I Read Books: House Of Chains

House Of Chains

This volume of the ongoing Malazan Book Of The Fallen starts with a long novella in which Karsa Orlong – later revealed to be a minor character from Deadhouse Gates – has bloody, plundering, rape-y adventures. His certainty and arrogance are challenged, and he discovers that his people, the Teblor, have been deliberately made into violent, primitive tribes by their gods. He mostly responds by choosing more, different people to murder.

After that we return to the Seven Cities subcontinent in the aftermath of the incomplete rebellion. The Malazan Empress has sent a new army and her Adjunct, Tavore, to reconquer. What she doesn’t know is that New Sha’ik, the avatar of the apocalypse and the leader of the rebellion, is her sister Felisin.

There is a lot of factional infighting in the rebellion, with everyone having their own ideas on how to use it and preparing to betray each other. Meanwhile Tavore’s army is made up of untried troops, weirdo veterans who have returned for the emergency, survivors of the city garrison and the local forces, who have been betrayed at least once, and a scattering of other volunteers. They’re brittle and unsure and plagued by omens and doubts that various characters manage to turn around somehow. Here’s where most of the jokes are, especially around the veterans who have seen all this before. Sure, they’re facing a god-incarnate, a hostile land, an army that has smashed the Malazans and is thirsting for violence, haunted by ghosts. So what’s new?

The Chained God storyline, brought into focus in the previous volume, doesn’t move forward a lot, but many of the plots in the Army Of The Apocalypse are either for, against, or altered by this. And on top of this there are Malazan agents trying to do various things, as well as a handful of wandering strangers moving along the various Shadow-related stories. It doesn’t get any more simple, that’s what I’m saying.

The crazed cannibal armies from the last novel was a high watermark for horror in the series, later tied into themes of sacrifice and reconciliation and maybe just finding a damn conclusion if you aren’t going to be fighting the same battles 300,000 years later. There’s more, more personal horror here, spending a lot of time with Karsa Orlong, a cruel violent murderer and rapist becoming crueller still after he is enslaved, and of the followers of the Apocalypse he is not the worst.

Read This: The book commits to the problems of war, intrigue, fanaticism and tribal feuds
Don’t Read This: It becomes clear that this – 4 huge, 1,000 page novels – so far, is all prologue