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Okay, authors? Let's have a little talk, you and I.
Your books? They need endings. No, I'm not kidding. Yes, even if they're in a series. ESPECIALLY if they're in a series, because you're far less likely to just *stop* in the middle of the story if it's stand-alone. Yes, I understand that you have a grand, sweeping vision and it just can't be contained in a single novel. That's fine.
But you know all that detail-y stuff? The rising action, the climax, the falling action, the denouement? Even if your book is the first part of your massive epic, you STILL NEED IT. I know it can be hard, but other writers do it. Heck, even Tolkien, who was actually writing it all as one big book, still manages to have satisfactory action in each book as far as I'm concerned.
So, just to sum up - stopping a book is not the same thing as ending a book, and if I pay for a whole book, I expect an ending of some kind, even if its not the end of EVERYTHING. Got it? Awesome, then let's move on.
Bakewreaker is a real slow starter. The first thing we get is the backstory of the conflict from the past which drives the action of the novel. It's an unapologetic info-dump, but moreover, it's also one full of odd words made up for this series. And there's a lot of them. You know that sensation when you read the same page of a textbook over and over again because you can't seem to keep the information in your head? Or maybe the sensation of reading a literary novel in a language you're only passingly knowledgeable in? That's what this felt like. I could sort of make out the words, but had to really work, to concentrate in order to force them into coherent thoughts. I read most fantasy for escapism. This was not an escape in the first third. At all.
The really horrible thing though (and the thing that made this 2 stars instead of 1) is that once it got going, this was actually pretty fascinating. There was no "good" or "evil" side and the characters were complicated and human (even if they weren't humans). Both sides made advances and faced setbacks, and perhaps best of all to me, no one was safe. Anyone could lose. Anyone could die.
I enjoy almost every book I read by Carey, and this one was so, so close. But both the beginning and the end were so flatly disappointing to me that I can't in good conscience give it more than two stars or recommend it, and much as it pains me, I probably won't be reading the follow-up.