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Doctor Jeep posted:there is a point where portraying the soldiers of an extremely expansionist empire as almost saintly becomes irritating, but the rant parts of the book compensate for that very well A lot of the morality of the Empire gets weirdly glossed over. They're murderous and expansionist, the first book is literally about a terrorist plot. They're better than Lether because they just want to absorb your civilisation instead of extinguishing it, which isn't much of an improvement. Edit: also this book has a second case of people insisting a traumatised rape victim accept their help which certainly means well, but feels kinda gross. Strom Cuzewon fucked around with this message at 13:07 on Jul 20, 2021 |
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Jul 20, 2021 13:02
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Strom Cuzewon posted:A lot of the morality of the Empire gets weirdly glossed over. They're murderous and expansionist, the first book is literally about a terrorist plot. They're better than Lether because they just want to absorb your civilisation instead of extinguishing it, which isn't much of an improvement. quote:Edit: also this book has a second case of people insisting a traumatised rape victim accept their help which certainly means well, but feels kinda gross.
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Jul 20, 2021 15:06
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Wait, not second. Third. loving hell Erikson.
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Jul 20, 2021 15:33
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I mean I guess that's one way you can technically read people offering help, sure?
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Jul 20, 2021 16:02
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Oh Snapple! posted:I mean I guess that's one way you can technically read people offering help, sure? None of it's offering though. In TtH it's entirely people insisting that Stonny let them help her, why won't she let them help her? And in tGiNW the marines pretty much kick the door in and announce that they're gonna fix her trauma. The message is supposed to be that helping people is good, and that it's okay to admit your vulnerabilities. But its framed in a way that completely robs the woman of any agency.
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Jul 20, 2021 17:10
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"Kick the door in." The book makes an explicit point about them doing the exact opposite of this - they are the only people to knock on her door who actually wait to be invited in instead of just knocking and assuming consent, and no part of part of me believes that was unintentional. From there it's a flow of "This is why we're actually here (and here's your usual payment for taking up your time), this is how the bloodoil curse works, this is what we want to do about it (and what that will do), will you let us." They're firm in making the offer but nothing is done without Sarlis' consent and there's no indication that would be the case if she chose differently. "Robs the woman of any agency." I just can't really agree with that, even going back and rereading it just now with that in mind. That said if that's your continued read of it, it is what it is and I'm not gonna push further on it; not really my place to, nor is it imperative to me that you alter your read to be inline with my own. But on my end I thought the setup was handled well enough, and the segment as a whole was one of my favorite parts of the book. Posterity inclusion: not ignoring the Stonny thing, but I haven't read TTH in a long time and that's not nearly as easy for me to refresh myself on.
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Jul 20, 2021 20:27
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Yeah, I get that while you can make the argument, the context here is that it is made very clear that Sarlis is both literally incapable of helping herself (through no failing of her own), nor even really aware that help is a thing that is possible (Benger isn't even confident) The Stonny one is a bit on the nose in hindsight, but it'd be disingenuous to imply that Erikson has some sort of 'rape-victim-saviour-complex' or something
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Jul 21, 2021 02:15
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Book was good but very preachy; I like that the passage of time has (theoretically) cleared the decks and reorganized how the world works, though I question how suddenly everyone knows everything about all the new gods and stuff and has (after I think just ~10 years) already adapted to using them as swear words? Actually I kinda had this complaint about the main series too, in one book Gothos is a forgotten figure of history and no one knows what an Azath house is, in the next book Corporal Backsplash who just walked off some farm goes off on the plight of Gothos with regards to the history left behind by the Azathanai and what really happened between Scabandari and Silchas 10,000 years ago or whatever. The Malazan world has a hell of an internet I guess, and everybody reads it cover to cover... like the fact that undead Whiskeyjack was going by Iskar Jarak was commented on as odd in one of the late BotF books (by Samar Dev maybe? Someone thinks it's weird this clearly Malazan dude is going by a Seven Cities name) but here in the remote north of another continent random townies are saying "by Iskar's wobbly knee!" and poo poo.
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Jul 21, 2021 20:43
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thumper57 posted:Book was good but very preachy; I like that the passage of time has (theoretically) cleared the decks and reorganized how the world works, though I question how suddenly everyone knows everything about all the new gods and stuff and has (after I think just ~10 years) already adapted to using them as swear words? anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 10:08 on Jul 25, 2021 |
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Jul 25, 2021 09:34
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anilEhilated posted:That's the card divination, isn't it? I seem to recall the decks being self-updating and it's not that hard to imagine the word being spread by fortune-tellers. As with most things it's kind of unclear, there are characters shown making new cards but also users of the deck will be surprised by what cards are in their deck sometimes
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Jul 25, 2021 19:55
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There are also large religions devoted to the different gods with priests that have some connection to them, so its not hard to see all the Hood priest all get the message one day that a new guy is in charge.
