Deadhouse Gates
From LeoWiki
| Score | Title | Author | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | Deadhouse Gates | Steven Erikson | High Fantasy |
| Technophilia | 9 |
|---|---|
| Secularity | 7 |
| Quality | 9 |
| Xenophilia | 10 |
| Personal Tilt | 10 |
This is a severely brutal book. Not only is it 935 pages long, but it is also full of ethnic cleansings, lynchings, executions, and oodles of graphic deaths. It reminds one of the tonnes of stupidity out there in the world (which even I as Supreme Earth Leader would have troubles eliminating).
Empress Laseen purges the rank of the treacherous Malazan nobility. Her new head of the secret service, Adjunct Tavore of the House Paran, includes among those purged her own sister Felisin, a differently-abled scholar named Heboric, and a mysterious goon named Baudin. They are sent to die in the otataral mines off the desert coast of the Seven Cities continent.
Kalam and Fiddler, two soldiers of the excommunicated Malazan 2nd Army, travel across that same continent in their quest to assassinated Empress Laseen. They are accompanied by Apsalar, a former fishergirl who was possessed by a god, and Crokus, a Darujistani thief who loves her.
In the meantime, the Seven Cities are boiling underneath the Malazan fist. Shai'k, a seer priestess, is set to channel her goddess and unleash a Whirlwind in the holy desert of Raraku that would act as a rallying banner for her people in the bloody rebellion against the Malazan Empire that is to come.
That is but a sample of the plots and the cast of characters.:)
Erikson is magnificent at world-building. His worlds live and his characters breathe. The slaughters and atrocities in this book are almost as moving as the ones in Rwanda in 1994. They make one fret about the goings-on in our Sudan.
The conclusions to the plot threads are mostly satisfying. There is one minor deus-ex-machina intervention -- the warren Fedex service -- that really feels more like a Harry Potter kind of thing, but it is but three pages of over nine hundred and it could be ignored without the plot changing one iota.
I don't have the spunk in me to start reading the sequel right away. Swallowing this baby in a week is exhausting. I do recommend this and I will read the next two books very soon.
See Also
- Gardens of the Moon
- Deadhouse Gates
- Memories of Ice
- House of Chains
- Midnight Tides
- The Bonehunters
