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Question for you guys: I read the first book a while ago, went to my local bookstore to pick up Deadhouse Gates and saw they only had the 3rd and 4th books, which I ended up buying. Am I going to miss anything just starting on the third book, or should I wait and order the second book?
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Sep 11, 2011 19:36
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Okay cool I'll see if I can find Deadhouse Gates off Amazon or something. The Malazan series isn't really too common in the bookstores I've been looking in. I really liked Gardens of the Moon but yeah the warrens etc. stuff was very confusing, so it'll probably help to have them explained a little better in DG.
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Sep 11, 2011 23:23
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I managed to pick up a copy of Deadhouse Gates at a local bookstore, liking it a ton. I liked Gardens of the Moon a lot too, but it took me about three restarts to give it a fair shot. The plot is still a little confusing but not nearly as bad as it was in the first book, and I actually like being in the dark about a lot of the people and events. Also there are badasses everywhere which is always great to have in any fantasy series!
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Sep 29, 2011 19:19
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I tracked down Book 2 without too much trouble and right now I'm a little over halfway through. One thing I really like about this series is that even when there are three or four groups of characters all doing different things, they're all still a blast to follow and I'm never disappointed that now I'll have to read another chapter of so-and-so. There's always at least one character I really like reading about.
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Oct 4, 2011 18:32
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Yeah I'm about halfway into Memories of Ice right now (and I'm glad I waited until finding and finishing Deadhouse Gates before starting on it, even if it seems I didn't really have to) and really this whole series owns. I committed to buying the next two books, too. Coltaine is a badass and I hope to see more of him in future books! Pretty much everything about Deadhouse Gates was awesome. I like that all the characters basically just do whatever they immediately have to do, so even though they're wading among pantheons of gods and their underlings who all have their own chemes going, I never feel like the plot extends too far past what the characters are doing. In other fantasy books I sometimes feel like I'm waiting for the author to drag his characters to the next big plot reveal, but with Erikson there's always something happening in the present, and the plot reveals just sort of get discovered by the characters. It took me ages to finish Gardens of the Moon because of some false starts and general apathy toward the confusing first 100 pages of the book, but once I put in the effort and focused on the book I really started getting into the story. Even then it still took me ages, but once I passed the halfway point I was really hooked and marathoned the rest down. I started Deadhouse Gates nearly half a year later so it took me a bit of time to connect with the new characters and setting, but the plot was a lot easier to follow, which made the book significantly easier to read than GotM. With Memories of Ice I'm pretty much getting the full picture of the setting , and it's great. The Ninth Layer fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Oct 22, 2011 |
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Oct 22, 2011 00:44
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About a third of the way through House of Chains now. Memories of Ice was a wild ride with tons of awesome moments, but I'm not sure any of them can top even the brief exploits of Karsa so far. I loved finding out that I'd already met Karsa before in Deadhouse Gates and I can't wait to see where this one goes.
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Nov 6, 2011 23:33
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I thought the overall plot of Gardens was easy enough to follow in that I never had any confusion about what the characters' larger goals were, but from scene to scene I had trouble figuring out what was going on, and pretty much everything having to do with Paran was incomprehensible as he got pulled into warrens and alternate dimensions and talked t various ascendants too. Those parts were hard for me to picture what was going on, although I suspect they'd be a lot easier to follow now that I'm a few books in.
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Nov 7, 2011 20:05
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I also finished HoC right about now. Started on Midnight Tides but having a little more trouble getting into it. This may be about the time in the series where I need to take a break and read something else first.
