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leifalreadyexists 's review for:
House of Chains
by Steven Erikson
Karsa Orlong & witness & et cetera. Second time on this ride for me – I'll note that way back in the day, this is the one that I started with. Not Gardens, not Deadhouse, but the newest one that happened to be this one.
Not feeling it, however, aside from the intense first two hundred pages or so. These are refreshing purely because they eliminate 1) setting bloat and 2) pseudo-philosophy, and thus because Erikson's narrative legs get a great workout. Otherwise, it's Tanno in the Whirlwind pt. 2 and there are things that are either tired or make little sense and make me tired which, I think, is not generally what happens with a good page-turner. New names are handed out (but old names remain open secrets) and that makes things strangely more boring. What was wrong with their earlier names? What's the point? (No, rhetorical.)
It's also at this turning point that I begin again to feel the peculiar weightlessness in the Malazan world, where no one is dead for long with only a few exceptions. I get it: you like your characters! But man: do I wish that when someone died, it really felt real. That's what makes the earlier books so thrilling: a sense of stakes. They're less stakes than tent poles here – and the circus has overstayed its welcome.
Nevertheless. I turned pages.
Not feeling it, however, aside from the intense first two hundred pages or so. These are refreshing purely because they eliminate 1) setting bloat and 2) pseudo-philosophy, and thus because Erikson's narrative legs get a great workout. Otherwise, it's Tanno in the Whirlwind pt. 2 and there are things that are either tired or make little sense and make me tired which, I think, is not generally what happens with a good page-turner. New names are handed out (but old names remain open secrets) and that makes things strangely more boring. What was wrong with their earlier names? What's the point? (No, rhetorical.)
It's also at this turning point that I begin again to feel the peculiar weightlessness in the Malazan world, where no one is dead for long with only a few exceptions. I get it: you like your characters! But man: do I wish that when someone died, it really felt real. That's what makes the earlier books so thrilling: a sense of stakes. They're less stakes than tent poles here – and the circus has overstayed its welcome.
Nevertheless. I turned pages.