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This book was a slog. Steven Erikson is an impressive author, and all his skills are on full display in Deadhouse Gates, but it is not an easy read.

Sounds like I am really taking it to Erikson, but the truth is Deadhouse Gates isn't meant to be an easy read, nor should it be. In fact, I imagine that the sloggy nature of the read was Erikson's design.

For a great, big, massively huge portion of the book -- essentially the entire book -- Erikson has us following one massive, nearly never ending, running battle. I've never seen anything quite like it, to be honest. I've seen plenty of that classic fantasy battle we're all familiar, some version of The Battle of the Pelennor Fields, that big battle that a small band of intrepid adventurers finds themselves in, the battle that either ends the conflict or comes very near ending it so long as some surprising, seemingly unrelated task is completed elsewhere. I have also seen plenty of those small, personal, highly bloody fights or assassinations, full of guts and blood and horror. Those sorts of moments are increasingly popular in fantasy. And then there are our ever familiar massacres, like the Red Wedding, that remind us of just how terrible and brutal fantasy world should be.

But the Chain of Dogs, Coltaine's bloody march, is something else entirely. It is massacre after massacre after massacre; it is packed with personal brutalities; it is full of outrageous, overwhelming group brutalities; it is a battle joined by countless groups who either perish or leave or disappear; it contains heroism, selfishness, stupidity, politics, entitlement, attrition, disease, exhaustion, and death. So much death.

I think Erikson wanted us to feel what a battle, a true battle -- even if it was in a fantasy world -- is like. It is sort of the Western Front of fantasy battles. It is interminable. It is exhausting for the reader. We are meant to be uncomfortable, to wonder when this battle is going to end, to almost wish it would end so that we can move on to something less depressing.

Erikson wasn't content to tire out his readers, however. He wanted to offer us the promise of some culmination, some giant, wild payoff, some gift for making it through all that pain and blood and shit he poured down on us. So he offers the quest for the Deadhouse Gates, as a parallel to the Chain of Dogs, and then ... (view spoiler)[he says fuck you all, and delivers a denouement that really isn't. I want to get angry about the way he destroys the expectations he has created, but I can't because that disruption of expectations makes the Chain of Dogs even more hopeless, pointless, and devastating than it already was. (hide spoiler)]

Erikson does all this to make us feel things as fantasy readers we probably haven't before, and likely won't again. It is a tough read, you have to be dedicated, but holy shit was it worth it for me. I loved it despite the slog. No, let me fix that. I loved Deadhouse Gates because of the slog.