Bryan's Reviews > Stonewielder

Of the three Malazan Empire novels that I've read so far I would place Stonewielder right in the middle. I enjoyed it more so than Night of Knives, and less so than Return of the Crimson Guard. It was a solid read though, and a worthy addition to the Malazan world. Hell, the more books in this universe the better in my opinion. I'm just glad to get to spend more time here.

It wasn't without its faults. I thought there were significant portions of the plot that moved very slowly, or felt a little too meandering overall. I think a portion of this had to do with my inability to connect with some of the POV characters. This actually brings to mind something that occurred to me about ICE as I was reading this. I would not be surprised to learn that his preferred method of storytelling is something other than that of multi-POV epic. Part of me feels like ICE would better serve his readers if he focused in a bit more, and cut it down to a few points of view, but that he felt obligated to present the story in the same way that Erikson did. Now I could be way off here of course, but in my opinion ICE's writing would benefit from that.

Faults aside, as I said, I enjoyed Stonewielder. And I'm excited to see what the next installment brings. The ending was strong and suggested that many characters I enjoyed here have more to their story ahead. Consider this one 3.5 stars.