A review by weaver
The Barrow by Mark Smylie

Did not finish book.

This is a 300 page book turned into a 600 page book from all the infodumping. When stuff actually happens, it's very exciting! It is! But I stopped reading when I realized I was skimming pages just looking for dialogue or for something to happen. It's a bummer because I'm really interested in the story, but unfortunately, all I get is the history of the city's two bathhouses in excruciating detail, the names of every street in the city, plus the names, histories, and affiliations of every person they walk past in said named streets. There's at least 150 named characters and 95% of them are never mentioned again, or if they are, I certainly can't remember them on account of how there's 150 of them and they don't seem to do anything other than exist in the background. There's an entire page dedicated to describing the five different hells, who resides in them, and their demon rulers, which is immediately forgotten. "Gilgwyr considered himself an expert in the many varieties of female flesh that crossed the city from the corners of the Known World," and now, yep, he's going to describe every single one of them. For the curious, there are twelve different varieties and you get to learn about their respective culture's history and religion in addition to their unique sexy qualities Oh yeah, and ol Gilgwyr lets you in on his plan to let one of his whores get raped to death by a bull. Yeah. There was a whole lot of rapey stuff, too! OK edgelord.
Anyway....I got 1300 other books on my to-read list.