This review originally appeared on Goodreads on February 18, 2016.

Deadhouse Gates

By Steven Erikson – Tor Books – September 1, 2000

Review by Robin Marx

I...think I give up.

This is not a bad book. Parts of it are pretty great, actually, especially everything dealing with Coltaine's Chain of Dogs. There are fascinating characters and some of the scenes are truly epic and vividly drawn. The problem is that Erikson makes very little effort to engage the reader. He's made an amazing, intricate world with fleshed-out societies, novel magic, numerous human and non-human peoples, but the author is so frustratingly obtuse and opaque about everything, to an extent that is completely counterproductive from a storytelling standpoint. His biggest fans gleefully celebrate this: “Erikson doesn't spoon-feed the reader!” I hate tedious exposition, info dumps, and “As you know, Bob” tactics as much as the next guy, but there's a difference between trusting in the audience's intelligence and pushing them into the deep end and flooding the pool with more water.

Erikson loves scenes where mysterious characters do cryptic things for unexplained reasons. Many times this pays off 100 pages down the line with some kind of revelation: “Ah ha! That guy was laying the groundwork for this to happen!” Just as often, however, there is no payoff. At least not in the current volume. Perhaps in a future book, who knows? Fans of the series say that Malazan Book of the Fallen benefits from repeated readings, but with 10 main books and an estimated 9,000 pages, that's an investment of time that many people—myself included—are unwilling to make.

It would be different if Erikson made more of an effort to lampshade the numerous little seeds he's planting, or if this was a slim, tightly plotted volume. But very often there's no real hint or foreshadowing that something will turn out to be important, it's just a line or two.

Inserted in the middle of a thick paragraph.

In a 600+ page book.

As a result, there were many intended revelations that just fell flat for me, the dummy unable to retain a minor, mostly inconspicuous detail encountered weeks ago and a couple hundred pages back. “Huzzah! Minor Character has come to the rescue!” the book proclaims, while I'm trying to puzzle out who in the cast of thousands this fellow happens to be, and where he was last seen. (And don't forget, Minor Character might not have even showed up in THIS book, it could have been the previous one.)

Among Malazan fans, Gardens of the Moon is widely recognized as a slog, but “Deadhouse Gates is where things get good.” I really wanted to like this series, but after two books and more than 1,200 pages I think I'm going to have to give the following volumes a miss. If you love both doorstopper fantasy AND books that demand (and REWARD, to be fair) constant and studious attention to detail, this is the series for you. If, like me, you're a less assiduous reader, you're going to have a tough time. Maybe I'm not hardcore enough, or lack the attention span. I would note that Glen Cook's Black Company series, one of the primary influences on the Malazan Book of the Fallen, manages a similar tale of epic fantasy war without presenting it in a package that's so irrationally indifferent to the reader.

★★★☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on March 21, 2013.

Gardens of the Moon

By Steven Erikson – Tor Books – January 10, 2005

Review by Robin Marx

“Interesting” probably best summarizes this book. This was an incredibly dense, frustrating read, but it was interesting enough that I was compelled to stick with it. Although I still think there are some pretty major issues with this book, I'm glad I completed it.

This is not a very reader-friendly book. Erikson doesn't make much of an effort to clue the reader in on what's going on, and a lot of the story relies on reading between the lines. Every character has their own hidden agendas, and its even trickier when all their intrigues are taking place in a brick-sized “cast of thousands” style epic fantasy. At its worst, it's almost comical, with a number of scenes where unidentified characters meet with named (but completely new) characters, mumble some mysterious portents, and then leaves. After finishing each chapter I read the corresponding section on the TOR website's re-read series, that helped me grasp some of the more opaque bits. I'm usually a pretty fast reader, but I crawled through this book.

Fortunately, the second half of the book is much more engaging than the first. The action became a bit easier to follow, although I'd be lying if I said I didn't have trouble keeping track of all the characters introduced after the move to Darujhistan. As can be expected in the first volume in a lengthy series, this book mainly serves to get the ball rolling. However, enough happens that it still feels like this book has its own plot arc, with a beginning, middle, and end. In the second half, Erikson cuts back a bit on the bricklaying and finally starts to have some fun with things, presenting some pretty exciting scenes. This served as the dessert to the first half of the book's interminable vegetable buffet. The conclusion really opened things up, making me excited about where the series is headed. It was nice that there was some reward for muddling through, I wasn't sure any was forthcoming.

This book (and apparently the series as a whole, from what I've read) is reminiscent of Glen Cook's Black Company and Dread Empire series. The scale is epic, and focuses on both the primary movers and shakers as well as a more humble group of soldiers. Also like Cook's stories, the tone is a tad on the grim side, with lots of moral ambiguity and a lack of a clear delineation between good and evil. That suits me just fine, but some fantasy readers prefer lighter fare. Those readers aren't going to like this book.

