This is a broad and sweeping epic involving many characters doing many things in lots of different places. While I did have trouble once or twice trying to remember who I was reading about and what they had recently done, I was impressed with Erikson's ability to keep everything different enough so this was not a major problem. As fantasy epics go, this has a lot of good things in it. The one downside is the size of the book. At 800 pages it's a literal pain to read, unless you're cutting the pages free or seriously breaking the spine. Otherwise, I enjoyed this book a great deal. I loved the settings, the cultures and the different races as well as the descriptions of the many battles.

The pace of the book is rarely slow, either things are moving or characters are changing or being confronted by change. With the wealth of characters involved there's also a lot going on and sometimes hundreds of pages go by before you return to a particular character and their situation. In the end it all comes together rather nicely, producing an incredibly entertaining read and a world that I would like to see visited again. I'd call this a must read if you're at all interested in military fantasy.