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thecallahan posted:Just finished the 3rd book last night, quick question. Who was Dassem Ultor again? I can't remember if they've explained it or not yet. He was commander in chief of the malazan armies for a long time. Everything else about him is RAFO
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Aug 18, 2013 17:29
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thecallahan posted:Just finished the 3rd book last night, quick question. Who was Dassem Ultor again? I can't remember if they've explained it or not yet. Daseem Ultor was the First Sword of the malazan empite during the old emperor days before Laseen. Basically, he was a immense badass. He also was the Knight of Death, iirc, and was noted to have been betrayed by Hood and wanting to kill Hood.
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Aug 18, 2013 17:33
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thecallahan posted:Just finished the 3rd book last night, quick question. Who was Dassem Ultor again? I can't remember if they've explained it or not yet. He's mentioned in the prologue of gardens of the moon as the first sword of the Malazan empire. He's the most badass warrior they had, until something happened.
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Aug 18, 2013 19:55
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Is Icarium incapable of writing stuff down? It's sorta weird to be perpetually stuck in a 50 First Dates situation.
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Aug 19, 2013 06:39
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amuayse posted:Is Icarium incapable of writing stuff down? It's sorta weird to be perpetually stuck in a 50 First Dates situation. He sorta does - he builds all those mechanical artifacts that are usually time-based. I always assumed that his keepers (Mappo, etc) confiscated any writings that would explain his past, because that is when he goes rage-mode and levels another city.
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Aug 19, 2013 14:20
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I forget, but he may have also written that monument Karsa and chums find early on in HoC. He may have just been named in it though, it's been a while and a friend left my copy next to an open window during a thunderstorm.
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Aug 19, 2013 16:52
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I forget, is Icarium's amnesia induced by his handlers or is that the reason he has handlers? (he forgets everything and goes blank, gets scared/anxious, and levels a civilization before he regains his wits).
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Aug 19, 2013 17:12
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Loving Life Partner posted:I forget, is Icarium's amnesia induced by his handlers or is that the reason he has handlers? (he forgets everything and goes blank, gets scared/anxious, and levels a civilization before he regains his wits). Spoilering this because I'm not sure how much is "common knowledge" vs specific plot points: His amnesia was caused when he tried to destroy an Azath house that his father, Gothos, was residing/hiding in. During the battle with the Azath, he drew upon his rage and nearly destroyed the house, but also managed to tear a hole in a warren (Kurald Emurlahn I believe). Ultimately, it was the tearing of the warren which caused his amnesia. The rage wipes his memories each time, so he never remembers the cities/people that he obliterates. The Nameless Ones assign watchers to Icarium so that he doesn't destroy the world. The Nameless Ones also boosted his powers over time, iirc, so that they could use him as a weapon.
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Aug 19, 2013 18:22
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Icarium is the world's most dangerous baby.
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Aug 19, 2013 19:33
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Is that breached warren the one that the people attach the soul of some child to at one point? God drat I have to read these freaking books again, there's so much poo poo I forget.
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Aug 19, 2013 19:38
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Masonity posted:You all make great points. But my avatar makes a better one. Especially when talking to a butcher fan (I also loved the roman Pokemon series and Dresden so that's no insult)... I personally thought the Bridgeburners and the Malazan army as a whole to be sorta boring, but it's kinda easy to be boring compared to undead cavemen, giant wizard tyrants, and other crazy races.
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Aug 20, 2013 03:10
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I think the image from the series that sticks with me the most is Gruntle's version of House of 1000 Corpses.
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Aug 20, 2013 04:52
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That's one that sticks with me as well. The other is the end of book 10, it made reading the series completely worthwhile for me even with having to restart twice to understand anything due to the time in between books, unlike the epilogue of The Younger Gods or the end of The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles where it was pointlessly depressing. Does it ever fully explain where the Tiste come from originally? Or the K'chain? I need to find the time to reread these, I've forgotten so much of them.
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Aug 20, 2013 05:09
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mornhaven posted:That's one that sticks with me as well. The other is the end of book 10, it made reading the series completely worthwhile for me even with having to restart twice to understand anything due to the time in between books, unlike the epilogue of The Younger Gods or the end of The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles where it was pointlessly depressing. Forge of Darkness goes way into detail on the Tiste, and it's kind of a shock in some ways. No word on the K'Chain yet, but I imagine that they'll show up in some form during the Trilogy once some time passes.
