Katharsisdrill reviewed Memories of Ice by Steven Erikson
The suffering... the sweet suffering
4 stars
Took me a while to finish this third book, not necessarily because of the book, but it is somewhat less fluently written than especially its predecessor, Deadhouse Gates.
The weight of the myriad of characters who all have to be revisited makes for a less concentrated tale, and as we are back on the continent of Genabackis where the first book ended there are a lot of destinies we have to return to.
But that aside the book is still a weird and surprising kaleidoscope in a world that is truly original. No obvious template lifted from history, like when a people is modelled over the Romans, the Vikings or the Mongols. The cruelty of the previous book is also there in all its macabre glory... as in really nasty macabre. The author seems to try to counter weigh it with some almost Jesus-like characters. Not my favourite element in …
Took me a while to finish this third book, not necessarily because of the book, but it is somewhat less fluently written than especially its predecessor, Deadhouse Gates.
The weight of the myriad of characters who all have to be revisited makes for a less concentrated tale, and as we are back on the continent of Genabackis where the first book ended there are a lot of destinies we have to return to.
But that aside the book is still a weird and surprising kaleidoscope in a world that is truly original. No obvious template lifted from history, like when a people is modelled over the Romans, the Vikings or the Mongols. The cruelty of the previous book is also there in all its macabre glory... as in really nasty macabre. The author seems to try to counter weigh it with some almost Jesus-like characters. Not my favourite element in the books, which also goes for the slightly sentimental solemn passages. But there's humour and imagination to make this minor flaws - thinned into only small nuicanses over the 1000 pages.
So all in all a fine reading experience that demands a lot of the reader - and now that you got this far you just have to go all the way anyway, right?