Review: Memories of Ice

Memories of Ice by Steven Erikson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars



View all my reviews

Review: Deadhouse Gates

Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With a title that would make Metal-Heads proud, Deadhouse Gates brings the thunder that Thor can only dream of. Acting as a sequel with a mostly new cast can be a daunting task. Erikson proved with Gardens of the Moon that he can write numerous characters and give them enough purpose to stand out. What he had to prove in this book is if he could reel in his worldbuilding to a more coherent level.

Deadhouse Gates IS the book you want to read. It makes Gardens look like a collection of notes Erikson strung together, whereas Deadhouse reads more like a finished product. Refined. He does this while taking us to new places. He does this while involving us with tons of new characters. Sure, it's the same world. But there is a LOT more in it. Does having the setup from Gardens help? Admittedly, it does. However, I can't shake the feeling that you could almost read Deadhouse first and go back to Gardens after. Major plot details or references will not have as strong as an impact but I don't believe that would matter as the currency of the new cast is enchanting enough on its own.

The returning group consists of Fiddler, Apsalar, Crokus, and Kalam. The latter separates from the group for his own adventure. These characters didn't interest me as much this time around. They aren't the people I would have chosen to follow from Gardens. Kalam grew on me as his personal quest to kill the Empress was more interesting, Crokus was regulated to an afterthought compared to how he was one of the major characters previously. This bothered me at first but it isn't his book to shine. Towards the end, he has more moments but the focus is on Fiddler. I mentioned previously how Fiddler is a fan favorite but I still didn't take to him. To be fair, he's more enjoyable than reading Theon Greyjoy chapters in A Song of Ice and Fire, if that helps.

Two more characters join up with them eventually. Mappo and Icarium. Meh. Then there are Heboric, Baudin, and Felisin. They had a great introduction which excited me. Heboric and Baudin exceeded my expectations with their roles in all of this. Felisin is another matter. After what happens to Lorn in Gardens, Tavore takes over as Adjunct. She is one of Ganoes' sisters. She in turn sends Felisin to the slave camps to prove loyalty to the Empress. Felisin starts great and then turns into a bitch for almost the entirety of the rest of the book. In the end, some things happen, but that's a whole spoiler level I won't even go into.

The fourth part of the story is almost a continuous battle as Fist Coltaine leads an army and refugees to the city of Aren while pursued by a bigger army. The viewpoint comes in the form of Historian Duiker who was once a soldier and proves countless times that he's still a badass. His story gripped me time and time again. The final chapters outside of Aren are masterfully cinematic and equally soul-crushing.

Let's talk about Death a little bit because there is a war going on so you know people are going to be killed off. Erikson gets to me. He does. Some deaths I can see a mile away and still when that bell tolls I am defeated. A secondary character that had grown on me was someone I thought from the get-go was going to be slaughtered. Still, it was tough. One of the more shocking deaths happens much earlier and unexpectedly. It left me grasping whether or not it actually happened. The madman did it. For fans of books where everybody dies because that's just the way it goes in life, try Malazan. Merciless.

Unlike Abercrombie who writes all characters as edgy with their penises hanging out, even the women, trying to snarkily compare who has the bigger one, Erikson doesn't fall on gimmicks. You enjoy these people or you don't because they feel real.

The biggest change between the books is that Erikson no longer floods us with history lessons. Everything is much more focused. The motivations and goals of the cast are clearly defined in the beginning so we as the reader know where this all is going. Shadowthrone has a bigger role here too, but we are no longer bogged down by Oponn. Again, fewer notes, more finesse. I knew where people were headed. There were enough moments in all four plots that even if I didn't like, let's say, something going on with Fiddler and his people, eventually, something would happen that would make me proud I didn't give up on them. Every story was worthwhile in the long run.

Deadhouse Gates is a solid improvement over Gardens of the Moon although I still wouldn't rate it as perfect. This is more along the lines of 8 out of 10.

View all my reviews

Review: The Two-Faced Queen

The Two-Faced Queen by Nick Martell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The worst part about The Two-Faced Queen is that it ended. 

Years ago, I was out dining with family when it was commented on that I always order the same thing and I was made to order a Filet Mignon instead. The irony here is that whenever we went to a restaurant that had Crab Cakes on the menu, that would be what my Father ordered after going over the entire menu. Without a doubt. Every time. When the food came, I noticed that the Filet was small and of course it was gone in a flash. That cut is considered to be one of the best. The perfect, most tender slice. The Two-Faced Queen is that Filet Mignon. If the book had been a quarter as perfect, but double the size, I would still have gobbled it down like the mortal enemy of cows that I am. 