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Aug 20, 2013 09:16
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mornhaven posted:Does it ever fully explain where the Tiste come from originally? Or the K'chain? 'Forge of Darkness' is a Tiste centric Origin-story. The K'chain... MY understanding was that they were actually originally from this world, but i may be wrong?
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Aug 20, 2013 09:19
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What I wonder if the other planets in the Malazan setting have gods and warrens. They make some passing references to that.
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Aug 20, 2013 15:11
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amuayse posted:What I wonder if the other planets in the Malazan setting have gods and warrens. They make some passing references to that. Wasn't there a whole crazy section where like, Felisin, Heboric, and Baudin get transported into some crazy warren or time and space location where they can see a bunch of other planets and the ways they're interconnected and poo poo like that?
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Aug 20, 2013 15:15
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Did they ever even explain why the second moon completely broke apart and rained down on the planet?? Did somebody gently caress up their garden?
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Aug 20, 2013 15:33
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one of the giant space statues hit it
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Aug 20, 2013 18:28
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Robot Danger posted:Did they ever even explain why the second moon completely broke apart and rained down on the planet?? Did somebody gently caress up their garden? Maybe I'm just not remembering but I do not think this was given the right reaction in the story. I just remember some characters mentioning it kind of offhandedly. If this happened on Earth people would go crazy.
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Aug 20, 2013 18:42
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Ethiser posted:Maybe I'm just not remembering but I do not think this was given the right reaction in the story. I just remember some characters mentioning it kind of offhandedly. If this happened on Earth people would go crazy. Didn't it happen almost 300 000 years ago?
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Aug 20, 2013 19:16
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I thought Iskaral Pust's wife blew up the moon  or was her little ritual coincidentally timed?
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Aug 20, 2013 19:32
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Everything is directly or indirectly Kallor's fault.
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Aug 20, 2013 20:51
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Loving Life Partner posted:I thought Iskaral Pust's wife blew up the moon I thought so too.
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Aug 21, 2013 20:34
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So I finally finished my pre-FoD reread last week, then read FoD within a few days, and am now catching up on the ICE novels I've heretofore neglected - starting with Stonewielder (I think that's the next after RotCG). I've been meaning to post some observations since finishing the original series again but haven't had time, so I'll just pack that in with some FoD stuff: So this was I think my third read of the entire series, but in actuality it may even have been my fourth - it's possible that I reread for DoD in addition to TCG and, most recently, FoD. And one thing I want to get out of the way right off the bat is how much more incredible TCG was for me the second time around. It took me probably two months to slog my way through TtH again, and a few weeks to get into and finish DoD coming off of that underwhelming volume (tth), but TCG I finished in maybe three or four days, tops. In this case, I think knowing which loose ends were going to be resolved and which weren't (and this not wasting time worrying about what wasn't going to happen), allowed me to enjoy the storylines I knew were coming far more. Even the Snake! And having DoD and TCG go back to back without the year or so in between significantly improved DoD, as well. And since the whole point of this reread was to refresh my memory before tackling Forge of Darkness, let me talk a bit about that: it was really good. Oddly enough, the thing I had trouble with the most was Anomander Rake - obviously he's a much younger and far different entity in that timeframe, but for a man known widely (in that universe) for his measure, inclination to think things all the way through, and lack of precipitate tendencies, he sure lets his primal brain do a lot of his thinking when things go sour. A few questions / musings: Tiste - So the Tiste were, as hinted, originally all one people. We know so far that the Andii and Liosan were artificially converted to their trademark tones, and both have their celebrated patron/matron in Father Light (Urusander) and Mother Dark. This leaves me curious as to whether the Tiste Edur are what they all looked like originally, especially since it is Scara Bandaris who eventually becomes 'Father Shadow,' and at this point in the story he has basically proclaimed an apathetic neutrality. e: while looking up something unrelated, I caught a quote on one of the Malazan encyclopedia sites