SFF Readalongs led by Kitty G discussion

This is the thread for ALL of Reaper's Gale. CONGRATULATIONS for making it to the end of the book (it was another chunky one!!) and well done for powering through :)

Let us know all your thoughts and theories below about the book as a whole, the ending, middle, characters and plotlines!

Feel free to post your review too, and tell us what you rated the book :)

Finally caught up (only 2 days late this time! YAY) and finished this. I think the reason it was slow for me was because I had a lot of other great books I was trying out this month, and I read a ton of other stuff alongside this meaning it never fully captured my attention. With the Esslemont book I am hoping to focus in on it in more detail and get more into the story, but we'll see how that turns out :)

As for the overall story, I think it was a bit too drawn out in the scenes between some of the Malazans. I don't particularly enjoy long scenes with not a lot of action, or scenes which are too much action and there were a fair few of each in this book.

As for emotions, I think this is certainly one of the more sad books in the series and I did definitely get a little misty-eyed at the Toc and Beak scenes because they were both pretty fabulous characters!

Overall I gave it a 3.5*s so it's tied with Deadhouse Gates for my least favourite Malazan book, but there's still a lot of merit to it also. A tough one to rate for sure.

I agree with you that some parts really felt very draggy so even though it's easy to get into given that it's a continuation from The Bonehunters, it was not as enjoyable. The ending really felt anti-climactic to me after that build-up of over 1000+ pages.

There're two storylines which I have mentioned earlier that I completely did not care about as well.

This is a sort of polarizing book in the Malazan community. Many people don't really favor it because of alot of the reasons you guys mention, draggy, really morose, and so on.

I'll agree in some aspects, it does take a long time to reach the finish line. But it's actually one of my favorites because of so many good scenes in it.

Like Beak, you just can't touch that. And Tehol and Bugg make their rounds, and they're impossible not to like. When Fiddler makes The Drum, that's one of my favorite moments in the whole series. The Malazans are on our shore? Chills. When Fiddler and Hedge meet up again and one two punch Silchas Ruin with cussers? Fucking Dragon. Doesn't get any simpler than that. Fucking Dragon. Oh and when Hedge KOs Quick Ben. That was hilarious.

But I can understand why people don't like it so much. The rape torture stuff is really hard to take. And the whole Redmask thing can feel like a dead end. But it truly isn't. It's like the one sequence in the series I think that really requires another book to fully understand. It was not all for nothing, but it'll take Dust of Dreams to make more sense.

I loved this book. There were so many storylines going and towards the end I was so nervous to see how everything will tie up. I'm really anxious to see where Icariums story goes from here and of course Karsa. Does Hedge coming back to life mean that also Whiskey jack will return??
The parts for hellian and skulldeath had me laughing my head off but I kind of miss Pust and Krupper.
Can't wait to see the great revenge against Rake and when will we get back to tattersail??
I'm hoping the next Esslemont book will be better than the first.