Take a photo of a barcode or cover
paulojr_mam 's review for:
Os Portais Da Casa Dos Mortos
by Steven Erikson, Carol Chiovatto
As well written as the first book, Gates is a book with a lot of flavor, not at all insipid. The characters are excellent, it's all very evocative, the tone is pretty strong, dense and palpable. It is also a hard read. I don't like excess of descriptions in books, but this one doesn't have enough of them. Part of that is due to the writing style of showing everything and not telling anything, but even within the limits of that style, it fails. It does so in a way that doesn't hinder our ability to comprehend (although I'm not sure I understood everything, unlike the first book), but it undermines our engagement, leaving what's happening a bit vague, distanced, what is at stake is not understood enough for us to get involved. That is worsened by the fact that the journeys between the different characters and the characters themselves are easy to be confused, too similar. The plot also seems to be going nowhere. I imagine that is because I'm not seeing the big picture being painted through ten books, but I still can criticize the feeling that nothing that's happening matters all that much. The stories happening also all seem too simple most of the time, despite the complex storytelling and the glimpses of this being much more interesting than it seems to be (something that never materializes in this book). Another factor that bothers me is the occurrence of events that seem a lot like deus-ex-machina, easy conveniences to save characters from difficult situations and that isn't satisfying, but this also can be because I'm not seeing the big picture. Not all is bad, though, I really liked the fact that important characters can die, unfortunately I wasn't invested in their fates enough to care about their ends. The philosophical ramblings and undertones are really nice, too. But the book also feels a bit too similar to the first one, with again a region that the Malazan Empire is trying to conquer while they are trying to resist. To finish my review, when the book starts to get really good, when things start to connect, the book ends abruptly in a not so satisfying cliffhanger.