Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson, first 200 pages of it. First book of the Malazan series.

This was recommended concerning escapist dystopian fantasy. But just because everyone's at war doesn't truly make a novel dystopian. For it to be dystopian there has to be something unique about the social norms and here it's the same old generic stuff. The exact same social norms but with the exact same simplifications which makes it fantasy. Also characters are a bit light and it's basically just killing. One hardly cares who dies. Best feature is the level of detail of the magic which I suppose makes the setting more believable but I don't think it's the correct way to go about introducing magic actually. It should be vague. It's supposed to be the unknown. Although granted plenty of unknown is left here so I guess the level of detail is OK.

Lots of political intrigue. Which isn't interesting. Reminds me of Dune in that.

There is something essential missing from the characters. There needs to be something other than endless war and killing and political intrigue in order to make one care about the results of all that muck.

What's keeping the pages turning?
There is some injustice to be righted. Although it's not strong enough IMO. And there is a sort of hero who one gets a very slight feeling has something special about him. Some ace up his sleeve. Barely. Maybe. Not leading to something very wonderful though. Just maybe they'll ease up this killing. They've not made room for anything in the place of the killing therefore nothing wonderful can loom.

..furthermore it just occurred to me they're really pushing the military angle a bit much... But then it is war.... Eh.