Deadhouse Gates

Deadhouse Gates is a fantasy novel by the Canadian writer Steven Erikson, published in 2000 as the second book of The Malazan Book of the Fallen.

The Malazan Empire is close to coming apart after the events of the first book, and the rebellion forming in the desert is the immediate danger. Sha'ik has gathered an army in the Holy Desert of Raraku for the uprising her prophecies promised, and the conflict that follows is one of the bloodiest the world has seen. Felisin, the youngest daughter of a disgraced noble house, is living in the Otataral mines and thinking about the sister who condemned her to them, and her escape takes her towards the same desert. The outlawed Bridgeburners, among them the soldier Fiddler and the assassin Kalam, are pursuing their own purposes somewhere in the middle of it.

Between them the book covers a war, a rebellion and a long march through country that offers nothing to either army. The uprising being raised in the desert is called the Whirlwind, and Coltaine, commander of the Malaz 7th Army, leads his soldiers in a running battle to bring thirty thousand refugees to safety.