Malazan Book of The Fallen

Blotto The Clown wrote:

I am having a really hard time finishing dust of dreams. The book is so depressing that I 'dread' reading it. I love his writing style and his frenzied pace, but its seems to all tailed off. I really want to like it :(

We've talked about this before, but despite how epicley badass Erickson's characters are throughout the series, the last couple of books have become increasingly turgid. Toll the Hounds was an ordeal to get through - long dry spells between brief points of entertainment - and Dust of Dreams comes across worse. Depressing, dry, overblown and rushed at the same time: basically his sense of fun has didsapeared. I stopped halfway through, and with the amount of other awesome books out there, I'm not sure it's worth the tedium just to finish the story. I'd rather have a cool but incomplete story than a complete but dissatisfying one.

"We're invading _____ from town to town?"
"Aye."
"Hellian, I hate to say this, but that's kind of clever."
"Aye. And that way we can eat real cooked food, too. It's the civilized way of conductin' war. Hellian's way."

That made me smile. Hellian'll do anything for a drink. Location of the invasion redacted for spoilers.

Honestly, the books do go through a depressing spell, but it picks back up. For sure. That said, I'm STILL on book 7. Too much work and Steam sale ...

Beak ...

Man, Erikson continues to amaze me. Truly. And I wonder why I'm struggling to read Dance of Dragons. Actually, I don't wonder, I just have a hard time explaining it to everyone else.

I'm currently halfway through Memories of Ice. I don't dislike the books or anything, but I'm not a fan of the "throw you into the world with no explanation" type of worldbuilding, which doesn't suit my typical reading times (just before bed - if my wife sees me reading at any other time, it turns out that there are lots of household chores I need to do right now). I'm forgetting basic stuff, like what gender everyone is. Out of Stonny, Gruntle and Burk, which one is the woman? I can never remember.

In Deadhouse Gates, I was frustrated not being able to find the mines where Felisin etc. were being held on the map. I couldn't work out where this bit of the map was compared to the one in Gardens of the Moon, which I enjoyed much more when the plot stopped roaming around and settled down in the city.

Stonny Menackis is the woman, which will probably become clearer towards the end of the book. Erikson's method of worldbuilding can be tough, I agree, but I think it makes is that much more satisfying in the later novels, where events that you're reading of right now have a lot of importance. I understand that can be fairly terrible when you're not able to race through the books like I did.

Though that being said, Memories of Ice is my favorite in the series, but it only became my favorite after having finished the book, so stick with it.

DudleySmith wrote:

I'm currently halfway through Memories of Ice. I don't dislike the books or anything, but I'm not a fan of the "throw you into the world with no explanation" type of worldbuilding, which doesn't suit my typical reading times (just before bed - if my wife sees me reading at any other time, it turns out that there are lots of household chores I need to do right now).

I'm about 2/3rds through Memories, but I actually do enjoy this style of worldbuilding. I find chapters of exposition and history to be really dull and unsatisfying. I tend to do a lot of reading on public transportation or in the bathroom(don't laugh, it's quiet and peaceful), so I guess that helps with the mental model issues.

I have a long and torrid history of getting 1.2 books into a fantasy series and then dropping it out of boredom which includes Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan, Stephan R. Donaldson, George R. R. Martin and a few others. I did get 3.2 books out of David Eddings before I got bored of his stuff, so that's impressive. That said, I love these Erikson books and have the 4th one on my shelf ready to go. Everyone I meet that blathers on about Game of Thrones I tell them to get these.

Memories of Ice is where Erikson's storytelling hits its stride. The style of his writing gets better as he continues to go on and as the reader continues to know and understand the universe. It's tough going for a while, and definitely gets better as the series goes on. His characters become more real and deep as the books go on also. That's been my one gripe with the whole series so far. Well, and the world building is a tough pill to swallow until you get a better foundation for it.

There's actually a pretty good wiki that does a good job of hiding spoilers that I have used by searching for characters or races/species as a refresher when I put a book down for a while.

Obviously you should still take care not to read too far ahead of where you are, but they do a good job.

http://malazan.wikia.com/wiki/Malaza...

After reading the first 9 books straight, and then waiting a year before the 10th came out, I'm finding it surprisingly hard to pick it up. I feel like the storylines and characters are so complicated that I'll be completely lost again, which is not how I want to feel about the last book in the series.

Should I reread it all? Just reread book 9? Not sure what to do here.

Dysplastic wrote:

After reading the first 9 books straight, and then waiting a year before the 10th came out, I'm finding it surprisingly hard to pick it up. I feel like the storylines and characters are so complicated that I'll be completely lost again, which is not how I want to feel about the last book in the series.

Should I reread it all? Just reread book 9? Not sure what to do here.

I read them all back-to-back this year (second read for books 1-8) and I still got characters mixed up and plots confused. It could be that I'm just dense. Or it could be that when characters disappear for 1,000+ pages it's easy to forget exactly what was relevant when they pop back in. I'm thinking a visit to the wiki that Mixolyde posted above would be better than a full reread.

I picked up the last book but I havent started it yet. I am so lost as far as the series is concerned. I need some sort of coles notes... in chronological order! not book order (there is a difference).

