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I'm one of the people who thought RotCG was great, that its weaknesses were minor and that it made for a very fun and fast-paced romp with great characters and giant explosions. So right there my expectations were very high for Stonewielder. Now I'm not going to actually steal Abyss review style with the fancy awards, instead I think I'll just run through each of the main characters and storylines with my thoughts on them. But first some abstract overview stuff, of course!
A big factor in reading and enjoying ICE's books is the hype. While some characters return and some storylines continue, it is looking like ICE's novels are going to be a lot more disjoint than the Erikson books which continue storylines more directly and feature far more returning characters (not in the GotM-to-DG sense, but in the GotM-to-MoI, DG-to-HoC, etc. sense). As such, a big part of the excitement for ICE's books comes not from the anticipation of hearing about what happens following the previous book, but rather from exploring important events and places that have only been alluded to previously. The trouble there is that ICE needs to make the event and location engrossing without taking away all the mystery. I thought his handling of The Return, the Old Guard, the Malaz Civil War, the Return of the Crimson Guard, etc. were all handled superbly well, in that regard. The entire sub-continent of Korel, I think was a combination of hit-and-miss in this regard, but thankfully with far more hits than misses.
Ussu and the corrupted Sixth Army - HIT. Ussu doesn't get a lot of screen time (and doesn't need it because he doesn't do that much), but what he has showcases perfectly how the Lady clamps down on mages, and the crazed-surgeon/mage combination is definitely something new. The Sixth Army having gone rogue and severed its ties with the Empire was definitely unexpected and praise to ICE and SE for not having so much as hinted at that until now.
Bakune versus the Lady - MISS. We really didn't need even half of Bakune's pages of him discovering more and more that the religious fanatics are sacrificing people to her. There was enough hinting at that in the other storylines that you could skip Bakune entirely and still get it, and then the cullmination of that revealing bit of information is in Hiam's storyline anyways. Like many characters before him, Bakune suffers from being boring and surrounded by other characters who are much more interesting and much more important. Ipshank's religious war with the church had far more importance to the overall plot. Bakune goes with him in his first attempt to destroy the Lady's artifact, but it's been moved, and Bakune doesn't even have anything to do with the second attempt to destroy it. Karien'el's political maneuvering and switching titles about would have been far more interesting, too. Manask was wonderfully hilarious and got just the right amount of screentime, so at least there's that.
Suth and Rillish, Conquerers of Rool - HIT.
The best storyline of the book and the only one to get really exciting before the climax - that would be during the naval engagement with the Mare blockade. I really liked how ICE isn't wasting time going over common-day things that SE has covered already, ie we don't get pages of Suth, Lard and Dim getting used to military life because that's been done already in HoC. It's the same principle that worked so well with the crazy sapper in RotCG - SE had already established that sappers were all lunatics so ICE just takes it as known fact and made them even crazier. I was fairly well able to keep track of everyone in Suth's squad from the get-go, and that's pretty good for a bunch of mostly thick-headed heavy infantry.
Kyle worked surprisingly well as a pseudo-secondary character and I liked the change from being the Crimson Guard rookie all the other guardsmen looked down on to that rumoured stint in the Guard inspiring everyone with awe. His handling of his leadership tasks and not crying nearly as much for Greymane as he did for Ereko makes it seem like he was an immature kid in RotCG and has grown up a lot since. And his plans at the end are about the most reasonable thing anyone 's ever done at the end of a Malazan novel.
I really didn't get Rillish' motivations at the start, so I thought maybe he was going because Mallick would give Talia and the babies the nobility/deeds/whatever whether he survived or not, but that doesn't seem to be the case at the end. Doesn't seem worth it to me considering Korel was considered such a death trap, but oh well. Boarding the Marese ship, followed by "I think we could use another ship." was great, and basically Rillish demonstrated all throughout the book how capable he was. The ending was a bit odd, I can't really see why the Riders would have bothered to save him. I think there should've been a short scene added in where the Riders are saving Greymane and somehow he knows or they tell him that Rillish has fallen and Greymane tells the Riders to save Rillish instead of himself because he knows he's been such a jerk to Rillish. Something like that. But oh well!
Ivanr and The Jourilan Reform - MISS. Unlike Bakune's story, stuff did actually happen here, but it was entirely irrelevent to the rest of the novel! The only connection to anything is that presumably the Priestess should be the same one as met Traveller in RotCG, but that girl was almost certaily an Edur and there's no mention of grey skin or any such thing. So a new religion for Dessembrae started in Jour and fought the Lady's religion, we saw plenty of that with Ipshank already, anyways. Martal being a former Greymane officer made me hope that the Army of Reform would meet up with Greymane's force and it would be significant somehow, but... nope.
Devaleth, High Mage of the invasion - 50/50. I found Devaleth to be a bit of a non-character for a lot of the novel, but her few scenes gleamed lots of information of the other officers' backgrounds so that was good.
Hiam and Corlo on the Stormwall - HIT. Hiam was a good well-rounded character, I especially liked the little bits of humour he indulged in that kept him from just being a one-dimensional religious fanatic. The Stormwall was given lots of detail, which was necessary after the little teaser we got in RotCG, and I liked how if the Stormguard had to be your cliche overly-arrogant religious fanatic uber-fighters, they actually had some benefit/reason to be so stuck up their asses with the Lady's Grace/Wrath. Corlo's perspective matched perfectly with his former PoVs from MT and HOLY CRAP THEY CUT OFF HIS LEG.
Shell and the rescue squad - HIT. Having ass-kicking Avowed voluntarily go into prison was a nice little turn of events, but then the Skiiiinnnnneeeeeerrrrrrrrr part was an even BIGGER turn. It was great and utterly surprising to see some Kaminsod involvement after his absence from TtH and DoD!
Kiska's search - HIT. My favourite storyline, actually, full of mind-blowingness! Jhevel, finally! Warran, could figure it out fairly early, especially considering that other name ST goes by, but you couldn't be absolutely sure and the fishing jokes were funny. Random K'Chain Che'malle in Shadow, uh sure, why no-Holy Crap Hound of Light! Well I guess that's the most unexpec-ARMY OF LIOSAN WTF! Well, I guess we know L'oric's going to be in char-DAUGHTER OF OSSERC AGHGHGHGHHH!!! Oh it's Yathengar from the previous book well that makes sense. Aww, we don't get to see the Liosan kill him, darn. Well I guess this storyline's going to end on a low not-ENORMOUS CREATURE CARRYING A BOULDER FOR SOME REASON THIS DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE:apt:
Overall I thought everything went along at a pretty good speed, but at the same time didn't find much excitement to be had between the Marese blockade and the climax. A very solid book and the mysteries of Korel were dealt with very well, which bodes extremely well for the even more mysterious Assail.
This post has been edited by D'rek: 05 December 2010 - 04:55 AM
