Reviews

Brilliant characters, one-of-a-kind world building, and a plot that builds to one of the saddest endings to military campaign in fantasy literature. Absolutely adore the world and characters Erickson created and only reason to deduct a half star is for the slight drag in the middle. Highly recommended!!!!

rsyngh's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

kett3975's review against another edition

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adventurous tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

louizje's review against another edition

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5.0

4.5

glaivz's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

blainembentley's review

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3.0

Have you ever heard of someone going on a date and talking about things not working out? Not because they didn’t find the other person attractive. Not because there were any red flags or dealbreakers. In fact on paper the other person should be perfect, but for some reason they can’t explain, they just have this feeling that things just won’t work out. Have you heard of this scenario? Because this is kind of how I feel about Deadhouse Gates. I feel I should have loved this book. I did enjoy this book. There were a lot of really awesome moments. There were a lot of great twists throughout. There were epic battles. This story was very intriguing. But for some reason, I just don’t find myself loving this book. I find it lacking something, but I just don’t quite know what it is.

This book isn’t perfect. There were only four characters from the previous book that were in this book. So it was harder to connect the two books and harder to get into this book as it felt like I was starting from the beginning. There were pacing issues. The middle moved very slowly, but the ending pace was almost too fast. I don’t feel like there is a clear end goal for this series, I don’t know where it is headed, or what the main conflict is supposed to be. I don’t exactly know if I am for or against the Malazan Empire. Although I knew what to expect from Gardens of the Moon, this book was still very dense and still took a lot of energy to understand what was happening/going on. Although I criticize these things, I don’t feel they turned me off from this book. The story was so intriguing and I felt very invested. However, for whatever reason, I just didn’t click with this book and didn’t feel it was as good as Gardens of the Moon. For me I just didn’t feel as satisfied with this book as I expect I should have.

chillcloud's review against another edition

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4.0

The 4 star rating remains on the re read, I don’t think this book really is a 4 star book, I felt that, through out the book, it deserved 5stars but now that I finished it just doesn’t seem appropriate somehow. Maybe it’s because I was sick and couldn’t read for almost a week or maybe it was something entirely different, but one thing is for sure, this book is heavy.
One thing that also remains the same is how much I loved pretty much all the POV characters. Felisn is such an amazing character, she suffers a lot and we suffer with her, she doesn’t always make the best decisions and we can’t say that her heart is in the right place sometimes but she’s been trough a lot and I wouldn’t say that it was deserved. Complementing Felisin we have of course Heboric, the ex priest and controversial historic, their dynamics are really beautiful and I want to see how that’s going to evolve given what happened. Mappo and Icarium serve to show just how little of the world we know, a funny thing that kept happening was me thinking that I knew so much more than the characters and then they start speaking about events and places I’ve never even heard about and I start feeling like a lost child. Dukier and Coltaine and their Chain of dogs has one of the most heart wrenching ending in all of fiction, and Dukier’s observations about human nature really hit me sometimes.
Overall I think this book is truly beautiful, but my heart doesn’t allow me to give it 5 stars. Can’t wait to go back to the bridge burners and I really want to re read the next book, in my head it anos really high on my all time list.

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