I'm so out of the loop, didn't even realize the final book was out!

Mixolyde wrote:

There's actually a pretty good wiki that does a good job of hiding spoilers that I have used by searching for characters or races/species as a refresher when I put a book down for a while.

Obviously you should still take care not to read too far ahead of where you are, but they do a good job.

http://malazan.wikia.com/wiki/Malaza...

This was really helpful when I was reading Esselmont's latest book. It gives you good, non-spoiler character info.

I was in the same boat when I picked up book 10. I decided to just forge ahead and it worked out fine. These books are some of the few I own, because I felt the the need to go back and reread them to figure thing out, but I just didn't have the time to go back this time and wasn't sure what to go back too. I'm still fuzzy on a lot of the Feather Witch stuff, so I'll be going back to those books.

Memories of ice is the best of them which is something Erikson himself said in an interview , he actual lost the original script when his computer crashed which he said was even better.

I think Toll the hounds, the crippled god and deadhouse gates are close 2nds, I still will flick though the crippled god and read random sections and be amazed at how good the series was. To me it is the Wire to ASOIAF Soporanos in terms of size of world and cast of characters and kinda of bittersweet ending.

Also Tor.com have a reread of the entire series with one person reading it for the first time and another the 2nd, its one or 2 chapters a week and they just started House of Chains. Really good read esp cause it's like rereading the books without having to spend as much time

PS - Erikson has 2 more trilogies, one dealing with the Telbor and Karsa and another with the Tiste Andi and what happened to them all that time ago which will be coming out as well as an encyclopedia like what Jordan had for wheel of time which is sadly my favourite wheel of time book and the only one I haven't sold.

Toll the Hounds has been put to rest. That one was certainly hard to get through at parts, but well worth it. I'm still not understanding half of the implications. I quite literally put my order in for the last two books. Awesome series. So awesome.

Just started book 2 here. Book 1 definitely picked up around the middle, as events and factions converged.

I'm re-trying House of Chains while I am at my folks' for a visit. I think last time, about a year ago, I tried I was just burnt out on depressing epic fantasy. I never really knew what the hell was going on anyway so taking a year off will probably not be as debilitating as it might otherwise have been.

I'm about halfway through the first one. I like it so far, although I feel a little lost.

If you didn't feel a little lost you'd be lying.

I was completely lost after the first one and having a hard time just starting the second.

PAR

Is there no thought that if everyone is lost, maybe there's something wrong with the books?

That said, I've been contemplating trying book one again.

garion333 wrote:

If you didn't feel a little lost you'd be lying.

I don't remember feeling lost during the first book. Not even during the second or third. Of course, that was quite a few years ago, so perhaps I'm looking at this through rose-tinted glasses. It could be that I'm lying to myself, too.

After book 4 or so it got progressively more complex, though every so often I would have an epiphany along the lines of 'Aha! So that's where this long and complex narrative thread fits into the larger huge insanely massive world.' I do have to read the last few books, I keep meaning to go back to them but as someone mentioned a few posts back, the epic depressive thing is a little heavy at times.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Is there no thought that if everyone is lost, maybe there's something wrong with the books?

That said, I've been contemplating trying book one again. :cry:

No, I've thought that as well. The author has so many people doing so many different things in so many incomprehensibly named places that it is hard to keep track of everything. He also likes to have 3-4 stories going on simultaneously, such that once you do get comfortable with who is doing what and maybe why, he switches perspective for two hundred pages; just long enough for you to forget what the hell was going on in that part of the narrative. It also doesn't help that, for a series that is so geographically-oriented, that the maps in the paperback books are approaching the Schwarzschild radius for comprehensibility.

But the writing is pretty good, the characterizations (when you can keep them straight) are nicely done, and, because the narrative is so big and complicated, it does feel like a real world is being depicted. These books are certainly a challenge to read but the payoffs are usually worth it.

Ugh, maps. That drives me crazy. I stopped looking for stuff after a couple books. I think someone in here mentioned that he was going to release some extra maps at some point.

Or I could be dreaming.

Now that I'm done the 10th and final book in the series, I'm going to go back and read Gardens of The Moon. It's going to be crazy reading that now knowing how it all wraps up in the end. I bet there's a metric ton of foreshadowing.

Having gone through books 1-9 in a row, and then waiting a year for book 10, I realized I couldn't remember what happened and was lost at the beginning of book 10. So I'm rereading the series before getting to book 10. Might be a bit of a stretch, but we'll see how far I get.

Nuean wrote:

I'm about halfway through the first one. I like it so far, although I feel a little lost.

Remember the list of characters at the beginning before the prologue? It turns out there's also a glossary at the end of the book after the epilogue!

The reason it's so easy to get lost is that characters, races, places, warrens, cults, factions, and historical events will be mentioned in dialogue with no explanation as to what they are until later. Now this is a pretty standard writing device these days, but Erikson takes it further than anyone I've read except for China Miéville.

I'm reading it on my nook. So maps and glossaries are such a pain in the ass i don't even bother checking them.

Oh, technology, what horrors have you wrought??

Rallick Om Nom Nom