Reviews

Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson

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zeph1337's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This was an excellent book. I think I liked it overall more than Gardens of the Moon. I really enjoyed the much darker tone which honestly made this whole thing just pretty damn tense and gripping. Overall this a very gory and violent book and I can see how that can put off many people but it felt very appropriate for the story it was telling.

The reason I am not giving it the full 5 stars is because I struggled a lot with one major POV and that's Duiker. The main issue here for me was the whole Military Fantasy part. I don't know I am really not a big "war and battle strategy guy" and combining that with Erikson's writing which is far from the easiest to process: I really had troubles visualizing a lot of what was happened during the many battle sequences within this book and that made these chapters into more of a chore than anything. And without reading aids and watching visual presentations of the battles I would have been completely lost. The climax for this particular arc was probably the biggest highlight of the book though. So there is big redemption for all the early struggles imo.

All the other arcs had me pretty excited the whole way through. Only a fraction of the characters in this book also have been part of the first book but we meet many many new cool characters with my favorites probably being Mappo and Icarium.

The worldbuilding of this series continues to be some of the best I have ever read and I am so curious about what else it has to offer and to discover the many Mysteries lying within it alongside the equally confused and clueless POV characters.

Next month onto Memories of Ice!

frogpheus's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Content Warnings

dkadastra's review against another edition

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4.0

These books are insane. Incredible imagination, but way more oblique about certain things than I feel is necessary. It was interesting to me how there was a pretty hard pivot away from the arc of the first book to a completely different setting, but there were enough characters from book one looped in, along with plenty of other plot connections, so it still felt like a continuation of the story in all the important ways. I do feel occasionally that there are a few too many deus ex machina-ish things that happen, but I guess it could be me just not understanding the underlying lore (which is expansive), and some things are at least hinted at, even if the coincidences still feel a little too absurd. Overall though, I'm enjoying the series and will definitely keep reading.