red, Deadhouse Gates is quite a few people's favorite book in the series so far... its no coincedence that when they decided to do a film, they chose the major DhG storyline
Again it drops you straight into the story, but after reading GotM, its much easier to understand, and the quality of the writing is, if anything, better. Introduces a whole host of new characters too, as well as developing on familiar friends from the first book.
One of the end scenes is one of about four occasions in any book I've read that has made me cry. (One of the others in in Memories of Ice
)