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Jul 26, 2021 00:34
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Finished Witness 1. Really enjoyed it. The tighter scope kept things moving nicely. Marine banter on point. Saw a few complaints that the core themes were not very subtle, but after the original 10 books I don't mind.
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Aug 5, 2021 02:44
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thumper57 posted:Book was good but very preachy; I like that the passage of time has (theoretically) cleared the decks and reorganized how the world works, though I question how suddenly everyone knows everything about all the new gods and stuff and has (after I think just ~10 years) already adapted to using them as swear words? Not being sarcastic or anything here but do you think it's got to do with the amount of time between when Erikson wrote Gardens of the Moon and Deadhouse Gates. Wasn't there 10 years or so between the two of them!
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Aug 5, 2021 12:43
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Witness kinda spoilers Who is Bliss Rolly? Couldn't figure it out but sounds like another ex-bridgeburner. The unveiling of the marines as a elite mage-stuffed unit still caught me a little off guard, but was an interesting take after their history in MBOTF. Loved Gruff, Oams is interesting and hope to hear more about the empire's current state in the next.
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Aug 14, 2021 19:02
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70 pages into GotM and it caught me off guard just how comprehensible everything is. The way people talk about the first book I was expecting Gene Wolfe-levels of confusing unexplained elements, but the story so far is as straightforward as can be.
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Aug 15, 2021 10:17
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I think the struggle most people have with GotM is that early on there's not a clear plot path to settle into. New characters show up five at a time, don't introduce themselves, and often were in the middle of doing something before the reader encounters them. The reader has just enough time to get some idea of who they are before Erikson's then swaps them out for another seemingly unrelated set of characters, and then still another set of characters. Eventually the story settles into itself and the pieces start clicking together, but at least for me it took a few false starts before I got far enough in the book for that to happen.
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Aug 15, 2021 15:09
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That was my experience. The later books do a better job of throwing you into the middle of something, but keeping you there long enough to figure out what's going on before switching point of views. Usually.
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Aug 15, 2021 16:00
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The most confusing aspect of Gardens is reading Deadhouse Gates and seeing all the things that drastically changed
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Aug 15, 2021 16:04
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Deadhouse Gates was written like a decade after Gardens of the Moon, despite their publication dates. He'd grown a lot as an author in that decade and it shows.
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Aug 15, 2021 18:42
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I've been re-reading Fall of Light, since I struggled with it the first time around and... it's better on a second go. But I think I've identified why I struggled so much with it the first time: The characters are mostly a bunch of assholes. Not all of them, but of the characters we know of from the main series, whom Erikson uses to drag us in to what's happening, maybe only Caladan Brood, Mother Dark (who did nothing wrong), Endest Silann (bit of a stretch, given what a dweeb he is in the first book) and Draconus actually come out of it well. And Draconus himself is a bit of a "sheesh", considering the freaky post-ADTRW poo poo he does with his Finnest (I mean, why would you even, dude?) and the implication that Mother Dark is just the latest in a line of Tiste women he's crushed hard on and kind of destroyed a society over. Plus, once you get into the production line of new characters across the two new books, I'm only really putting Renarr, Pelk/Rancept, Hish Tulla, Faror Hend and Wreneck in the "actually likeable" category (and even Faror Hend gets most of her likability from the first book). I like Korya and I like Arathan as well (and obviously I like the Jaghut - I'm not a monster) but they're each barely in the Fall of Light. The main take-home messages from reading these books is that A) The universe of the books would have been a better place if the Crippled God had just landed on Kharkanas three pages into the first book, rather than a continent over; and B) Mother Dark Did Nothing Wrong. It's interesting that the first book doesn't actually suffer as much from Assholitis, possibly because there's still that novelty of seeing things as they were in a different time. Also, while I like the Deniers storyline, it does contribute to the suffocating atmosphere of DOOM in the book. And when you're spending a lot of time reading the internal monologues of assholes, it's hard to give a poo poo.
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Sep 3, 2021 20:08
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Yeah spoiler free take was that the books got a bit self-indulgent to me. I dunno I guess I should go back and read them a second time. It's just that the writing style I love form the main books wasn't really there in these.
