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What are the flaws in Malazan that you can't find in Mistborn and vica versa?
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Apr 9, 2019 22:44
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Yeah im gonna need some more details. Mistborn seems sort of self-evidently bad based on what has been posted in this thread. Does Malazan also have lifeless prose? A lack of exploration of interesting ideas? A heavy focus on "worldbuilding?" Text that reads like a video game QTE script?
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Apr 9, 2019 23:10
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Malazan has a ton of jerking it to various proper nouns and magic systems and prose that reminds me unpleasantly of Thomas Covenant. Much of it is dedicated to bluntly informing the reader How Intricate This Evil Plan is. gently caress, I'm gonna have to reread Deadhouse Gates for the thread aren't i?
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Apr 10, 2019 02:40
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Yes
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Apr 10, 2019 03:40
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i read the first two books of malazan in high school and felt that it resoundingly sucked rear end. the only thing i remember about it now is a bit about a skeleton (?) with glowing blue eyes (?) who sacrificed himself by ascending to the sky in order to fix a hole in reality, which meant that he wouldn't die but would instead suffer in agony for eternity also i think he was telepathic
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Apr 10, 2019 04:31
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chernobyl kinsman posted:i read the first two books of malazan in high school and felt that it resoundingly sucked rear end. the only thing i remember about it now is a bit about a skeleton (?) with glowing blue eyes (?) who sacrificed himself by ascending to the sky in order to fix a hole in reality, which meant that he wouldn't die but would instead suffer in agony for eternity thank mr skeltal
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Apr 10, 2019 04:46
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Malazan has a ton of jerking it to various proper nouns and magic systems and prose that reminds me unpleasantly of Thomas Covenant. Stephen R. Donaldson posted:Through his rejections, Erikson tests our notions of what it means to be human. He challenges us to reexamine how we think about ourselves, our world, and each other; to reexamine the stories we tell ourselves, the means by which we create our own realities. He encourages us to expand our minds and our hearts to meet those challenges. And he does so in lucid prose as seamless as oil.
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Apr 10, 2019 04:57
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Yes, the story with zombie dinosaurs that have swords for hands is clearly meant to be taken Very Seriously
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Apr 10, 2019 05:33
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Malazan has a ton of jerking it to various proper nouns and magic systems and prose that reminds me unpleasantly of Thomas Covenant I do not recall Malazan spending much time trying to make some explicit Sanderson-like Magic system. I'm also not sure how big of a deal the various different names for all the various different peoples are.
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Apr 10, 2019 05:42
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David Gemmell's Legend felt like the literary equivalent of a bad 80s anime OVA when I read it last year.
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Apr 10, 2019 05:48
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Sampatrick posted:I do not recall Malazan spending much time trying to make some explicit Sanderson-like Magic system. I'm also not sure how big of a deal the various different names for all the various different peoples are. I've read the first book. There is a magic system, but like a lot of other things, Erikson doesn't explain it.
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Apr 10, 2019 07:15
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everyone posted:Malazan is dogshit So far there is lots of jerking it to randomly Capitalized Nouns. And prose that seems to be trying to be pulpy, like Robert Howard, but is missing the mark. It's bad, but it hasn't gotten really bad yet. It hasn't gotten as bad as I am afraid it will before the end.
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Apr 10, 2019 14:53
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onsetOutsider posted:i'd like to see you try. that book is phenominal hyperion, like all of dan simmons' work, blows like the winds to the east
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Apr 10, 2019 16:30
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Getting mad about capitalized nouns is honestly the dumbest poo poo. There's some reasonable things to critique, like the prose being poo poo, but getting mad about pronouns is just dumb.
