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A review by icecreamemperor
Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson
challenging
dark
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.25
At some point about halfway through this book I just lost patience: with the glacial-but-somehow-frenetic pacing, with the slow blending-together of all the character's voices and personalities, with the author's compulsive need to obfuscate and allude even when clarity is required. And once I lost patience it was just an awful, endless slog -- not unlike the in-fiction slog that takes up basically 80% of the book, where we get to watch like six different groups of POV characters all... slowly... grimly... travelling... forever... repeatedly... going... somewhere? It's interminable.
And why have POV characters at all, why write in a character's specific voice, if they're not actually going to reveal any of the information or context they have about what is actually going on -- if instead they are going to constantly, repeatedly, ad-nauseumly make vague pronouncements about what might or might not maybe be happening... TO THEMSELVES, inside their own fucking heads?
Yeah, there was no patience left. At least in the first book the author actually had characters who a) were trying to understand what was going on and then b) would actually explain to the reader what they thought was going on. How can a book simultaneously have so much exposition and have so little of it make any sense? If you find yourself re-expositing THE SAME INFORMATION repeatedly throughout your book because you can't trust that the reader will actually understand or retain that information? You might need to rein in your impulse for endlessly-expansive worldbuilding. For the sake of producing a remotely readable book.
And why have POV characters at all, why write in a character's specific voice, if they're not actually going to reveal any of the information or context they have about what is actually going on -- if instead they are going to constantly, repeatedly, ad-nauseumly make vague pronouncements about what might or might not maybe be happening... TO THEMSELVES, inside their own fucking heads?
Yeah, there was no patience left. At least in the first book the author actually had characters who a) were trying to understand what was going on and then b) would actually explain to the reader what they thought was going on. How can a book simultaneously have so much exposition and have so little of it make any sense? If you find yourself re-expositing THE SAME INFORMATION repeatedly throughout your book because you can't trust that the reader will actually understand or retain that information? You might need to rein in your impulse for endlessly-expansive worldbuilding. For the sake of producing a remotely readable book.