I wish I had kept a log or filmed myself while reading this so that you could observe how many times I said "Jesus Christ!" or cursed. I can tell you that I read this on my Kindle and at 11% was my first Jesus Christ moment and around the 90% mark was a full-blown "What the ****?" This has shock, after shock, after shock, after shock. 

The Two-Faced Queen continues the story of Michael Kingsman while leaving the comfort so many book series find themselves in. There's a level many books find themselves in. Mistborn, for instance, even though the stakes get higher and the world expands has a constant feel to it. What Nick Martell does here is "I've already done that, this is where we are, and it's about to explode." Michael's redemption is prevalent but everyone comes up to bat in this book. Trey & Naomi have wonderful storylines. I was beyond excited to have the Princess be in the spotlight this time around as her brother was a force in the first book. Every scene she had in Kingdom of Liars always got my attention. Martell even threw in an appearance by Em, the Baker's daughter. He's smart enough to take us on a different adventure while reminding us we are still in the same world. Talented, damn it. 

And these people feel real. They aren't cardboard cutouts of generic fantasy characters. They curse and they **** and they tease and they hurt and they bleed just like the rest of us. Without having to kneel to the Grimdark side of things to have personalities. This is something newer writers should take note of. There's a way to express people without being a caricature. Evan Winter is another writer who is good with this. 

What was really badass this time around was that the plot includes both an assassin and a serial killer on the loose. They contribute to the craziness but there is no escaping the situation surrounding the Princess, Michael, and Dark. The mystery surrounding Dark is a huge focal point. You could easily argue for him to be on the cover of this book. Speaking of which, both covers are absolutely beautiful. 

God, so much happens in this book that it's hard to talk about without giving out other key information. As I'm rewinding it in my head I'm remembering other details that conveniently slipped away and must most likely be waiting for us in book three. I'm still stunned at some reveals. I even was so caught off guard at one point that I threw my Kindle down and had to get up from the couch and shake it off.  

Minor Spoilers: A few passing thoughts to close this out. Naomi this time around definitely gave me Maya Hawke-in-Stranger-Things vibes. You'll understand. There also must be something agreed upon by most writers putting out secondary books in 2020 (or early 2021) that all sequels must have more dragons. 

Overall, this is a solid book from a solid writer. The type of book we read for. I'm honored to have been able to read it early. 

I'll leave off with one of my favorite quotes from the book because I absolutely loved it. Spoilers only because it's wonderful to come across these things on your own as you read. It doesn't affect the story at all. 

There were two kinds of people in Symon's mind: Those who respected books and those who didn't. And anyone who fell in the second category would be lucky if they were erased by history rather than dehumanized. 

For what it's worth, as I can't have milk or eat Chocolate without suffering, the cows truly have the upper hand in our rivalry. 

View all my reviews

Review: Gardens of the Moon

Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Anyone who follows my reviews will know that I read under typically unfortunate circumstances. I have many kids and little time. I've mostly been on a reading sabbatical, which as a reviewer I deeply regret. Therein lies the question of why I decided to start the Malazan series as a way to bring myself back to form. Especially with everything I have against me.

You see, Malazan is considered to be a "difficult" series. I talked with multiple people shortly after I started as to figure out why this is, and it came down to a few reasons. The main, of course, is that it suffers from the same illness many fantasy series do. Unusual names for people & places mixed in with tons of worldbuilding. The Malazan series is incredible with its worldbuilding. Erickson excels in it.

The short prologue sets the story up a little bit but takes place many years before the events of the rest of the book. Once you get into the first chapter you are treated to rapid pacing and information dumps relentlessly. There's probably close to twenty characters or more that you meet in the first two chapters and they aren't the entire cast. Nothing in this book is done on a small scale. Those information dumps are purely all over your lap, your hands, the floor. I've been told to "get" the Malazan Series you would have to study it. Seriously, that was my advice. The only way it was going to work was to commit my all to it. Well, that didn't happen. And you shouldn't worry about that either.

The book starts us out with possession, then a massacre, an investigation, and an important battle. What could be troubling is that during these events, little things may be occurring that get referenced but don't come fully to light until afterward. Gardens of the Moon makes you wait for the payoff. What slowed me, in the beginning, was keeping up with all the names, titles, and places thrown at me so quickly because the book does not stay put. It jumps from characters and situations frequently. Enough to make me want to write down who is who and what they are doing, whose side they are on? No. I did grow annoyed when people had multiple titles or nicknames and those were used interchangeably without mentioning their actual name but that is only really prevalent in the first part of the book. Also, I'm still not sure how many one-armed people exist.