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Apr 10, 2019 17:28
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Sampatrick posted:Getting mad about capitalized nouns is honestly the dumbest poo poo. There's some reasonable things to critique, like the prose being poo poo, but getting mad about pronouns is just dumb. (1) Capitalization is obviously part of prose style. Capitalizing certain words changes their inflection. It is annoying to trip over stupidly capitalized words once or twice every sentence. (2) Capitalizing Special Nouns is one of the most common and easily identifiable habits of bad SF/F writers, so people who (justifiably) don't want to waste a lot of time criticizing a lovely book that is lovely in exactly the same ways as many other books are lovely can just point to the dumb capitalization and say "get a load of this poo poo."
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Apr 10, 2019 18:10
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Solitair posted:I've read the first book. There is a magic system, but like a lot of other things, Erikson doesn't explain it. There's a lot of things to criticize (and I'm saying that as a fan of series) but a Sanderson approach isn't one of them. I don't doubt they had a system in place for the RPG they based it on but the books never devolve into Setting Magical Laws. I'd also say it feels pretty unfair to hold the fact that noted twit Donaldson likes the books against them. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Apr 10, 2019 |
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Apr 10, 2019 18:31
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I don't know what pronouns are, but I won't let that stop me from telling other people what to think about them.
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Apr 10, 2019 18:31
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Sampatrick posted:getting mad about pronouns is just dumb. 
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Apr 10, 2019 19:09
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chernobyl kinsman posted:hyperion, like all of dan simmons' work, blows like the winds to the east I remember The Terror as being pretty good
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Apr 10, 2019 19:19
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chernobyl kinsman posted:hyperion, like all of dan simmons' work, blows like the winds to the east lol if you really think this
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Apr 10, 2019 19:26
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Sham bam bamina! posted:I don't know what pronouns are, but I won't let that stop me from telling other people what to think about them. he meant proper nouns, but even then he's wrong
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Apr 10, 2019 19:28
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Now, there's no hard-and-fast rule against weird capitalization. You just have to show you know what the gently caress you're doing, e.g. Olga Tokarczuk in Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.
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Apr 10, 2019 19:52
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The apostrophe Proper N'ouns are ridiculous to the point of self parody. Take this example from the dramatis personae of Deadhouse Gates: Icarium, a mixed-blood Jaghut wanderer Mappo, his Trell companion Iskaral Pust, a High Priest of Shadow Ryllandaras, the White Jackal, a D’ivers Messremb, a Soletaken Gryllen, a D’ivers Mogora, a D’ivers This is presented before any of the text of the story. Now, Soletaken and D'ivers are literally just shapeshifters but Erikson feels the need to slather on made up words with apostrophes. Yes, "divers" is old English for "many" (the shapeshifters being able to turn into a pack of wolves, for instance) but the apostrophe adds nothing. Half the "fun" of these books are figuring out what proper noun corresponds to what made up concept and keeping track of the piles of characters who are so numerous Erikson can't keep their genders straight. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
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Apr 10, 2019 20:11
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Sampatrick posted:Getting mad about capitalized nouns is honestly the dumbest poo poo. There's some reasonable things to critique, like the prose being poo poo, but getting mad about pronouns is just dumb. I promise when I post my review I will talk about more than just the dumbass capitalization.
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Apr 10, 2019 20:22
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He does love his ap'o'strophes.
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Apr 10, 2019 20:23
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Eugene V. Dubstep posted:(1) Capitalization is obviously part of prose style. Capitalizing certain words changes their inflection. It is annoying to trip over stupidly capitalized words once or twice every sentence. Oh, for sure. It's not very moving to capitalize words like soletaken or w/e but at the same time I also think that not capitalizing them reads weirdly. Idk, I'm not very knowledgeable about these kinds of things. Most of the capitalization is just actual proper nouns, though, so it is kinda lazy to point to that as being some flaw of the story. TheGreatEvilKing posted:The apostrophe Proper N'ouns are ridiculous to the point of self parody. Take this example from the dramatis personae of Deadhouse Gates: Well, the reason why they're not called shapeshifters, you see, is because calling them shapeshifters would be boring. Note that no culture in history calls something a shapeshifter, they have names for the things that do the act of shapeshifting. D'ivers is absolutely a stupid name but calling them shapeshifters would have been just as stupid.
