In near complete agreement with your review (it's a not unique case, but not all that common either ).

I really enjoyed Felisin (so far. I'm re reading up to midway into HoC, then I will read the rest for the first time). She's the character with which Erikson convinced me he could actually write characters for a novel, not just good (or less than good) RPG characters used in a novel. Oh sure, they still tend to "level up", but this time around it comes with solid. gripping character development, especially in the case of Felisin.

I also agree with you her storyline is just as interesting and powerful as the Chain of Dogs (which I find near stellar, truth be told), and that most of the interest isn't plot-based but arising from the character herself. As far as Hero's Journeys goes, this one, and Coltaine's really go where fairly few Fantasy writers go (refreshingly devoid of the Joseph Campbell vision of mythology, for once). CoD really felt like mythology or epic literature in the making, in a way few since Tolkien have truly achieved (that well, anyway).

My other main point of interest was Duiker. I was a really great narrator for the CoD, and I think the concept of an Historian thrown in the middle of events, who becomes more of a witness than a scholar or analyst, and who doesn't have the emotional detachement and perspective Historians aim to have, was a fairly interesting angle to explore. I really loved the side characters he got tied to, from List to the three child warlocks. Not much to say about Coltaine that I'm sure has been said hundreds of time before, except I'm really curious to know what happened to him and if and in what form he might come back (but no, I don't want to be told now...). I think making us see Coltaine mostly through Duiker, who didn't know him well, was a very clever choice. I wonder if it's what Erikson was trying to do with Whiskeyjack in GotM - if that is so, it's much better executed with Coltaine. The only downside in that storyline was the weakness of the noble and High Fist characters. This was too black-and-white and over the top. They're the only characters in that storyline I just couldn't suspend disbelief about. It was a good starting point, but after months on the CoD, I just couldn't believe anyone could remain as stupid, as greedy and as blind as that. I can buy how it ends, that once safe they'd return to their old ways and backstab, but I couldn't buy that such weak people wouldn't have broken apart a lot more in the middle part.

Overall, Duiker and Felisin both provided what I felt GotM missed. They were not your usual round of "young heroes" yet served the same purpose in a way, being excellent characters through whose eyes you could discover the story and world. Just enough outsiders that you don't feel as distant to the players as I felt in GotM, with its string of "too advanced"/too involved players.

I also really liked devices like List's dreams, or the way Heboric knows things about the far past. The archeologist really showed there, and this aspect is far better executed and fascinating than it was in GotM, where this was just thrown at the reader. You get a much, much better sense in DHG of how much the characters themselves know and don't know.

Mappo/Icarium are also a big highlight of the book, and I'm very much looking forward to more of them (the characters and their mysteries really were fascinating, though the storyline as such was a bit on the dull side and felt more like a device to introduce them). And just like you, my opinion is that the downside in that storyline is Pust. So far, I find Erikson's style of comic relief characters not much to my liking. I didn't enjoy that aspect in GotM either. In DHG, it's over the top again, but OTOH it was really well done with Mappo/Icarium and it made me wish a lot Erikson had stuck to his winning mix of tragic/touching/humouristic elements with the pair, without the really over the top Pust stuff. I had a very similar problem with Kruppe in GotM. A few scenes, okay, but it gets old very, very fast after that, and I didn't feel it fitted at all with the tone and themes of the rest of the novel.

Unlike GotM where they left me cold, the House Shadow characters become really interesting in this book, for all the shortness of their appearances.

Not much more to add. Ah, yes... at this point in the series (and considering I'm still sort of a first time reader) I still feel Erikson tends to make what he doesn't yet intend to reveal a tad too opaque and hard to follow (yet better integrated in the story by this point), while what he does intend to reveal before the end of an ongoing book gets a little too obvious long before the actual explanation comes. In DHG, this ranged from the Tano spiritwalker song ("oh, here comes of his end of book deus ex machina" to the real identity of the agent on the boat (anyone didn't figure out right away it was the Claw guy, and from the moment this Claw appeared with the Red Blade it was obvious Laseen was forewarned? I wouldn't have revealed the guy with the Red Blade woman was a Claw, personally, nor how they tracked Kalam through the Imperial Warren). Other things were obvious but rather created a good feeling of anticipation, like the fact Tavore/Felisin would end up facing one another, obvious from the prologue).

Unlike GotM, I don't hesitate to say I think DHG is definitely one of the major Fantasy novels written this decade.

A question to end: per any chance Larry, do you know if GotM was essentially written before Erikson studied creative writing and DHG afterward?