What a slog. I had to push through this one because I’ve heard such great things about the series. The main issue here was that there is absolutely zero attachment to any character. As many have noted, there’s no character development. There are a lot of fun ideas here that do not live up to their potential. I read somewhere that Steven Erickson used his role-playing game universe as a setting for this book. I think the RPG would be more fun. One of these days I’ll work myself up to reading the next book in the series. Fun fact: you can find an annotated version of the first chapter, published on the author’s website; the level of narcissism his own comments are amazing to witness.