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Apr 10, 2019 20:24
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anilEhilated posted:He does love his ap'o'strophes. Erikson tries to make things sound ancient by adding glottal stops which is probably racist but w/e I don't want to unpack that
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Apr 10, 2019 20:26
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Sampatrick posted:Well, the reason why they're not called shapeshifters, you see, is because calling them shapeshifters would be boring. Note that no culture in history calls something a shapeshifter, they have names for the things that do the act of shapeshifting. D'ivers is absolutely a stupid name but calling them shapeshifters would have been just as stupid.
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Apr 10, 2019 20:47
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anilEhilated posted:I'd also say it feels pretty unfair to hold the fact that noted twit Donaldson likes the books against them.
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Apr 10, 2019 20:58
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Sampatrick posted:Well, the reason why they're not called shapeshifters, you see, is because calling them shapeshifters would be boring. Note that no culture in history calls something a shapeshifter, they have names for the things that do the act of shapeshifting. D'ivers is absolutely a stupid name but calling them shapeshifters would have been just as stupid.
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Apr 10, 2019 21:18
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That'd be confusing, there are already dragons, and the dragons can also shapeshift and some people can also shapeshift into dragons.
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Apr 10, 2019 21:24
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The Ninth Layer posted:That'd be confusing, there are already dragons, and the dragons can also shapeshift and some people can also shapeshift into dragons. The dragons cannot shapeshift, but there are lots of people who can shapeshift into dragons. You see, in order to make somebody look powerful, you just give them the ability to transform into a dragon and blam, instant power.
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Apr 10, 2019 21:31
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There are at least two shapeshifting dragons in Forge of Darkness / Fall of Light.
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Apr 10, 2019 21:35
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The Ninth Layer posted:There are at least two shapeshifting dragons in Forge of Darkness / Fall of Light. Noted to not be in the book series Malazan Book of the Fallen. Also, not books that I have read.
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Apr 10, 2019 21:41
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Those characters are in the main series if it matters (book 6: Telorast and Curdle)
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Apr 10, 2019 21:44
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Still reading Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino and it is absolutely explicit in the unreliability, the un-reality even, of its characters, story, everything. He disguises nothing with voice or prose, and yet disguises everything. I find it far more interesting and exciting to read than Gene Wolfe’s Totally Unreliable Narrator Torture Guy books, where it felt like I had to closely read a dullard’s description of his passive life to see if the boring details all jived. Marco Polo describes a city made of memories, imaginations, future memories, outright lies, and in two pages of straightforward writing my brain gets loving lit up - what does authenticity actually mean; does our remembered experience create meaning and reality even though none of the memories are real; what is reality anyways? anyways in conclusion cities are dragons
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Apr 10, 2019 21:49
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Sampatrick posted:Note that no culture in history calls something a shapeshifter, they have names for the things that do the act of shapeshifting. what immediately came to mind reading this claim was Petronius' Satyricon, LXII, bad translation mine: Intellexi illum versipellem* esse, nec postea cum illo panem gustare potui, non si me occidisses. Then I understood him to be a [werewolf],* nor after that could I sit down to dinner with him, not even if you killed me. *literally, "skin-turner" with the sense of "skin-changer," which I should think is close enough to "shape-shifter" i'm sure that most cultures actually have a word or phrase that translates to something equally banal with regard to their own 'shape-shifters.' The English 'werewolf' itself has a disputed etymology but my understanding is that it likely means literally "big/dangerous wolf." No proper nouns needed. Bonaventure fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Apr 10, 2019 |
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Apr 10, 2019 21:50
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Appropriate that Donaldson creams himself over it: “And he does so in lucid prose as seamless as oil.” what even is that sentence. its so bad
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Apr 10, 2019 21:54
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it's true. oil doesn't have seams
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Apr 10, 2019 22:04
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Seamless as oil, silent as maggots
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Apr 10, 2019 22:07
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