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Sep 3, 2021 20:11
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I’m just mad we didn’t get the third book because all I wanted to see was what happened with Hood and his war on death. That was the only really interesting storyline with Draconus’ son hanging out there. Well that and the two Rosencrantz and Guildenstern guards.
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Sep 12, 2021 05:52
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Ethiser posted:I’m just mad we didn’t get the third book because all I wanted to see was what happened with Hood and his war on death. That was the only really interesting storyline with Draconus’ son hanging out there. Well that and the two Rosencrantz and Guildenstern guards. It's still coming. Due to the (comparatively) low sales of the first 2 Karkanas books Erikson's publisher basically asked him to do Witness first - not sure if this is the whole Witness trilogy or just TGINW, but Walk in Shadow is still on its way
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Sep 12, 2021 06:49
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More than a year since he threw the Walk in Shadow opening up on his Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1633922950093332&id=884647141687587 I'll spoiler it below if you don't have FB One of the first questions a writer must ask is where to start (it's not the first question, just one of them. How can there be more than one first question? Well, because these kind of questions each possess their own arena. For example, another first question might be: why write at all?). Normally, I start where I'm supposed to start, but that reply can be seen as trite and really, it explains nothing. For The God is Not Willing, I started three times; as it turned out, each start was indeed a start: one for each book in the trilogy (lucky me!). And each one suited or will suit their respective books. The point being, I usually don't have trouble answering the question of where to start. But I'm aware that for at least a few beginning writers, it's a fraught question, the kind that can freeze you up. Now, for Walk in Shadow, the third book in a trilogy, the matter of where to start has taken some thinking. I had plenty of options, all of them set up by the previous two books. Some were sedate; some languorous, some hectic and fraught. That opening scene will set the tone, after all (I'm not including here the prologue, which continues the frame and so holds to its own rules), and given that this novel is the concluding tome of the trilogy, that tone is a crucial consideration. In addition, and on a personal level, I needed to rediscover the style and cadence of this trilogy's problematic narrative, to nail it to the ground for myself. It took me four days thinking about it to arrive at the opening scene. It took another two days before I was ready to write it. Writing it took ... fifty-five minutes. So, when people look at me and say 'I don't know how you write so fast,' I always look back in bafflement. Sure, one might say that opening scene took you a mere fifty-five minutes (maybe not 'mere' since it's only two and a half pages long), Steve, so yeah, you're fast. One could equally say that it took six and a half days for two and a half pages' worth of scene. And that's pretty slow, isn't it? Anyway, both takes are valid. But remember, a novel's opening has more weight on it than any other scene in a book, barring perhaps the book's final scene or scenes. So mulling on where to start will naturally take more time. Now, those preceding six days cannot be envisaged as me sitting in a study, brown or otherwise; nor sitting staring out of a window; nor taking long walks; twiddling a pen between the fingers; staring at a blank screen my eyes blinking in time with the cursor. None of these classic cliches apply, alas. Instead, I faffed about, doing all kinds of poo poo. Trying to learn Character Creator 3; playing Star Trek Online with my new character, the Gorn named Neoprene Head, captaining the IKS Slime of Irate Snail. Watching a gripping Polish police procedural on a Netflix (Signs), re-reading Forge of Darkness (with Fall of Light pending) to help me remember all the crap I've forgotten; and otherwise staying 'busy' doing everything but actually writing. Then again, I was still working on the novel, in the midst of all that other stuff. Because preparation takes time and demands distraction. Time: for things to jell. Distraction: to give the subconscious free rein to work, unaffected by that effing endless internal monologue of conscious thought. It's work but not work. It's writing without writing. And as an explanation, it never, ever works on your spouse. Where I landed on the opening scene for Walk in Shadow, now viewed in retrospect, makes perfect sense. It arrived fully visualized in my head (when I was finally ready for it), where I then let it gestate for two days. I have a lot of faith in that cinematic process, appearing like an opening shot in a film. Try thinking in those terms when you read the novel's opening, but not the first time around. Better the second time through, which in truth will be more in keeping with my writing it, since the 'writing' of it was in fact the 'second time around' (the first time was all in my head). Obviously, I won't be throwing onto this FB page the rest of the novel, just this modest little opening (and the scene continues on with them, deeper into the chapter). One last point to make for all you beginning writers out there: expositional background can wait. Nail down what's immediate and make it relevant. You can fill in things later on in the narrative. Or conversely, ignore my advice entirely: when it comes to writing, I'm my own constellation, I sometimes think. Way out there, recipient of blank looks among my fellow wordsmiths whenever I make the mistake of talking