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Illuyankas posted:Just because it's Late and not Last doesn't mean the Empire doesn't dissolve into independant states after that ends or anything without having to be eradicated by Karsa. I'm pretty sure Mallick Rel is on it.
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Mar 23, 2011 05:55
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Habibi posted:He'll string us along for years until it turns out that, ta-da, QB is an illusory manifestation along the lines of Nefarious Bredd. Did SE bombadil the intarwebs?
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Apr 9, 2011 09:36
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Abalieno posted:Is the "Malazan Book of the Fallen" the story of the Crippled God? Yes. He's the one who fell. Of course as I've posted before it's actually the Ammeanas and Cotillion show, but TCG is certainly the one the subtitle is named after. Ninja Edit: Shadowthrone = Am-meanas oh Erikson you sly devil.
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Jun 9, 2011 09:44
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Electronico6 posted:More TGC ending spoilers It's a wonderful trick for escaping his follower's influence, which most ascendents sooner or later have to deal with. Dessembrae almost seems like something Dassem simply discarded. It's pretty clear where all the competence ended up. Edit: Too many people were already using the "drowned at sea" story.
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Jun 20, 2011 07:24
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xwonderboyx posted:Just finished book 3. I spent all day yesterday reading the last 400 pages. So far it has been my favorite and I can't wait to sink into book 4. Memories of Ice is indeed fantastic. It might be the best book in the series. Not that the other books aren't well worth reading; it's just that good.
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Jul 8, 2011 10:25
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Habibi posted:Two comments: Medieval? Rape and war have gone together longer than peanut butter and jelly, and that's never going to change.
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Aug 7, 2011 01:37
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Cardiac posted:Sorry about missing spoilers. Although we're not really discussing the plot here, more the fluff around the characters. Quick Ben is sandbagging more than any other character in the novels, with the possible exception of Shadowthrone. Everything we know about his limitations is based on his own testimony, and he is basically a pathological liar. He's also quite clever; plently clever enough to not want to start a convergence centered on himself. Note that going toe to toe with Icarium during one of his episodes is about as buff as you can get in this series. He just generally prefers to rely on cleverly using the smallest amount of power that it takes to get the job done. Edit: He's probably a soletaken gerbil though, or something equally useless. User fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Oct 18, 2012 |
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Oct 18, 2012 05:19
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Cardiac posted:There was also the time he scared of the Tiste Edur from the Perish fleet by a huge illusion of some horrible sorcery, and afterwards he confirmed he was spent. There is also a situation in Memories of Ice (?) where he faces of against Bauchelain and Korbal Broach and uses 6 warrens on them each, emptying him. There are also multiple scenarios where he gets swept away by sorcery which shouldn't really happen if he was that powerful. For instance, the fight against the short-tails . Shadowthrone and Cotillion give up on getting back at him. That alone says a lot, because while Cotillion is perhaps pragmatic, Shadowthrone probably hates being outplayed more than anyone else in the series. And you can call it something other than power if you like, but Quick Ben is basically the poster child of warrens vs holds.
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Oct 19, 2012 03:30
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Base Emitter posted:It's no problem, Kallor spends those points somewhere besides the Ascendant advantage, and gets a Cursed By Elder Gods disadvantage on top of it, which is probably worth a fair number of points. GURPS is pretty neat actually. Edit: You really could read Rake as another incarnation of the Champion if you felt so inclined. User fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Nov 10, 2012 |
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Nov 10, 2012 05:55
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How many First Empires are there? There have to be at least two human ones, right? Kallor's was destroyed by the calling down of the Crippled God and Dessimbelackis's was destroyed by the soletaken and d'ivers ritual. I don't recall whether there is enough information to figure out chronological order either.
