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britineurope 's review for:
House of Chains
by Steven Erikson
Probably a 2.5 star book rounded down.
The plot of this book seemed interminable. People either spent an age messing around on ships or the 400 page of build-up to arrive at the final battle in Raraku for it to sizzle out spectacularly. I think I had a similar problem with Deadhouse Gates where I wasn’t really invested in any of the characters and so it cast a pall over the book as a whole.
It is noticeable how many people give these books four or five stars but only on the second reading. I think Erikson’s writing is not the clearest, and often it is only through the Malazan Reread of the Fallen that I was able to figure out what was going on in places. Perhaps this was due to skim reading through the boring parts, but when characters (like Sinn) pop up 1000 pages after the last time the appeared, I found it very difficult to care about who they are or what they were doing. Let’s hope the next book brings back more interesting people!
The plot of this book seemed interminable. People either spent an age messing around on ships or the 400 page of build-up to arrive at the final battle in Raraku for it to sizzle out spectacularly. I think I had a similar problem with Deadhouse Gates where I wasn’t really invested in any of the characters and so it cast a pall over the book as a whole.
It is noticeable how many people give these books four or five stars but only on the second reading. I think Erikson’s writing is not the clearest, and often it is only through the Malazan Reread of the Fallen that I was able to figure out what was going on in places. Perhaps this was due to skim reading through the boring parts, but when characters (like Sinn) pop up 1000 pages after the last time the appeared, I found it very difficult to care about who they are or what they were doing. Let’s hope the next book brings back more interesting people!