Malazan Empire: House of Chains - Reread Critique - Malazan Empire

The pattern that has emerged during my Erikson literary crusade has been thus - finish book, start next book, get 1/2 through, and then write post on previous book. Why break with tradition?

Anyways, House of Chains. You know, the first time I read it, I didn't really like it that much, but I liked it a lot more the second time around. I found that the sub-plots were more interesting than the main plot of Tavore's punitive expedition. I also still love Karsa Orlong, redneck barbarian.

Um, I won't get into Karsa's time-travelling exploits, but I'll just mention there's a discontinuity there between his capture and his appearance in Seven Cities as Sha'ik Elder's bodyguard.

Erikson is back to being himself in HoC. He pulls out the ol' bait 'n switch gimmick, by marching Tavore's army towards the Dogslayers and the Whirlwind, and then doesn't give us the payoff. This time through though, it didn't bother me as much - maybe because I knew it was coming. Regardless, I'm tired of this literary tactics for important plots.

Another gimmick SE pulls out, which reminded me of Fiddler's quest in DG, is the story involving Cutter and Apsalar. There really was no need for the two of them to journey to Drift Avalii - The Rope could have defended the Throne of Shadow all by himself. That entire plot lacked credibility, but existed, like Fiddler's quest in DG, as a method of imparting information to the reader. While I recognize that that's how things get done when authoring a book, I still feel it could have been done in a different manner that has more believability.

Take Lostara and Pearl's "quest" - we got a lot of totally unrelated information out of that one and their mission was a lot more believable. Even if Pearl is an annoying homo. See, Erikson /can/ pull it off...

Speaking of a lack of cred - Korbolo Dom's "plan" of betraying the Whirlwind and triumphantly returning to the Malazan fold seemed pretty laughable the first time, and even moreso the second time. Why are people in 7 Cities so dumb?

Oh, another Korbolo point - I believe there is an error involving his exploits - Sha'ik Reborn is talking to that Mathok guy (whatever) about the hot & cold warleaders, and it's mentioned that Coltaine and Korbolo fought 9 battles on the Chain of Dogs - I thought Kamist Reloe was in charge in the early battles and Korbolo didn't get there until like the mid-point?

HoC also throws another wrinkle into just what Otataral is good against. The Tiste Edur certainly use Elder magic, and Otataral seems to be effective against it. I believe there's some bone thrown in about Kurald Emerlahn (sp?) being weakened due to the shattering of the warren, and that's why the anti-magic dust works. Blah blah blah.

It has taken until the end of HoC for me to tire of the endless philosophising (sp?) of everyone - eveyone's a genius and spouts out reams of worldly knowledge and wisdom and exploits, and none in a more annoying fashion than Felisin Younger. I wish she had been killed. I wish I never had to read about her again.

While it never really played into much, Kalam finding, of all things, an Otataral knife at a merchant in 7 Cities was pretty unbelievable. Booty from the Chain of Dogs? How could such an item (how highly prized is Otataral anyways?!?) be almost left lying around? No doubt it'll play into something in The Bonehunters. And those shadow demon diamonds he was carrying around were straight out of the Fantasy Writer's Guide to Plot Devices, hell, from the same page as where Fiddler got the shapeshifter-attuned conch shell song bomb from Kimloc.

Jeez, I just read that last line. A shapeshifter-attuned conch shell song bomb. That has to be one of the more over-the-top ideas I've ever heard of. No one who hasn't read TotMBotF would believe that statement was anything but a random collection of words.

Oh, I believe that HoC is the first book that really gives us a glimpse, Wheel-of-Time-style, of the future. Notably, the little sidebar about Grub and his becoming what, the First Sword or something of the Empire? That alone tells us that the Malazans'll be around for some time to come, and the Empire should survive the 10-book saga.

All in all, House of Chains is the weakest of the series to this point, but it has a lot of good stuff in it that I enjoyed. My opinion of the book has risen significantly.

I still don't get the acid-trippy stuff about Heboric's visions of alien beings trapped in giant jade statues floating through space into an anomaly. WTF?!?!

And Good Lord, compared to the first four books, the early parts of Midnight Tides are horribly boring. (Yawn)