|
Skip ‘em.
|
#
?
Jan 25, 2024 02:03
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 18:26 |
|
|
If you can't get enough of the world, read the ICE books. If you want more good Erikson prose read the KB&B short stories.
|
|
#
?
Jan 25, 2024 02:09
|
|
|
Eediot Jedi posted:needs more apostrophes. Kyl'e, bang, done. You find out his full name in Assail Kylarral-ten e: please don't read Assail Clark Nova fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Jan 25, 2024 |
|
#
?
Jan 25, 2024 04:44
|
|
|
I've talked enough poo poo about the ICE books, but most of them aren't that bad. They just feel like missed opportunities. Y'know, for an actually talented author to write some awesome stories, as opposed to the mostly-decent stuff ICE puts out.
|
|
#
?
Jan 25, 2024 17:49
|
|
|
Even if you’re just interested in tying up loose threads I think you’re better off just leaving it to your imagination because the resolutions you get from the ICE books are wholly unsatisfying and borderline on character assassination in some cases.
|
|
#
?
Jan 25, 2024 17:59
|
|
|
Seems like No Life Forsaken is taking longer than anticipated. I feel like I've got through most of the A-list fantasy and to me nothing compares. It seems like the long winded philosophic monologues are a bit of a contentious topic for most, which I can understand, but when one of them connects its such a highlight of the series. Fingers crossed we get it in 2024 I thought The God is Not Willing was prime poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Jan 25, 2024 19:18
|
|
|
I really need to read the God Is Not Willing and also Fall of Light some day too. I did start Willful Child a while ago and did not care for it and shelved it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 25, 2024 19:26
|
|
|
imagine dungeons posted:I did start Willful Child a while ago and did not care for it and shelved it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 25, 2024 19:46
|
|
|
Yeah I think so. I found myself reading it super quickly. It kind of feeds into the frenetic pace and the captain stringing along from danger to danger.
|
|
#
?
Jan 25, 2024 20:52
|
|
|
anilEhilated posted:Yeah, that one is... weird. I guess you have to be a Trekkie to "get" it? as a casual trekkie (i've watched all of voyager, TNG, movies, the lower decks) and full time space opera enthusiast it was just a bit poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 22:05
|
|
|
I mean it's a satire of trek stuff. That's kind of niche as hell. Though you can read it as straight schlock scifi I guess.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 22:25
|
|
|
60% through the Complete, on sub-book 3 of book 7. I realize at this point I skip the pre chapter poems all of the time now. They rarely relate to anything happening, or even to any sort of interesting world building. Are there any good ones or is this a common thing opinion? It's hard to form an opinion on the series even being 80 hours of reading into it. There are parts that I like and parts I dislike, but something about it makes it very hard to get invested in most characters. Even compared to WoT I feel like there's so many different threads that each gets so little time for me to get invested in something. Tehol/Bugg are great, and I liked Rake+Whiskeyjack and that crew but WJ is dead and Rake hasn't been on screen in the present day since like book 3. Everyone is just mysterious and guarded all the time and the reveals of stuff that seems like they should be important focuses just disappear for 10 hours at a time as soon as they happen.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2024 00:27
|
|
|
I can imagine that reading the series back to back all at once in one big Kindle book can make things kinda blur together too. One of the big reasons this series owns on a reread is how many little details you sweep past the first time around but really make an impact the second time.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2024 00:34
|
|
|
The Ninth Layer posted:I can imagine that reading the series back to back all at once in one big Kindle book can make things kinda blur together too. I can totally believe that, there's plenty of stuff I gloss over if I don't want to reference notes. I know there's a Wheel of Time companion app that you can set what book you're on and look up info that'll be curated to avoid spoilers, is there anything similar for Malazan?
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2024 00:37
|
|
|
There's a Tor Malazan read along with two readers going chapter by chapter, one who has read the series and one who hasn't, and iirc it's pretty good for spoilers. Edit: https://reactormag.com/columns/malazan-reread-of-the-fallen/
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2024 00:40
|
|
|
The Ninth Layer posted:There's a Tor Malazan read along with two readers going chapter by chapter, one who has read the series and one who hasn't, and iirc it's pretty good for spoilers. Imo, Bill spoils stuff all the time in that but Amandas parts are great! Maybe he doesn't in the recaps but he does in his thoughts on it. There's https://searchofthefallen.com/ where you can search through the books for keywords and specify which ones you want to search which is by far the safest approach. It's down a lot but google has it cached if it is. Or you could always ask here and we try not to spoil it for you!