Fans of the series praise the author's mason-like plot-building skills, where vague hints and throwaway lines get a big pay-off later on, often in subsequent volumes. That's fine, I respect cleverness and attention to detail, but there's something to be said for readability. Reviews for this book seem to be pretty polarized, with unsatisfied readers who couldn't get through it and others that struggled with this volume, but came to appreciate it a great deal more after reading the rest of the series. I'm hoping I'll be able to join the ranks of the second group of readers, since the ambitious scope of this series is appealing. I like the direction hinted at towards the end of the book, and I've purchased the second volume in the series. However, I think I'm going to read something less challenging for the next book or two.

★★★☆☆

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This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on April 17, 2023.

Wraithbound

By Tim Akers – Baen Books – April 4, 2023

Review by Robin Marx

Wraithbound presents a world that is literally coming apart at the seams. Reality-warping elemental Chaos is only barely restrained by monumental, magically-infused barricades. The fortunate and affluent live deep within the Ordered Lands, while those less privileged are relegated to the outer borders, suffering the corrosive influence of the roiling Chaos just outside the walls. As the creators and maintainers of the so-called “orderwalls,” the mages of the Iron College have become a prominent pillar of society. Known as spiritbinders, these mages interweave a portion of their souls with an elemental spirit, gaining power over that spirit’s domain. Each spiritbinder dedicates themselves to a single element. Air, water, fire, and stone are some common choices, while others form pacts with more abstract entities, such as manifestations of law or life. Rumors also exist of renegade spiritbinders who entangle themselves with darker entities, such as demons or the souls of the deceased. With the continued survival of civilization at stake, the Iron College has established the justicars, a ruthless security force tasked with both policing the ranks of the spiritbinders and also hunting down unsanctioned “feral” mages operating outside the strictures of the College.

Young Rae Kelthannis finds his comfortable lifestyle turned upside down when his father, a minor weather-controlling stormbinder in the employ of Baron Hadroy, becomes entangled in a justicar-led purge of heretical magic. The Kelthannis family flee to the edge of civilization, eking out a meager life in the shadow of an orderwall. Despite the risk of justicar scrutiny, after a miserable decade of self-exile Rae gives in to the temptation to follow in his father’s footsteps. He attempts a spiritbinding of his own, using his father’s fractured sword as a focus for the magic. Instead of joining with a minor air elemental as intended, he finds his spirit entwined with something much more treacherous: a wrathful soul from the realm of the dead. This disastrous summoning has lethal consequences for Rae’s loved ones, and he immediately finds himself pursued by both justicars and an even more implacable foe: a brutal mage encased in a mechanical suit. To survive, Rae will have to come to grips with both his father’s hidden past and his dangerous new spiritbound partner.

Wraithbound is an epic fantasy where magic takes center stage. The various types of spiritbinding and their myriad manifestations are examined in intriguing detail, providing fun daydream fodder to readers and making this book an easy recommendation to fans of Brandon Sanderson’s intricate magic systems. Command of elements like fire and water are common enough in fantasy stories, but Rae’s tumultuous alliance with the wraith is both fresh and compelling. Rae is reckless and untrained, while the wraith bristles at being compelled into servitude. With the wraith seeking ever more control over his earthly host’s body, the reader is given the sense that Rae has caught a tiger by the tail. He requires his deathly companion’s dark assistance if he is to live to see another day, but the wraith’s agenda and Rae’s own are often at odds.

Wraithbound is also rich with layered mystery. Although it’s given away in the title, Rae doesn’t discover the true nature of his bound spirit until the halfway point of the book. The actual identity of the wraith isn’t revealed until much later. The role of Rae’s father in the magical catastrophe that has come to be known as the Hadroy Heresy and the ultimate goal of Rae’s pursuers are also crucial parts of the puzzle he must solve. I felt clever whenever one of my suppositions turned out to be correct, and absorbed even further into the narrative with every unexpected twist. Akers keeps the reader guessing.

Promoted as the first book in The Spiritbinder Saga, Wraithbound concludes with some tantalizing hints about the future direction of the series. However, prospective readers can rest assured that Wraithbound provides a self-contained tale with a proper ending, rather than merely a fraction of the story with an arbitrary or abrupt conclusion.

Much like Rae himself, the reader is whisked from one danger to the next, with very few pauses to rest. Rae’s perilous journey takes him far beyond the Ordered Lands and into the Chaos-infested wilderness, the skies, and even the shadowy land of the dead. Fast-paced and packed with cinematic magical duels, Wraithbound is an exhilarating ride from start to finish.

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