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Book Review: Deadhouse Gates July 11, 2008
Note: This is book #31 of my 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge for 2008.
I mentioned a while back how after a few false starts I eventually grew to appreciate Steven Erickson's Gardens of the Moon, the first book in his high fantasy series Mazalan: Books of the Fallen. So you shouldn't be surprised to find out that I moved on to the second book, Deadhouse Gates. In most ways, it's a lot better and a really good read. But in other ways it worries me and doesn't exactly motivate me to choke down the stacks of subsequent books in the series.
Deadhouse Gates establishes a pattern I'm told repeats itself throughout the rest of the series: it takes a few characters from a previous book, throws them in with new characters in an ever increasing cast, and moves the action far, far away from what you had been used to up to that point. In true epic fantasy style there are actually multiple plotlines and points of view in Deadhouse Gates, and following the laws of probability some of them are more interesting than others. The main event tying them all together is that the Mazalan empire is facing an insurrection in one of its desert kingdoms led by a prophet kinda sorta lady. Things get really brutal really quickly and a small company of the Mazalan army finds itself trying to protect tens of thousands of Mazalan refugees as they embark on a long and horrible trek across the desert that comes be known as "the Chain of Dogs." Oh, and also there's a couple of superpowered dudes who are looking for some magical gateway and a badass assassin who's looking for that same gateway so he can use it to get close to someone to assassinate her and a group of former nobles turned slaves who are escaped and on the run through the desert. Lots of plots.
I found myself enjoying the chapters about the Chain of Dogs the most, since they had a real epic feel for them and I liked seeing how the completely outnumbered and overburdened defenders kept finding ways to outsmart and out outmaneuver their dogged pursuers. It was just good drama and it had a heck of a payoff. The rest of the plot lines were okay, with the exception of the ones dealing with super duper badasses Icarium and Mappo. Those were incredibly boring yet reeked of 3xtr3m3 4ct10n!!!. I cared nothing for those characters and could barely tell what the heck was going on.
On balance, though, Deadhouse Gates is quick paced and exciting for what it is. The thing is that I can see how epic and LARGE Erickson is setting this whole thing up to be. It's not really a single tale, but a whole history of the Mazalan empire, and on that scale things are moving pretty slowly. And given that the rest of the books from here on out get pretty beefy --like in the 1,000+ page range-- I'm just not sure I've got the will to focus that long.
Others doing the 52-in-52 thing this week:
- Jeremy reviews People of Sparks
- Heliologue reviews Me of Little Faith by Lewis Black and The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie
- Nick reviews Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer
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Tags: Book Review, Deadhouse Gates, Fantasy, Steven Erikson