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Nov 28, 2011 04:47
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I just got through Midnight Tides after having a bit of a struggle adjusting to new characters again, what a read! I still haven't hit a book in the series I haven't liked, or even a POV character. I went from not being too crazy about the Tiste Edur to loving the poo poo out of the Sengar brothers, and Tehol and Bugg were great cast additions too. I really can't wait to see what all those guys have been up to while the first four books were going on. I'm halfway through Night of Knives right now, and while the drop in quality is pretty noticeable I'm nevertheless finidng it an enjoyable read, and certainly a nice change of pace from Erikson's writing. Someone was nice enough to get me Crack'd Pot Trail for Christmas too, and I still have the necromancer trilogy back at home, so there's going to be a lot more Malazan reading ahead for me!
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Dec 28, 2011 05:05
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Just got done with The Bonehunters. I really like how this series heavily rewards careful reading. I'm finally at the point in the series where I can now call out some of the telegraphed plot twists in advance. For example, I figured out that Heboric Ghost Hands blubbering just like Itkovian in Memories of Ice meant he was Treach's Shield Anvil, not his Destriant and guessed correctly at the beginning of the book that Felisin Younger would be Sha'ik Reborn, not like those were hard predictions to make or anything but it felt good to have seen them coming anyway! Icarium and Karsa Orlong remained badass throughout. Icarium is basically all the characteristics of Bruce Banner/The Hulk taken to the extreme that has lived for centuries. People even talk about him like he's The Hulk. Anything with Karsa reads like something straight out of Skyrim, right from the beginning he's immediately wrecking poo poo up. Come to think of it I think this book series would make for an excellent Skyrim mod. On to Reaper's Gale, can't wait to see how some of the story setups from last book get resolved.
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Jan 11, 2012 04:13
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Just finished Reaper's Gale. Trull!!! That was the worst death of the series for me so far; when Coltaine and Whiskeyjack died I was crushed, but Trull dying came out of nowhere and really hit me hard. He was one of the most likable characters of the series yet, and his way of dying was heartbreaking. Leaving his newly found love to reconcile with Rhulad, only to get stabbed in the back after finding his brother dead... Such a brutal, meaningless death for a great character. I really hope the Errant gets his just desserts, although I'd be surprised if this series delivered that sort of karma. On to the Return of the Crimson Guards next, got my copy of Toll the Hounds waiting to follow it up.
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Jan 17, 2012 08:11
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Yeah I've hit another roadblock in this series with Return of the Crimson Guards. I didn't mind Night of Knives so much because it was a short, relatively hollow book that focused on just two main characters along with the occasional scene with sideplot characters. In Crimson Guards there's a lot more going on, and so the substandard writing (compared to Erikson anyway) is making it difficult for me to get into it. I'm only about 150 pages in but this might be a good time to take a break and maybe read one of the Necromancer stories.
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Jan 24, 2012 20:23
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Yeah the apostrophe argument they're making in the thread is pretty dumb. I can only remember four instances of it in a name. In T'lan Imass and specifically T'oolan, where iirc the apostrophe implies those guys are dead, the K'Chain Che'Malle who are ancient dinosaurs that likely talked weirdly if at all, and that Prince D'Avore guy which is more or less the same thing as having DiMaggio or McDonald as your last name. If people are going to dismiss the series on archaic names then I guess they deserve to miss out on the books. edit: oh and D'ivers too, surprised I forgot about that one.
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Jan 31, 2012 01:55
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Praesil posted:So I read the first four books over a year ago and wanted to start reading things again. From what I gather, book 5 is the start of Major Plot Thread #3, and book 6 brings things together. Depends on how much you remember I guess. Book 6 picks up right were 4 ended, so if you don't remember much of the first four it might not be a bad idea to reread. In fact, you will probably get a lot more out of the series the second time around. Regarding the names, the reason some names are lovely and others aren't is because the lovely-named people are generally Malazan peasants or some other non-noble. They have bad names because they're unpretentious nobodies. Surly was Surly before she became Empress, and then she was Lasseen. Ganoes and Felisin Paran have flowery names because they're descended from nobility. The Ninth Layer fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Jan 31, 2012 |
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Jan 31, 2012 20:26
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For what it's worth it took me about 6 months to find the motivation to get through the first part or two of Gardens of the Moon, and about a week to finish the rest. The first book is the hardest and if you can get through it then it's smooth sailing the rest of the way.
