The Deadhouse Gates is the second novel in Steve Erickson's monumental Malazan series. It alone clocks in at 850 pages, longer than the entire Book of the New Sun put together.
The most important question is, was it any good, and fortunately it's easy to answer yes. Malazan is a complex world, with a lot of different cultures, and it's clear that Erickson's put some thought into the way it's put together. Although I can imagine editing this book somewhat, I don't think it could be significantly cut.
The harder question is, is it worth the time and energy to read it? After all, the series is a whole is probably as long as the complete works of many authors, some of whom are better writers than Erickson. But the large canvas he's chosen for himself gives Erickson the chance to work on a huge scale. Even by the end of the second novel, I felt like there's a lot of Malazan left to explore, and that Erickson has a handle on how he wants to unfold it. And that sense of scale can be fun to read in and of itself, even if the writing is occasionally clunky -- the feeling that no-one is doing anything quite like this. (I know that Malazan gets frequent comparisons to A Song of Fire and Ice, but (a) the Song isn't finished yet, and (b) it's not really clear that Martin knows where he's taking the series. I haven't read the novels myself, but I've definitely heard that the latest couple of novels have had a lot of treading water).
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