Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Man, Steven Erikson writes some really, really bad prose. Also some of his passages where he's trying to express character's emotions are either laughable or just too terrible to laugh at. That being said, that's not the case most of the time, nor does it make the book not worth reading. It just severely detracts from it.
Anyway, this book continues on one storyline that was begun in [b:Gardens of the Moon|55399|Gardens of the Moon (The Malazan Book of the Fallen, #1)|Steven Erikson|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1355144064s/55399.jpg|2646042], but introduces some new characters in the typical Erikson way, which is to explain nothing about them at all and let details drop as they will in the course of the narrative. It's annoying to me but I honestly will not say that it's an objectively wrong way of doing things. The action jumps to a different land across some ocean (where this is in relation to the first story I have very little idea since the author seems to find it unimportant to actually lay out the geography of the world).
There are two (or three) distinct stories which never actually intersect anywhere, so one wonders why they're crammed in the same book other than that they're occurring approximately at the same time. However, as far as they go, they are interesting stories. I do like the world that Erikson is building at this point, as it has lots of interesting features. Some of the characters are interesting, some are incomprehensible.
I'd barely recommend this book, but only to those who really can wait for gratification and who can tolerate really bad prose in places.
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