series... no, sorry.

It doesn't really compare, though, because the problem is not that nothing happens in the later books. Every single Malazan book has the same pattern of relatively slow movement in the first half of the book (in some cases it's really slow, in others merely slow compared to the second half), and then the big "convergence" in the second half - he even has a plot justification for it, with the whole thing of Ascendants flocking to every convergence they see occurring in their vicinity and making the chaos bigger.

It's more that you just don't care as much anymore, because it doesn't seem like the series is really going anywhere - new characters keep coming, old characters keep dying, and no later book comes close to the levels of MoI. Sure, you keep having to figure out things, and you keep learning more details about earlier books (if you want to know more about that dragon Silanah in Gardens of the Moon, you'll see her in book eight, for instance), but I don't know, personally I kind of want there to be a point to things, and to have the series end in some satisfactory way that provides at least some kind of closure for at least most plot threads. I still have to read the final two books, but it doesn't look to me like that's going to happen.

I would probably have to reread books six, seven and eight before making this kind of judgements, but if you asked me now, I'd have to say both Reaper's Gale and Toll the Hounds were among my least favourite books in the series - despite being among the most spectacular in terms of plot events. Toll the Hounds has a truly massive, game-changing thing happening in its climax, but I still didn't like the book much. Bonehunters was more fun, but felt somewhat fluffy in the sense that little of it seemed to matter all that much in the greater scheme of things.

Good job!