Reviews - House Of Chains | The StoryGraph

891 reviews for:

House Of Chains

Steven Erikson

4.26 AVERAGE

ondrykselecky's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

seantooth's review against another edition

3.75

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

luana420's review against another edition

4.0

Erikson's sprawling saga continues as a disorienting new (or is it??) point of view character taking up the first fifth of House of Chains. Gone again are the familiar faces of the previous book, to be replaced by blood crazed barbarian Karsa Orlong. His culture (and quickly apparent extremist status within that culture) is alien and interesting enough that this detour adding even more layers onto what is already a mind-boggingly vast storyline does not annoy. In fact, it all went past rather quickly, considering the relative novelty of just following one guy and knowing his precise motivations.

Once the Karsa storyline rejoins the rest of Malazan, you'll be left scratching your head as to why exactly this wild man warranted such exploration, but I promise you will be Karsa 4 Lyfe by the time he starts understanding his wider role in the world.

As ever, I am giddy to find out what happens next in the Malazan Empire and beyond. Having said this, you may wonder why I knocked a star off.

At one point, Felisin Younger is shown to converse in direct speech for the first time. Now, it had always been a very Erikson thing to do to simply have everyone be erudite and fancy-talkin' as fuck. From an interview, I gleaned that he believes that even the simplest of folk can think about heavy philosophical subjects and the continued disbelief that they can't is pretty classist.

Nice sentiment, Steve, but I think they would employ different registers from literally everyone else, especially if they're 12ish like Felisin Younger.

balefulknight's review against another edition

4.5

These books are DENSE. It makes it hard to put my feelings into words when there is so much to think about. However, here are some of my favorite bits; Karsa ripping off Bidithal's privates and shoving them in his mouth, every scene with Kalam, the dead bridgeburners ascending, the scorpion fight, Torvald Nom, and, of course, our boy Fiddler. Overall, great book, lot's of humor and grand tragedy.

mcduggan33's review against another edition

3.75

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Reasonably contentious book in the series, with a lot of people not getting on with the first quarter of it. From a reread perspective it bangs though. A more subdued affair after the barnstorm of Deadhouse and Memories, but House of Chains really kicks off a lot of the overall story. And Greyfrog first appears in it, which I'd completely forgotten about.