from a pre-chapter passage in TtH by Endest Silann, suggesting that what became the Edur were born from the ashes and took up the sword, and listed some of their leaders as Scabandari and Ilgast Rend, among others. Rend caught my eye, as he figures in FoD (and presumably the rest of the trilogy), where he is a healer and high ranking officer in Urusander's legion, and one of the very few, if not only, Andii to have at that point managed to tap into one of the newly created warrens (in this case, Denul). Toward the end of the book and when it becomes evident that circumstances are heading to an uncontrollable conclusion, he - like Scabandari - elects to basically sit it out on the sidelines, though in his case by travelling out of Tiste lands. I guess I could see the Tiste Edur being those who sat the war out (potentially being the rational ones at the time) and were either broken or driven to extremes by the aftermath and quoted 'ashes' of the Dark/Light conflict, and took up the sword to do....what? Who knows. It is even possible that the way things unfold, the Dark and Light elements, in light of the destruction they create, become viewed as dangerous religious extremism, and the neutral Tiste take up the sword to eliminate the fanatical elements of their race and get on with their normal lives. Geography - Unless I'm completely mistaken, it reads from all appearances as though what we know to be the elder warren of Kurald Galain was - in contrast to the constant insistence of many sources in the original series - originally in fact part of the Malazan world, at least if the references to the empire of the "High King" are what one might reasonably assume - Kallor's empire. I suppose now that the Gate of Darkness is there, perhaps Mother Dark has enough power to shift the city state into a different realm, and perhaps this was already somehow manifesting when the Vitr (which is something else I'm really curious about) was stopped by an invisible barrier. Overall story / timeline - We all know that tracking time in the Malazan universe is tough, but this book introduces a lot of questions. Was Kallor's original empire (and is he)...human? We hear at the time of FoD of the early rise of the Jaghut tyrants among the Imass. IIRC the Imass didn't really end up encountering humans until toward the wane of their own time, coinciding with the rise of the humans. I may be remembering wrong, but I recall nothing mentioned about human empires - or even empire - existing at what must be close to the height of the Imass civilization. And how is it that he manages to keep Azathanais out? I've also seen a lot of speculation about the events that are going to be covered in the trilogy - the fall of TCG, sundering of Kurald Emurlahn, to name a few - and I don't really see how that will be possible, unless significant chunks of time pass between at least two of the books, or they cover considerably more time in and of themselves. We haven't even met K'Rul or Nightchill, and Draconus doesn't seem to be anywhere near to joining those three to face down Kallor after the fall. And from all the evidence, I get the feeling that the sundering of Emurlahn, which followed or coincided with the battle between the Edur/Andii and K'Chain / the betrayal /etc..., occurred hundreds, if not thousands, of years after the events of Forge (this just given the mention of sheer numbers in those battles, and what we see of Forge-era Tiste society. Arathan - who is he? I've seen some speculation here, and if he exists in any other form that we have met I thought at first he may have been Ruthan Gudd, what with his name meaning 'Walks on water' and his seeming connection to ice. But IIRC, Gudd notes at one point that his cold powers were a gift from the Stormriders, which sort of seems to short circuit that particular connection. There are likely a number of things I'm forgetting, but I guess this is a good start. Habibi fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Aug 24, 2013 |
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Aug 24, 2013 06:04
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Oh, yeah, I remembered one - so it seems destined to be the case that that first set of Jheleck hostages/'pups' will be trained by Tulas and eventually become the beings we are familiar with as the Hounds of Shadow, and it seems likely that either some of them will become (perhaps explaining his feelings for them, since it would be a betrayal) - or that some others will be trained to become - the Hounds of Light. The Deragoth - a name we are told (or a version thereof) means 'Hounds of Darkness' - however, precede them by an unknowable, but certainly vast, amount of time, as we see glimpses in the original series of them running with or perhaps even 'domesticating' the Eres, who are gone from the world even by the time of FoD. I wonder if Tulas' hounds lose their ability to semble back into men simply by virtue of staying hounds too long and losing their minds, or through sorcery.
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Aug 24, 2013 22:57
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PPS: drat but Stonewielder is a painful read. I find myself scanning some pages just to get a sense of events rather than trying to work my way through whichever adjectives popped up on his desktop flip calendar that day.
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Aug 25, 2013 15:57
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Chapter 11 of Toll the Hounds was a painful read, but for a different reason.  "Kick open the gate, Whiskeyjack."
