As Steven Erikson says in the introduction this is effectively the first half of a single massive novel that concludes the current Malazan sequence.

It therefore achieves a lot less closure than previous books and spends a lot of time moving people and plotlines towards the final convergence.

It overlaps in timeline with Toll the Hounds and the impact of the amazing ending of that book doesn't start to be felt till 3/4 of the way through Dust of Dreams.

There are some nasty cliffhangers - if you hate those, wait for the final book and read them together.

Even so the writing and characters sparkle and there are hardly any sections where I was impatient for the PoV to switch to someone more interesting (the only candidates being the Shake, who are clearly going to do something important...eventually).