So far my favorite Malazan book has been Deadhouse Gates. This made me excited to jump into this one as it continues on the continent that DG was on. 

At first I was slightly disappointed that we got a new character POV that felt somewhat disjointed but that feeling quickly vanished and I got into this book real fast. In fact it was the first time in the series where I had no issue reading multiple chapters in a row. 

Although this book has a higher page count than its predecessor it felt more condensed as I think it had fewer overall plotlines and it kind of made it flow better for me. 

While Deadhouse Gates as my previous favorite was an excellent book overall I had a particularly hard time with some of the chapters, the ones depicting large scale battles, House of Chains felt like a winner the whole way through. 

Another little gripe I had with the series so far was a lack of emotional investment into its characters which became very apparent to me in Memories of Ice. I am very glad to report that this book provided a solution to this and its name is: Karsa Orlong! 

Man that guy is a huge dick in the beginning of the book and just comes off as extremely unlikeable but damn his journey is gripping and his character development in this book is great. Yes, we spend a lot of time with him in this book (in fact the first ~25% is only his POV) but all of that build up is really paying off. There were at least two scenes where I went into an involuntary audible cheer so it is safe to say that I was invested! 

This probably doesn’t say anything good about me that now my emotional anchor in this series is a

raping, murdering, no nonsense Giant Barbarian

but I hope I can at least somehow attribute that to Eriksons excellent writing instead of my depraved (?) personality?

I feel like I say this every time but it just seems like the humor is getting better and better each book. This has to be a symptom of character dynamics and relationships being explored and evolving and as a result we get lots of camaraderie and bantering as the characters reference all the insane shit happening around them resulting in a ton of laughs.

I also have to mention the ending which once again brought together everything beautifully and some things unwrapped in a very unexpecting and simply tragic way. The final two chapters might have been my favorites out of any Malazan book so far. This was a clear instance where lots of POV swapping was absolutely benefiting the story and it was just gripping.

And I am glad that we didn’t get this huge scale battle that this seemed to be building up to.

Next Month: Midnight Tides. I already heard that this will be on an entirely new continent. Not super excited about that but certainly ready to be surprised.