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Aug 25, 2013 16:20
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Did I break the thread? Anyway, in the mean time I've finished Stonewielder and Orb, Scepter, Throne, and started Blood and Bone or whatever the next one is called. Stonewielder was bad. I enjoyed finding out more about the history of the Stormwall and learning about that part of the world, but drat was it a ham-fisted novel. Aside from the awkward writing itself, I felt like a number of the plot lines were either unnecessary or generically bland to the point that may as well have been unnecessary. One thing I will say is that I did not think Kyle came off as anywhere near a badass, as a poster some pages back had opined. He came off as a very regular dude possessing a powerful weapon, which is what he is. On the other hand, if I never see a scene with Leoman and Kiska again, as written by ICE, I will take a measure of comfort. Thankfully, Orb was a HUGE step up across the board. It still had plenty of stilted dialog and character developments that arrived with a suddenness that stretched the imagination, but it was to this point by far the best effort ICE has made - no doubt helped along by featuring plenty of established characters. B&B, which I have heard even higher praise of, seems to feature relatively few known characters, so it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
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Sep 7, 2013 01:47
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It took me a while, but I just finished DHG. It is quite a heavy read, not the easiest book for a non-native english speaker. I did not enjoy it that much, but far more than GOTM; and it somehow still got me hooked. A friend of mine is a fan of this series and I really enjoy to discuss the books with him.
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Sep 8, 2013 13:17
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Ryoji posted:It took me a while, but I just finished DHG. It is quite a heavy read, not the easiest book for a non-native english speaker. What about DHG did you not like? Was it the entirely new cast in a new city?
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Sep 8, 2013 19:08
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pakman posted:What about DHG did you not like? Was it the entirely new cast in a new city? It is not a problem with DHG itself, it is more about the style of writing. Getting thrown into a huge, complex world without any infodumps, trying to figure out all by yourself requires a certain degree of patience and a rather good memory for all the small details. I am not a very careful reader and I tend to forget some stuff on the way. (Word search with ebooks is a great help) However I still enjoyed the unpredicatability of the story and the miraculous world. I will read a lighter novel now and than I will jump back into the series... just waiting for a good discount code to buy MOI at Kobobooks.
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Sep 8, 2013 20:41
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Ryoji, you should check out the Malazan Reread of the Fallen at the Tor website. They read each book in the series a couple chapters at a time and discuss it in detail. It's a good resource for trying to get clarification in certain areas with a series this huge, and the way they have it set up makes it easier to avoid spoilers. link:http://www.tor.com/features/series/malazan-reread-of-the-fallen
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Sep 8, 2013 21:06
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savinhill posted:Ryoji, you should check out the Malazan Reread of the Fallen at the Tor website. They read each book in the series a couple chapters at a time and discuss it in detail. It's a good resource for trying to get clarification in certain areas with a series this huge, and the way they have it set up makes it easier to avoid spoilers. That's a great advice! Thank you.
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Sep 10, 2013 08:08
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I'm almost done re-reading GotM and yeahhhh it's got a lot of weird stuff and inconsistencies with the rest of the series, it's weird. I honesty don't think I'd even say it's a "well you have to read the rest of the series before it makes sense!" I think he just plain wasn't as good a writer then and either couldn't get his ideas across properly or realistically did some retconning in later books. Characters don't really feel right and it's not a "well you need to look at them from another perspective you don't get until later", it's just that he didn't write them as well in that book and its possible their motivations change. It's interesting
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Sep 10, 2013 16:10
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Levitate posted:I'm almost done re-reading GotM and yeahhhh it's got a lot of weird stuff and inconsistencies with the rest of the series, it's weird. I honesty don't think I'd even say it's a "well you have to read the rest of the series before it makes sense!" I think he just plain wasn't as good a writer then and either couldn't get his ideas across properly or realistically did some retconning in later books. The easiest way to deal with GotM is to treat it as a prologue, and then the fun starts in Deadhouse Gates.
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Sep 12, 2013 10:49
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Finished Toll the Hounds the other day. It felt somewhat similar to Deadhouse Gates as far as pace goes. What a gut wrenching conclusion. I've decided to try Stonewielder next, but I'm afraid I've lost most of the context for it. Can someone refresh me on the state of things at the end of Return of the Crimson Guard? I remember that Laseen was killed, and now it looks like Mallick Rel is emperor.. Other than that I'm in the dark. Anything super important I should know?
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Sep 12, 2013 15:03
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apophenium posted:Laseen was killed, and now it looks like Mallick Rel is emperor.. Wow. I was wondering where she was at the end of the series. I need to read the Esslemont books.
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Sep 12, 2013 16:21
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Gosh, does Erickson purposely try to make you hate the Paran siblings and the Bridgeburners?
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Sep 12, 2013 22:36
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amuayse posted:Gosh, does Erickson purposely try to make you hate the Paran siblings and the Bridgeburners? What books are you reading? e: Let me rephrase that with clearer emphasis: What books are you reading?
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Sep 12, 2013 23:14
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