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Feb 8, 2012 07:14
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I just finished Return of the Crimson Guard. Glad I stuck with it because after the first 200 pages or so the plotlines began coalescing into an interesting story. The writing was substantially better than Night of Knives and it actually felt like a Malazan book. Finding out Traveller was Dassem Ultor was a huge plot twist and pretty awesome too, but is he also Dessembrae too? The conversation he has with Hood at the end of the book where Hood says it's just like old times makes me think so. Also, loving Mallick!! Can't believe that guy is going to become Emperor. Back to Erikson for Toll the Hounds, getting close to the end now!
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Feb 9, 2012 21:17
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Weren't people complaining about various problems in the early Malazan ebooks, such as "Toe the Younger"?
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Feb 11, 2012 22:18
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Midnight Tides is one of my favorites, and I definitely had more trouble getting into it than any other book in the series besides Gardens. Once the story got going it was a very hard book to put down.
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Mar 7, 2012 19:04
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The second book drops a character reveal about two big characters in the first book (Shadowthrone and Cotillion's identities) but it's not really a spoiler that would ruin the first book for you (if anything it might help you understand it better). I think the resolution from the first book also gets spoiled, and some of the characters you're following (Kalam, Fiddler, Apsalar and Crokus) were all introduced in the first book. If you're already halfway in there's not really much you can do but I'd definitely recommend going back to Gardens of the Moon before hitting up Memories of Ice.
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Mar 7, 2012 19:36
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I'm lucky I just finished Toll the Hounds or I would have been spoiled pretty bad there 
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Mar 7, 2012 21:06
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I think the characterization in Malazan is one of the series' strongest points. Erikson does a fantastic job showing, not telling, who characters are. It's one of the strengths of the books that often I'll read one character's opinion of another and think to myself "that's not who he/she is like at all." Even the individual Malazan marines all have their own personalities. Martin certainly does a fantastic job of getting into the heads of his POV characters, but as far as the entire cast is concerned I have a better impression of all of Erikson's characters as individuals, and I think it would be hard for me to narrow it down to even my top ten favorites in the Malazan series. They're sort of tough to compare just because of narrative style. Erikson is more focused on events and will jump from viewpoint to viewpoint to give a bunch of different characters' perspectives on the happenings (and usually some insight into the mind of that character) but tends not to reuse the same point of view within each chapter. He likes to alternate chapters by location and ery rarely will he end one on a cliffhanger or otherwise leave something happening unresolved. Martin on the other hand is very focused on his characters but will happily cut out on an event at its most dramatic, leaving it unresolved until either he returns to the POV character later or has some other character comment offhand about what happened. There are only a few instances I can think of in the series where we get to read about something happening from beginning to end. So I think it just comes down to focus really. Erikson knows the story he wants to tell and uses his characters as a vehicle to tell it. Martin knows the characters he wants to examine and uses the story as a vehicle to make us want to see what happens to them next.
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Mar 13, 2012 01:20
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I'm only about halfway through Dust of Dreams and it looks like The Snake is (spoilered just in case I guess) a long procession of kids, some of them from the Elan tribe, who are walking through the Wasteland after something horrible has happened to them. So far the information from that end has been sort of vague though and I obviously haven't reached Crippled God but I think you're talking about the same thing.
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Mar 23, 2012 23:07
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I was the same way when I read Gardens of the Moon for the first time. Took me about half a year to get through the first two parts and then about a week to finish it once the story had hooked me. From then on it was smooth sailing.