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2024 01:18
|
|
|
Skyl3lazer posted:60% through the Complete, on sub-book 3 of book 7. I realize at this point I skip the pre chapter poems all of the time now. They rarely relate to anything happening, or even to any sort of interesting world building. I can't say if there are any good ones but I can tell you I skip the hell out of all that sort of poo poo unless it's a fake quote or a funny quote from our world. Another Fine Myth posted:There are things on heaven and earth, Horatio, Man was not meant to know. Another Fine Myth posted:Careful planning is the key to safe and swift travel.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2024 04:56
|
|
|
Skyl3lazer posted:60% through the Complete, on sub-book 3 of book 7. I realize at this point I skip the pre chapter poems all of the time now. They rarely relate to anything happening, or even to any sort of interesting world building. It's extra flavor there for a re-read, which the series rewards. He's actually decent at the poetry, but not everything is a poem. Since it's written as a history, some of the chapter headers will reveal what happens to characters after the series ends, or during the series but off-screen.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2024 05:41
|
|
|
If I remember, Erikson wrote the pre-chapter stuff (poems, extracts, etc) as the last thing in each chapter so that they could set the tone appropriately. I tended to skip over the poems, but some of the other stuff is interesting
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2024 08:06
|
|
|
Yeah when you re-read, you will discover the pre-chapter is a subtle microsom of the themes you are about to enounter.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2024 08:16
|
|
|
kingturnip posted:If I remember, Erikson wrote the pre-chapter stuff (poems, extracts, etc) as the last thing in each chapter so that they could set the tone appropriately. I think he said in one of the Ten Very Big Books interviews that he writes them before each chapter as a sort of Theme Summary for the chapter or something like that for himself.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2024 12:50
|
|
|
Echoing the sentiment that the poems are rewarding on a reread. It’s also kind of nice listening to them read aloud in the audiobook versions.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2024 14:29
|
|
|
ulmont posted:I can't say if there are any good ones but I can tell you I skip the hell out of all that sort of poo poo unless it's a fake quote or a funny quote from our world. Asprin was cheesy but he could write a gag
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2024 20:52
|
|
|
About halfway through Bonehunters, excellent stuff. Question about the T’Lan Imass and Eres’Al - Eres’Al at this point seem to be described as proto/ur-humans, but T’Lan Imass also seem like early humans pre ritual of dust. Is there like an evolutionary chain of humanoids? With e.g. toblakai being evolutionary offshoots?
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2024 19:21
|
|
|
It's explained in more  detail later, iirc.Like a lot of things in the series, though, it makes as much sense as it needs to for the story to be cool.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2024 19:26
|
|
|
It makes perfect sense, there were plenty of different proto-humans in real life that interacted and interbred, this is the exact same thing. He's an anthropologist after all. I don't really think it should just be dismissed as rule of cool.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2024 20:51
|
|
|
First time I’ve ever seen someone say Malazan makes sense.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2024 21:46
|
|
|
imagine dungeons posted:First time I’ve ever seen someone say Malazan makes sense. I'm gonna entrap you in my magic sword for this
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2024 22:16
|
|
|
I'm on Toll the Hounds and I'm getting the feeling this book was written while mad at critics. Don't write books while mad about stuff like that.* Now I fear K&B book two was an accurate forecast of what is to come rather than a chance to blow off steam. *You know exactly which pre chapter poem I am talking about
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2024 10:26
|
|
|
Toll the Hounds is easily the worst book in the series.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2024 08:00
|
|
|
TTH worst book the first read, one of the better ones the next time through. Back to average on the third read. It's about his father dying. The mad at critics book is Crack'd Pot Trail.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2024 08:34
|
|
|
imagine dungeons posted:First time I’ve ever seen someone say Malazan makes sense. It's an interesting mix because there's a bunch of stuff that he does to ground it in modern anthropology, like never shutting up about potsherds, deconstructing noble savage myth, placing cities in reasonable/realistic locations, talking about everything being built on the bones of something older, etc. But also you got your zombie velociraptors with knifehands. It's a land of contrasts.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2024 22:54
|
|
|
TTH is the worst book on the first read because it’s all setting up this huge impactful ending, so it doesn’t really feel like anything is happening until the very end when everything comes together. I think it’s a lot better on rereads because you know what it’s all leading up to.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2024 03:12
|
|
|
The ending of TTH is fantastic but drat there is a pile of poo poo to slog through. It's a book with like 15 different plots going on and at the end it turns out only 2 kind of a little bit maybe might matter.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2024 06:32
|
|
|
I just finished chapter 7 of Bonehunters. God drat it this is so loving good
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2024 12:37
|
|
|
What I love about this series is that for any combination of Best/Worst book you can find someone to yell about how wrong, wrong, so very wrong and also stupid you are. I think it's cool that there's no universally derided book in the series. Even GotM has a lot in its favour despite being very rough around the edges.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2024 13:30
|
|
|
Zombie velociraptors with knifehands makes perfect sense. If you had undead dinosaurs wouldn't you put knives on their hands?
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2024 16:36
|
|
|
Guyver posted:Zombie velociraptors with knifehands makes perfect sense. If you had undead dinosaurs wouldn't you put knives on their hands? I swear its a Fafred and the Grey Mouser reference.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2024 00:58
|
|
|
Toll the Hounds has a fuckton of certified original gangster Kallor the High King, slaps therefore.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2024 01:22
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 18:26 |
|
|
Nearly finished Bonehunters in my wife-read. She's loving it. She rather likes the Crimson Guard, and although we have decided to skip the Esselmont books, she has asked for us to include RotCG in our plans. So we'd do Reaper's Gale next, then RotCG, then the last three Erikson books. I'm a bit torn... on the one hand, the book is a bit meh from my recollection, she has no knowledge of the Esselmont-specific characters, plus it delays us getting to the fantastic series end (and I'd quite like to actually finish the series at some point and maybe read her WoT afterwards... and I'm not getting any younger). On the other hand, the Crimson Guard are pretty cool, it would make her happy, it contains stuff with Traveller, which is pretty nice world-building stuff relevant to the main books, plus it would circumvent the weirdness of Laseen's death happening outside the main books.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2024 12:27
|
|