process. Anyway: Chapter One “This gathering is too solemn. Swivel those flat eyes and attend to me. Let not a single flake of this ash so like snow settle lifeless upon thy upturned faces. Heed my words! That each utterance unravels in echoes is mere sign of a tale spun awry, but the thread is not lost. I promise you that. Ask yourselves this. Has Prazek ever lied to you? I make no pause to enliven your contemplation of that question, bleeding free every sordid suspicion, for we are not here to judge the veracity of the orator. The smoke lies in wreaths, not yet plucked away to awaken the wake’s frantic cavort. The red streams still trickle and gurgle into lost pools; there to soak deep into the thirsty earth. The sun looks down because the sun will ever look down, slant upon the nose of light beams, and sniff derisively in soft gusts of heat. Your expectation swells and so invites swollen portent. You hang upon every word, draped upon any branch. Heads will tilt on pillows of stone. Is this not a day like no other? Have we not gleaned last and lasting truths, revelations to freeze the face, eternal now in wonder, stamped by the witness of every living eye into the sponges in our skulls, there to reside forever more? Have I your attention, my friends? Words to knock teeth from your jaws, to bruise the concavities beneath your eyes, splash blood to the season’s small flowers at your feet. Words to link what was to what is and what is to what will be. History, my friends, never slinks, never shuffles, rarely dances. Can you not hear the foot-stamps? That measured promise of boots beating the ground in perfect cadence? Aye, history marches. The hand made into fist cannot reach to take another, cannot grasp anything at all, cannot bridge a gap, cannot clasp in solidarity. The hand made into fist has but one purpose and we know it well. The face above it? Ah; see the knotted scowl, the hateful flare, the open mouth locked in hoarse rage. Pray one day blind Kadaspala paints history’s true face, every muscle stretched taut, the gaping maw lying flat and silent on the canvas, to be filled with whatever the audience desires. Details are without relevance. Specifics are a pedant’s indulgence. What matter the precision of enunciation. All significance can be found in the scream’s blinding white roar. The voice, then, of history, enough to make your ears bleed. Should you now—” “You’ve lost them, love,” Dathenar cut in. “I see eyes glazing, expressions gone slack. I see a host of flies descending, eager to dance in those gaping mouths. I see the wasps and butterflies, and faintly do hear the tremour of worms and grubs climbing up out of the sodden soil, the clickety-clack of beetles and all this buzzing discontent.” He paused and wiped at the blood drying on his face, dug his nails to tug free a coagulating clump of gore from his beard, which he then flung to one side. Prazek regarded him. “Your back against that boulder, your head slung down with unblinking eyes upon your crimson and black hands, your legs sprawled with the sole of one boot half cut away.” “My toes were indeed spared.” “The nails?” “Deftly trimmed.” Sighing, Prazek set his hands upon his hips and slowly looked around. “True, I lost them with my first proclamation.” “Do not judge your talents too harshly,” Dathenar chastised. “They screamed plenty when they lived.” The glade was red and still deeper hues of red. It was bone splintered and exposed. It was flattened grasses every blade a crimson caress. It was bodies with pale flesh, none moving. “They should have heeded my first efforts at speechifying,” Prazek said. “They seemed disinclined to debate,” Dathenar pointed out. “I forgive you.” “And for the flailing about of your blade and all the foe reeling back with mortal gasps, the thud of bodies upon the ground and all the rest,” said Prazek, “I forgive you in turn.” Groaning, Dathenar climbed to his feet, collecting up his Hust sword as he did so. The blade keened softly, silenced only when he gave it a sharp shake to shed the grisly mess of slaughter. “Then we are forgiven.” “It was,” Prazek now decided, “an ideal audience.” “Aye,” Dathenar agreed. “As they are, one and all, now history.” The two men set off to find their horses, which had wandered away in search of unsullied pastures. ***
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Sep 12, 2021 06:57
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he's doing an AMA over on reddit right now, per has facebook Edit: Interesting quote quote:There are scads of discussions of the use of gender balance in the Malazan world, in interviews I've given and in analyses by scholars (see A Critical Dragon and 'The Malazan Book of the Feminist'). That said, this is the first time I've heard anyone connect our approach to gender in the Malazan world to the implicit balance present in roleplaying systems. I suspect, if anything, if the D&D and GURPS system penalized female characters relative to skill-sets, etc, we would have recoiled and rejected that out of hand. We set out to make a world free of sexism and used egalitarian magic as the deciding force in eliminating gender-based hierarchies of power. As for the empire-at-constant-war demanding the inclusion of women as of necessity, no. You're missing the point, because by that argument you are assuming a 'natural' state of gender inequality, which we made a point of rejecting. Sexism never existed in the Malazan world, was never part of its cultural and societal development. Ever. Therefore, no such assumptions should be carried over from our world. Specifically, do not assume patriarchy is a natural state. It isn't. Also shout out to David Graeber's book on debt Jaxyon fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Sep 13, 2021 |
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Sep 13, 2021 21:28
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That quote makes my skin crawl.