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Mar 30, 2012 20:36
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I finished Stonewielder a few days ago and I have to say I really liked it, maybe even a little more than I liked Crimson Guard. It was the first ICE novel I've read yet where I could tell from the outset how all the different stories (apart from Kiska's) related to each other. The Malazan marines were the best part of the novel as usual, Manask also ended up being pretty awesome. I don't think the ending was quite as tight as RotCG's but I'm still glad I took the time to read it instead of rushing straight to The Crippled God.
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Apr 27, 2012 20:48
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Finished The Crippled God, gotta say I'm seriously bummed now that I'm done with the main series. It took me about a year from GotM to TCG to finish and I didn't really take any breaks. While I agree that the first half of the series is stronger than the second half, I found every book enjoyable all the way through and I'm really glad I took the time to read this series. I really don't know how I'm going to get back into more conventional fantasy novels now, I'm about 100 pages into Way of Kings and can't imagine finding the drive to finish this book that I had since about Part 3 of Gardens of the Moon for the Malazan series. TCG spoiler talk: I'm seriously surprised by how many characters ended up making it through. Gesler, Stormy and Mappo dying all hit hard, as did Cuttle and Corabb to a lesser extent, but Fiddler surviving was unexpected and awesome. Draconus ended up being a lot cooler than I was thinking he'd be around TtH, but I was disappointed that he took off after the Errant halfway through the book and never reappeared. I'm hoping we get to find out what happens in a future book. The Shake plotline of TCG definitely got me more excited about Erikson's Kharkanas trilogy. I'm now really interested in getting a look at the early Tiste Andii as well as some of the events alluded to in flashbacks throughout DoD and TCG. I've still got Sceptre, Orb, Throne to pick up sometime too, and I imagine I'll want to start a reread soon enough... In any case, thanks for making this thread because it's what got me to check these books out!
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May 9, 2012 00:30
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I dunno, I enjoyed the philosophizing characters and storylines that went nowhere because they all contributed to give the world depth and atmosphere. It never mattered to me exactly what a character's internal monologue was describing, what I enjoyed was the tone those monologues set, how they often put me in the mindset of the character I was reading or at the very least informed me of what thoughts and worries they were preoccupied by. Stories like the Snake in DoD didn't add a ton to the plot progression but they did give me a sense of the world's scale and even made the world feel realistic. The feel of the books, and not the dragons or the wizards or magic, are what got me to read all ten of these books and keep reading them.
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May 12, 2012 13:25
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Didn't it have a lot to do with the Crippled God poisoning the warrens? By giving him a place in the Deck of Dragons it protected the warrens from his degrading influence. Also I'm pretty sure the Crippled God himself did want a House in the Deck, and Paran agreed to it because it would make him a "player in the game" who could lose like anyone else. Been a while since I read Memories of Ice but I'm pretty sure that's how it went.
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May 14, 2012 21:05
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They're mostly self-contained, although the plotline of some characers continue on into later books. I've still not read OST though so I can only speak to the first three.
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May 22, 2012 21:42
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I'm not too certain about the Empire's timeline mostly because it's hard to pin down how old certain characters are or should be, but yeah Kellnaved and Dancer got the whole thing started. Without spoiling too much, the two were originally successful pirates based out of Malaz and most of their original lieutenants including Surly/Lasseen were part of their pirate crew.
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May 29, 2012 16:30
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MaterialConceptual posted:On the subject of future books, I'm sort of worried about the prospect of a Tiste Andii TRILOGY. I liked Toll the Hounds, but only because there was some balance between the three main plot arcs. An Andii trilogy sounds like it would just be a competition to see who could be the most morose. Anomander Rake was amazing, I especially liked how Erikson built up his reputation by having other characters talk about him while he was "off stage" instead of focusing on him all the time, but with him gone the Andii are going to be pretty dull (except maybe Silchas Ruin?) Dust of Dreams and Crippled God both got me hyped on the Anomander trilogy. I was lukewarm about it until those two books.
