House of Chains (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #4)

There's been so much good buzz about this series. I keep wanting to like it, but it fails to meet me halfway.

I had high hopes for this book, as the beginning was, I thought, the strongest of the lot thus far. By focusing on a single thread (and even character), Erikson produced some of the best storytelling of the series. However, after 200 or so pages, he reveals that it's all just been an aside, and the character was relegated to secondary status for the remainder of the book.
And how was the remainder? Typical, only moreso. Fragmented stories, too many characters, and many of those had unclear motivation (or worse, seemingly no motivation at all). Where the other books redeemed themselves, with interesting Big Ideas, or at least an exciting drawing-together of the the threads, this one… didn't. A Deux Ex Machina subverted our expectations, but those are so common at this point that we are no long even surprised. Thus was squandered the goodwill and potential that had been built up.

I'm tempted to stop, but there must be something here, given the number of people who rave about the series. And if nothing else, their size means that I don't need to take more than one with me on vacation. I hear there's a bit of a shift after this book. Maybe it'll be in a direction that I prefer…