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Sep 13, 2021 23:48
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Eediot Jedi posted:That quote makes my skin crawl. Go on
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Sep 13, 2021 23:56
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Jaxyon posted:Go on I would actually like to hear why it made you feel that way. Perspective is always appreciated. edit: quoted wrong person
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Sep 14, 2021 01:03
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It's probably from coming in halfway through an argument and only catching the tail end. The way I read the quote in a vacuum is: We set out to create a world where sexism doesn't exist and never existed, we were completely successful in keeping sexism out of MBotF, so potential sexism you see in our world is your own inherent bias coming from the real world. It read like they intended the world to be completely free of sexism, therefore it is completely free of sexism, shut up.
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Sep 14, 2021 03:39
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Eediot Jedi posted:It's probably from coming in halfway through an argument and only catching the tail end. Seems like a bit of a stretch given the context of the comment is him dismissing that there should be any meaningful between difference mechanically between the sexes in a tabletop role-playing game. That’s my take anyways. I won’t pretend that there isn’t an implicit male bias in his writing but I don’t think there is anything gross about the quote.
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Sep 14, 2021 05:39
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Yeah, I'm reacting to a half-heard argument. The way he answers hits a nerve I associate with shitheads who know enough to sound convincing and will reiterate their credentials at every chance. It's probably just Erikson being Erikson and writing too many wor'ds. e: I think I'd feel a lot better if he'd couched it in terms of their intent. "We intended the Malazans to be gender blind, they don't care, never did, they only cared about efficiently murder-hoboing the entire world". Eediot Jedi fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Sep 14, 2021 |
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Sep 14, 2021 09:34
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He wasn't responding to an accusation of sexism and I'm sure he would have phrased his answer differently if that was the context. The question asked was whether there was a time when the Malazan army was men only and something happened to change that. The answer was simply no.
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Sep 14, 2021 09:57
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Yeah Erikson is very good about sexism as far as the Epic Fantasy Author spectrum goes, though I admit that's a very low bar. He's politely pointed out that lot of the fanbase shits on Felisin because they're sexist, before, and that did not go over well. I read and liked that quote because it was a nice confirmation that he had at least tried to make a world that didn't assume patriarchy.
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Sep 14, 2021 10:19
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Wait, people don't like Felisin? I thought she was a great character.
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Sep 16, 2021 12:47
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Joey Steel posted:Wait, people don't like Felisin? I thought she was a great character. People complain about her a lot. About her being "mean" to the men trying to protect her, and sleeping around. Mostly they blame her for being *checks notes* an incredibly traumatized literal child who is eventually mind-raped by a vengeful spirit.
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Sep 16, 2021 17:42
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A lot of the time she is "on screen" she displays unlikeable traits, i.e. bitter and deliberately hurtful comments to those around her who are trying to help her. However, it is very clear what the background and underlying causes of this behaviour are (summarised in the post above). Some people seem to find it hard to connect her behaviour to those things and afford her the concomitant empathy. Sexism is probably quite a big part of it.
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Sep 16, 2021 17:47
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Yeah that's basically what the author said and as you can imagine a whole bunch of "well I guess I can't just not like a female character without being sexist?!" replies from people who think Kallor is an inspirational figure.
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Sep 16, 2021 20:36
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People can’t often distinguish between character they don’t like and character that is poorly written.
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Sep 17, 2021 00:54
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denimgorilla posted:People can’t often distinguish between character they don’t like and character that is poorly written. the Peggy Hill Principle
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Sep 17, 2021 04:13
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People hate Peggy Hill? Maybe it's because King of the Hill was before the internet got so big but I never knew there was a large backlash against her. Now the Skylar White Principle on the other hand...
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Sep 17, 2021 17:54
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