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Nov 10, 2012 22:40
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apophenium posted:Nearly half way through with Deadhouse Gates and for some reason I'm not feeling it as much as I did Gardens of the Moon. I can't even place what it is about it that's making it slower to get through, but I'm not binging through it. Maybe it's the characters? So far I really only like the ones returning from the first book and Mappo and Icarium. Everyone else seems kind of, I don't know... Bland maybe. Also it doesn't really feel like much has happened yet. I'm hoping it will get going in the second half though. The climax of Gardens of the Moon was absolutely riveting. I felt the same way, but Memories of Ice was awesome. Anyhow Deadhouse Gates holds up quite well as a reread.
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Dec 11, 2012 06:26
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Sir Bruce posted:As for Karsa, he rapes women in the village. Then after sex, she says that it was okay for him to do that because he must have been stronger than her previous men. (or something like that, I don't have the books present at the moment). But Karsa's a "good" character as far as the narrative is concerned so his barbarism is de facto turned to "good violence" as the story arc continues. No more raping and pillaging and more slaughtering the evil guys. Yes it's obvious that he doesn't have the exact same definition of evil as we do but it's close enough for the sake of a cleanly defined nobel savage protagonist. Karsa's morality is that the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must. Other notions of good and evil don't really enter into his character. He plans to destroy civilization because he thinks it's weak.
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Jan 11, 2013 08:42
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I on the other hand found Deadhouse Gates boring and uninteresting compared to Gardens of the Moon; only the dust jacket of Memories of Ice got me to keep going. Maybe it's because I enjoy deducing how a world works and how characters fit together rather than finding it intimidating? Well, that and subverting Dune tropes just didn't appeal to me as much as an appearance by the Eternal Champion. Edit: Gardens of the Moon is a great reread though, but it seems to me being a great reread requires having been read first. User fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Apr 4, 2013 |
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Apr 4, 2013 18:39
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So I've been trying to find a good image of a Jhagut, but all I can find on Google is fan-art that looks like orcs. Is there any good Erikson approved jhag(ut) art? There isn't anything like that on the covers of the books I own. Or do they just look exactly like orcs? I always pictured something a bit more regal than that.
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Jun 17, 2014 02:13
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NoNotTheMindProbe posted:I enjoyed it quite a bit although for all the moving parts it still didn't manage to reach the same clusterfuck levels of a Peter F Hamilton novel. Anamander Rake was by far my least favourite character. Yes, he is actually a Drow edgelord with a big edgelord sword, and he can even turn into a dragon. In a story full of powerful wizards and monsters he still managed to feel like a fan-fiction character. Nah he's Elric++. It's so blatant I take it as an homage. efb Cardiac posted:Anomander Rake is Eriksons version of Elric. Seriously though, he's so Elric it hurts.
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Apr 2, 2019 03:37
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Karsa is basically rapist Half-Nazi Conan the Barbarian. I say Half-Nazi because half-Toblakai is good enough for him. He's one of the most loathsome, albeit entertaining, characters in the series.
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Apr 9, 2019 00:01
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Infinite Karma posted:Idaho is (going to be, if they make sequels) so weird that you can't really go wrong with a guy like Momoa. Let me explain that for you then: a large percentage of people enjoy when the casting for a movie adaptation of a book includes actors who credibly resemble, at least thematically, the characters as described in the book. Dave Bautista as Feyd makes about as much sense as Peter Dinklage as Anomander Rake. It might be zany and fun and a good movie, but it would still be disappointing to people looking for a 7 foot tall black Elric.
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Apr 17, 2019 01:17
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Wow I massively misread the list. Sleep deprivation I guess. Agree Bautista works fine as Rabban. Josh Brolin as Gurney isn't at all how I'd picture him, but I can see it working. User fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Apr 17, 2019 |
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Apr 17, 2019 02:24
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He's also a jobber.
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Apr 17, 2019 17:49
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Cardiac posted:T'lann Imass never had an empire, they are after all Eriksons version of Neanderthals ie cave men. The First Empire
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Apr 25, 2019 07:47
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Leospeare posted:You mean Dessimbelackis' empire? They were humans. It's been a while, but I'm virtually positive there was an Imass First Empire. We don't hear much about it, other than the occasional reference. The human First Empire not actually being first is a bit of a gag.