All of this changes once the first battle ends. We've met a good portion of the major characters or else heard about them and the format of the book abruptly changes. The pacing slows. We spend a decent amount of time with fewer characters and then move on to the next big set-piece. Or course, once there we get a whole boatload of new characters and more things occur but it's like hearing the same story but told by someone else. This shift happens in Chapter 5 so if you are on the fence about sticking with it, make it at least through that chapter.

I was very impressed with Erikson's ability to merge stories and connect his large cast. I call this the Tad Williams quality I look for in authors. Some people can do it, some people can't. Tad always wins. Erikson doesn't just give us a story but a rich history of the world with different species and cultures too. I have the full collection of books to go through and I know a lot of things mentioned in this volume will come up again and be expanded. It's a series that you can get lost in and even live in for a while to escape from everything going on in our world.

I'd seen somewhere that Fiddler was a favorite character for his humor but I didn't notice Fiddler that much in this book, and never for a laugh. I enjoyed Captain Paran as well as Crokus and the rest of his crew. Adjunct Lorn also grew on me throughout the book. Curiously, with the first two, they are the closest we get to generic fantasy hero tropes. I'm talking about a stable boy or kitchen hand. Paran was a noble that decided when he was a boy that he'd rather be a Soldier. Crokus is the nephew of a known writer (and more) who can land himself in the higher circles of society but chooses to be a thief. With a cast so large it's odd that I find the two easiest characters to enjoy, but they also are used as pawns to the Gods (one in particular) so the focus is largely on them. Lorn then is someone who struggles between her duty as the Adjunct who exists solely as the hand of the Empress and the person she is. The more I think about this the more I realize how I enjoyed many of the characters. Excellent job Erikson.

The main plot focuses on the Malazan Empire planning to conquer the city of Darujhistan which is secretly run by High Mages and has rival Assassin clans. An Assassin War is a minor part of the book. Complicating the Malazan Empire's plan is Anomander Rake who is the lord of the Moon's Spawn which is a floating fortress with a city within it. He had made a pact with an earlier city, that of Pale, where the first battle of the book takes place and jumpstarts the events. Despite being opposed to the Empire, Rake ultimately comes across as a third party. It's team A versus team B but team C is involved because so and so. Got it. He has his own cards he is playing in Darujhistan, and everything comes together as books do.

I enjoyed the ambivalence of the characters. Although you can say a couple of people do things only to deliberately harm others, actions are often brought about because of the situations they find themselves in. Those I swore were the villains turned out not to be so at all. Even the Gods we meet, because they play huge roles, are typical Gods. I would compare them closest to the Greeks. They come, they interact, sometimes they help, sometimes they ruin things, and then off they go. It's like watching episodes of Xena with more interesting immortals and a lack of lesbian undertones. Mmmm Calypso.

The worldbuilding was impressive but not entirely my thing. On a geographical scale, I didn't mind it. When we dive into the history of non-human races, the first inhabitants of the world, etc, I start zoning out. Rake, who in Gardens of the Moon is 20,000 years old, is a Tiste Andii which is similar in appearance to a Drow. Dark skin, white hair. His people have a backstory as they are one of the elder races and I wasn't able to connect with them. At least at the time of reading. Now that I'm done I do appreciate more their storyline. There are also the Imass, the K'Chain Che'Malle, the Jaghut, and others. Each with details enough to fill a companion textbook. I just wanted to keep moving with the story, getting to the top of the figurative mountain without doing the climb. This is me as a person and not a fault of Erikson. It's a lot of information but none of it is hard to understand.

What I'm getting to is that if you are interested in the series but hesitant, I recommend you try it out to at least the end of chapter 5. Don't do a ten-page in and skip thing. This is involved fantasy to the fullest extent and you will be rewarded, I promise you. Read on a kindle to avoid papercuts. Ten big books mean lots of opportunities.

View all my reviews

Review: The Return

The Return by Roberto Bolaño
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A series of person tragedies punctuated by a book I was looking forward to but ended up hating led me to take a sabbatical from reading. Its been difficult, the long road back to myself. Luckily, Bolano was there waiting. I don't know what will happen when I finish all his works. I try to save and sprinkle them throughout my reading stack. Maybe the world will end. It feels like that sometimes.

I read but didn't review The Romantic Dogs because I am not comfortable enough to have any specific views on poetry. Though I also try to stay away from short story collections, I owe it to Bolano to speak up. So, without beating around the bush anymore, here are my thoughts on The Return.