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Jun 7, 2012 02:49
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Just finished Orb Scepter Throne. Without getting into a lot of the events that transpired, I'll just say simply that it's the best ICE book by a lot, and I agree with others in the thread who said it's one of the top 5 Malazan books period. I liked Toll the Hounds overall but my appreciation for the book has shot up after reading OST and seeing how some of the "unnecessary" plotlines got folded in. The characters are pretty dead-on from Erikson's writing, and Antsy's dungeon crawl is definitely the highlight of the book imo.
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Jun 19, 2012 04:50
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Well I'm rereading Gardens of the Moon and noticed something that doesn't make sense to me. Full series spoiler concerning Dessembrae: When Kruppe is reading in Mammot's study, looking for references of the five black dragons in Moon's Spawn, he comes across a passage describing the fall of the Crippled God which lists all of the ascendants who attended the event. Among them is Dessembrae, and a few of the chapter intros refer to or otherwise describe Dessembrae in a way that makes it clear he's been around for a while. Now, Toll the Hounds confirms Traveller as Dassem Ultor and Dust of Dreams confirms Dessembrae as Traveller... so how can it be possible that Dessembrae was at the Crippled God's fall, which was presumably hundreds of years before Dassem's "assassination?"
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Jun 26, 2012 21:01
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Reading the passage it doesn't sound like it. It's at the beginning of Chapter Twelve for reference:Gardens of the Moon posted:...and in the Calling Down to earth the God was Crippled, and so Chained in its place. In the Calling Down many lands were sundered by the God's Firsts, and things were born and things were released. Kruppe describes the tome as ancient too.
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Jun 26, 2012 22:28
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It's pretty close to the ordered list in the OP. I think Crimson Guards is supposed to happen right after Bonehunters and probably during Reaper's Gale. Stoneweilder probably takes place around Toll the Hounds or slightly afterwards but it sets the stage for some of The Crippled God. For what it's worth, the Esslemont books go out of their way to avoid spoiling or mentioning events going on in Erikson's books, and except for only a few slight mentions that you may not even have noticed, Erikson is pretty good about not spoiling events in ICE's books.
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Jul 2, 2012 23:34
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I thought the series really picked up around the third part of Gardens of the Moon. After that I was pretty much hooked for the rest of the series. I think those first two parts of GotM are the hardest to get through and then after that the plot starts coming together.
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Jul 4, 2012 04:39
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Daric posted:I just finished Return of the Crimson Guard and I'm only kinda confused about one thing I'm pretty sure they're referring to Ullen, who got dropped near the end of the battle. The last thing he saw was his bodyguard standing over him after getting caught, if I'm remembering it right.
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Jul 5, 2012 23:45
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I don't agree with that. Some characters share common traits, but most of that you could trace to geographical origin or race. There aren't two characters in the series that I would say are characterized the same way; even the dozens of Malazan marines the books followed always felt unique and distinct to me as I was reading.
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Jul 31, 2012 07:11
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Robot Danger posted:I'm a bit confused. I just about 20% into the second Malazan book. Are the first three considered a trilogy and the rest more stand alone reads? The chart just posted is a pretty good reference. For the most part there are three settings that get explored throughout the books, such that 1, 3, and 8 are on Genabackis, 2, 4, and 6 take place in Seven Cities, and 5, 7, 9 and 10 take place somewhere you haven't heard about yet.
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Aug 3, 2012 22:03
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Oh he's talking about the prequel trilogy he's writing. The Malazan Book of the Fallen is its own 10-book series, but Erikson will be releasing the first book in a prequel trilogy about a younger Anomander Rake and the Tiste Andii. It'll be fairly unrelated to the Malazan series storyline, so I guess it'll be up to you whether you want to read Forge of Darkness or just go through the series. I can't imagine it would spoil much, and it might make some of the divisions between the races present in the Malazan series more understandable.
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Aug 3, 2012 23:29
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Nah you should leave that for the reader to discover, it's a pretty fun reveal.
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Aug 4, 2012 05:13
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