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Apr 25, 2019 18:34
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1994 Toyota Celica posted:"I have had enough of your justice," is definitely my favorite line in the series Seconded. Nothing like a Jhagut going full orc and ripping someone's face off with his tusks.
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May 16, 2019 05:34
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Yeah, for example the battle-axe culture (or the corded-ware culture if you want potsherds first descriptions) is a nice real life example of primitives engaging in genocide at a level far surpassing anything seen since history started getting recorded. If there's one thing an anthropologist is going to know, it's that every culture ever has been awful at least sometimes.
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May 17, 2019 03:07
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1994 Toyota Celica posted:the Letherii understanding of their own history has a few issues in itself And the Tiste are far far worse.
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May 29, 2019 02:47
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I like GotM because masquerade climaxes are cool, and so is Darujhistan.
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Jun 6, 2019 06:56
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There is some grimdark and some cringe, but the series just has so much heart that it more than balances out. Also, Erickson is excellent at what I guess you could call epic humor, so it never just wallows in the negative stuff and even laughs at it.
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Jun 11, 2019 19:46
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thumper57 posted:Re: the Seguleh in RG, this is where Karsa went from annoyingly precious to outright intolerable for me. Total Worf Effect on your own unstoppable badass warrior society I see where you're coming from and I pretty much hated Karsa through all of House of Chains, but this is pretty much exactly how you'd expect a fight between a 12 foot tall magic proof barbarian who is well on his way to ascendancy to go against someone with less than half his size and reach who trained with a sword a lot, but isn't anywhere near ascendancy..
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Jun 19, 2019 17:27
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thumper57 posted:edit: Forgot the other thing that set off my "author loves his own character too much" alarm, when as things go on he uses him more and more to try and give the rub to other characters, so you go "Aha, if even this guy who literally never loses thinks this new character is bad-rear end, he must be really something!" I think maybe Erickson started thinking this too, because Karsa displays some humility in the later books. In Toll the Hounds when Dassem and Anomander are fighting to the death Karsa pretty much says no way no how not messing with either of those two.
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Jun 25, 2019 03:38
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Did I miss the Wodehouse story where Bertie is secretly hypercompetent?
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Jun 29, 2019 06:27
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Shocking to see the leading ideological cause of mass killing in the 20th century get some criticism. 
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Jun 29, 2019 21:48
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When your ideology beats the nazis by an order of magnitude in mass killing you don't get to make the omelets argument.
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Jun 30, 2019 10:11
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Raest for president!
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Jul 2, 2019 00:34
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Cardiac posted:Why? Oh come on, 1984 turned out just great. Also Rejoice sounds awful. Even worse than Tiste exposition book 3. If you're going to expy Clarke it had best be pure metal. User fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Jul 2, 2019 |
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Jul 2, 2019 05:22
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I'm not particularly sensitive to fictional violence, but the hobbling was incredibly poignant. It felt like getting kicked in the gut, or maybe seeing a loved one get kicked in the gut. I had an actual visceral reaction. If Erickson's intent was to provoke an emotional response and a desire to see vengeance then he succeeded.
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Jul 3, 2019 01:06
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Infinite Karma posted:Ublala Pung was pretty bad too. Ublala is obviously mentally disabled. It's female dominant statutory gang rape played for laughs.
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Jul 4, 2019 05:28
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I thought Mieville was a card carrying communist. This is all news to me, Any references?
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Jul 4, 2019 21:03
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I like Toll the Hounds because I like Darujhistan. That's also why I like Gardens of the Moon despite its many obvious flaws anyone who read it knows about. It's pretty much a perfect fantasy city. Gaslightpunk I guess you could call it. Also like a lot of people all I could think of when I first saw Anomander Rake described was oh look another incarnation of the Eternal Champion.
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Jul 14, 2019 06:12
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OneSizeFitsAll posted:
I always figured this is just starting counting from zero instead of one.
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Jul 14, 2019 08:23
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