Deadhouse Gates

Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

Well, that was a short reincarnation ... but I digress.

The term 'Deadhouse Gates' refers to a portal - a means of travel from one location to another - not, perhaps as fast as one might think; but a lot faster than could be accomplished by means of Air Canada. It, however, is a fairly small part of this novel. And this novel comes as quite a surprise after Volume 1. I was expecting that the story would carry on from where it left off and it does ... sort of. It takes place a year later, in an entirely different location, and with mostly different people. A few individuals made it across from Volume 1 but most didn't. We do occasionally hear of their doings but what we hear is pretty sketchy.

In any event it appears that the Empress does have her problems - an army in open revolt on one side of her and an uprising in other lands. Imagine a colonial power such as Britain when it controlled India. Now imagine not a comparatively peaceful transition but one in which a huge army and a large number of citizens are slaughtered. Increase the scope. Suppose that a country the size of France was dominant over the rest of Europe and then those countries rose up in an unbridled wave of fury and ferocity. That's sort to the thing that the poor old Empress has to contend with.

This story, of course, is Sword and Sorcery - perhaps more sword than sorcery but there's plenty of both. At no time does the pace slow and there is plenty of action from the beginning to the end - and there are an awful lot of pages in between. There are great battles, betrayals, stealth and skulduggery - and enough plot twists to keep even the most jaded reader going. Steven Erikson certainly knows how to write battle scenes on a grand scale - something that's not as easy as it sounds. When huge armies collide things get messy and describing the clash in such a way as to make it real for the reader is highly impressive.

I took a few minutes to review this saga online and apparently we are in the middle of events surrounding the Malazan Empire so I expect the additional books in the series to go backwards as well as forwards - something I don't really care for at a personal level; but I certainly intend to keep reading so I'll just have to live with it. In any event, Book 2 could be read without ever reading Book 1 and it would still make sense - mostly. As with Book 1, there are many characters and so for the first fifty or so pages I was constantly flipping back to the cast of characters in the beginning but after that I had become sufficiently familiar with them that I could just keep reading. I read this book in 'e' format which was okay but unfortunately I was unable to enlarge the maps at the beginning so as to make sense of them. They're not really necessary for figuring out what's going on but I would have liked to take a peek at them from time to time.

Although subtle, the author does allow himself a little editorializing along the way. One of his 'messages' for example is that war is unpleasant. Now who would have guessed that? In addition, he really, really doesn't like nobility. There are a few other 'educational' stirrings that grated just a bit; but for the most part they can be ignored and the reader can get back to the good stuff - the killing and maiming of both good guys and bad guys either on a battlefield or in a back alley. You really can't go wrong with an assassin who pretty much carves his way through an entire guild of assassins although he doesn't fare so well when magic is involved. Anyway, the knives are sharp, the swords are whetted to perfection, and blood flows from cover to cover. This is a great book and I highly recommend it.



View all my reviews