Snow - A story is told by a man whose family fled Chile due to them being Communist. They end up in Russia and he becomes a procurer for a Russian Mobster. One of the girls that the mobster wants is a gymnast who ends up in a side relationship with the narrator. Its kept hidden until one day the girl reveals the truth to the mobster who ends up beating the narrator but lets him live. It turns out to be a bad decision because our speaker then kills the mobster and leaves Russia. This isn't a favorite of mine from this collection but I've noticed other people refer to it among theirs. It IS a very easily identifiable Bolano story.

Another Russian Tale - A quick little story about a WW2 Soldier in a Spanish Division who is wounded, discharged, and accidentally sent to the wrong division. While it's being sorted out, the German division he is with gets captured and he is discovered by Russians. They torture him but the language barrier is proving difficult to confess his innocence. Eventually, they try to pull his tongue with pliers and he shouts the word "Cunt" but to their ears, it is "Kunst" which means Artist. Thinking he is an Artist, they end up letting him live, and eventually when the war ends he goes on with his life.

William Burns - An American is hired to look after two women who insist they are being stalked by a serial killer. He believes he found the guy per the instructions given to him by the women and ends up kidnapping the man's dog. The guy comes to the house and is murdered by the American. Later on, the American is killed. It's unclear, at least to me, if the man was a stalker, to begin with. The American doesn't seem to believe so at the end. He thinks it was a case of mistaken identity. I had the feeling that maybe the women intentionally misled him. Maybe the man was an ex-lover. They were very quick to start disposing of the body. I don't think a man looking for his dog would break into a house the way he does. Maybe this is all obvious to everybody else.

Detectives- A conversation between two detectives which ends with one of them recounting a story about Arturo Belano in jail. We've seen the other side of this story in another form, in another work. The back and forth between the detectives take a while to get us to the actual story here.

Cell Mates - The story of a man who begins an open relationship with a woman who is crazy. Both of them are former prisoners. I didn't take notes but I believe in this one the woman and one of her boyfriends try to murder a friend of the narrator.

Clara - Another relationship story. The girl develops cancer. In the end, she disappears.

Joanna Sivestri - A Porn Star does a shoot in Los Angelos. She visits an old friend, a former porn star, who is dying. It's clear he has AIDS but Joanna sleeps with him anyway which, knowing how the crisis was responded to in the early '90s, pulls me out of the story for lack of believability. Unless the point was she just doesn't care.

Prefiguration of Lalo Cura – Lalo Cura makes many appearances in Bolano's work. This story is about his mother being a porn star while pregnant with him.

Murdering Whores - A whore narrates. She kidnaps a man she's seen on TV and is about to murder him. If you notice at this point the stories tend to have a narrative running through them all.
The Return – The best story in the collection and one of the strangest and funniest Bolano ever wrote. A man has a heart attack while out dancing and dies. He recounts how he hated the movie Ghosts, especially the scene when Swayze first leaves his body, but that is exactly what happens to him. He follows his body to the morgue and is hanging around without direction until two workers take his body with them. The body is sent to the home of a famous Fashion Designer who doesn't sodomize it but gets off on it. Then our Ghost speaks and the Designer hears. After proving that he is the ghost of the deceased and not a hidden speaker, he decides to stick around with the designer even when his body is retrieved by the workers. An unlikely friendship has developed.

Buba - The story of a Soccer Team with bad luck. The narrator is a player who is injured in or before his first game. He ends up rooming with Buba who is an African. One night, Buba tells our narrator and another man on the team if they give blood to him he can guarantee a win. This starts a cycle that lasts all season and beyond. Buba always scores two goals, with the remaining going to them. Eventually, Buba is traded to another team and they end up beating the team the narrator was on. The book ends with the team, sans Buba, reuniting for a documentary. Buba had died in a car crash earlier on.

Photos - Arturo Belano looks at photos of poets and thinks about who he wants to have sex with.

Meeting with Enrique Lihn - Bolano, as himself and not Belano, has a dream he meets the very much dead Enrique Lihn who tells Bolano he admires him. There's also a case of double mistaken identity on the steps of Lihn's building which is an amusing step away from the main story.

How Bolano writes humans is what makes his work special. I can't think of one American author who captures our essence in quite the same way. How Bolano tells stories, and how he has his characters tell each other stories, is so distinct. There is a deeper emotional richness. Even lighthearted conversations have heavy undertones and that's what sticks out to me. Bolano is like an English Teacher's wet dream in that regard.

