House of Chains

About House of Chains

Karsa Orlong is a Teblor warrior — giant, brutal, and raised on stories of his people's greatness — and the opening hundred pages of House of Chains follow him through a raid on a lowlander settlement that constitutes one of the most morally confrontational openings in fantasy fiction. Erikson does not soften what Karsa does or make it comfortable, and spending so much narrative time inside a perspective genuinely hostile to the values most fantasy readers bring to the genre is either the most interesting formal choice in the Malazan series or the reason some readers put the book down and do not return. House of Chains is the fourth volume in the series, and after that extended prologue it returns to the storyline running through Deadhouse Gates — the Whirlwind rebellion in Seven Cities, Sha'ik reborn and surrounded by advisors with their own agendas, and a Malazan army trying to reassert control over a continent in open revolt. The convergence of Karsa's trajectory and the Whirlwind war is one of Erikson's characteristic structural pleasures: the series builds meaning through unexpected juxtaposition, placing characters and storylines in proximity and letting the thematic resonance accumulate without editorial commentary. Erikson's prose in this volume is more controlled than in earlier books, and his interest in what sustained institutional military service does to people over long careers deepens in ways that will pay off across the next several volumes. Tavore Paran, commanding the reconstituted Malazan 14th Army, is introduced here as a figure of deliberate opacity: Erikson refuses to explain her motivations or interiority, making her a vessel for reader projection and narrative mystery that pays off across volumes five through ten. House of Chains is not the series' most accessible entry point, but it is among its most provocative, and Karsa Orlong becomes one of fantasy's most unusual heroes precisely because of where he starts.

Tropes & Themes