What did I think of The Return?
As with any Short Story collection, I like some more than others. My favorites would have to be The Return and Buba. The other stories were more commonly fitting with Bolano's style and that worked against them here. The Return and Buba were uniquely different and showed a side of the author I wish we got to explore more of. I have a mental block of Cell Mates and Clara beyond them being two very similar stories. The non-romantic in me could be the catalyst behind that one. Bolano is at his best when he writes these lost or broken people. As a collection, I like how the themes flow from one story to the next but the stories about porn stars and whores disengaged me. I'm not a prude. Trust me on that one. The first porn-related story was ok. I'm not interested in these people but moving past the sex there's a poignant story. Then the Lalo Cura story came. I think out of all Bolano's characters, Lalo Cura is someone I'm never big on. The Murderous Whores story was better, in a different sort of way, but if it had been a touch longer I think it would have been more interesting. So there are a few misses for me here. Is it enough to pull me out of my reading slump? Absolutely. Check it out for the title story.

View all my reviews

Review: The Romantic Dogs

The Romantic Dogs by Roberto Bolaño
My rating: 5 of 5 stars



View all my reviews

Review: The Trouble with Peace

The Trouble with Peace by Joe Abercrombie
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The trouble with peace is that it does not last. People sitting idly tend to get bored. The trouble with this book is that *I* was bored.

This had been my most anticipated book of the year and ended up almost being one of the few books I did not finish. The first tenth of the book is dreadfully boring. The first half is continually boring with one of two really short moments (pages) that I enjoyed. The second half does get better especially the last quarter of the book. Twenty-Five percent of a story does not make up for the shortfalls of the rest of it.

Joe Abercrombie is very much in right now. As he has been for years. The book is going to sell well and people will worship the ground he walks on and a certain YouTuber will sing it's glory and get tons of new followers for it and life will continue as it has been. Remember, just because someone likes or dislikes something doesn't mean its bad. Out of all the books from Abercrombie that I've read, this is my least favorite and I feel it is the weakest. Is it? That's up to you to decide. He's going to make bank on it either way.

I didn't feel a thrill while reading this. Abercrombie has an ability to put you on a rollercoaster ride from the comfort of your favorite chair but I was so bored I decided to stop reading at one point and watch The Greatest Showman instead which was another dreadfully awful thing to sit through. People paid to see that so my opinion may count for nothing in the world.

I noticed that A Little Hatred gets some flak for being centered on a new generation. The Trouble With Peace, as it's the continuation, plays into that hand real hard. I didn't mind the new characters the first time around but everyone in this book came across different. Only one character ended up being likable (Orso) even though I don't remember him standing out much in the last book. He comes into his own in this one. Savine, Leo, Stour, Broad, even Rikke... I didn't care for how their development changes them. Savine and Leo especially.


One chapter about Rikke's struggles with the Long Eye allowed Abercrombie to do some creative styling with the storytelling. I guess you can say it was a chapter reversed. At first, I thought this was interesting but as the chapter dragged on I grew disenchanted. I think this is when I took my Greatest Showman sabbatical. Ugh. But don't worry because the always included continuously-changing-point-of-view-from-secondhand-characters which has become Abercrombie's trademark is here in all its typical violent glory. For those not in the know, this is when a character is stabbed, and then we follow the person doing the stabbing, then they die somehow and we follow their killer, and it goes on like this until we shift from the killers to observers and then go back to normal. When I finally got to it here I had almost forgotten he did these types of chapters.

Fans of Best Served Cold will be happy to see many connections here including what I'll call a cameo from a certain husband and wife team. I was disappointed that one of them is repeatedly mentioned when they didn't show up again in a more pivotal role. The players in this book are strictly the characters we were introduced to last time. We also learn more about Clover, who he is, and an interesting tidbit of what made him famous. I also miss Glokta centered stories. I started daydreaming at one point that maybe Abercrombie will kill him with an epic send-off. The original cast has been dead or is dying out in this trilogy but he deserves a little fan service. I keep hoping that the Bloody Nine will return even after the events of Red Country. The best ending for this new trilogy I could think of would be both Logen and Ferro returning to, pardon my language, fuck shit up. If that shit happens to be Bayaz, even better. 

Being a sequel in a series, specifically the middle book, you have to enhance the story of the original while leaving the reader wanting to get to the conclusion. For most of The Trouble With Peace the behavior of the cast was unreliable based on what I'd come to know of them previously and the main word I would use to describe the book is Wasted. The cast was wasted to tell a story of treason and betrayal that is expected, common, and unoriginal which are not words that I would normally use when Abercrombie is involved. I wanted more but got less. I had ambitious hopes but as mentioned above the only person I liked this time around was Orso. I'm not sure how Abercrombie plans to end the series and I'll read it for sure, but the days for idol worship of "Lord Grimdark" are over.

View all my reviews