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From the last thread: I just finished Bonehunters. Really loved it. Mostly for the fact that Erikson finally laid off on introducing 50 new characters and for the most part just stuck to ones we already knew. I was really on the edge of my seat for the last 200 pages, wondering who was gonna live/die. Kalam/Tavore/T'Amber basically cutting a swath of Claw death across Malaz City was AWESOME. Then the showdown with everyone trying to hold off Icarium.  It seems like the consensus is that Reaper's Gale is great, so excited to dive right into that. 02-6611-0142-1 posted:Q: I haven’t seen this character for a few books. Who is s/he again? On that note, who's Cartheron Crust again? I recognize the name, but I don't remember the context. qbert fucked around with this message at 08:03 on Mar 2, 2011 |
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Mar 2, 2011 05:54
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Habibi posted:I think you left out the spoiler from the other thread... You're right, edited. That's what happens when you copy/paste the post directly instead of checking the version showing tags.
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Mar 2, 2011 08:03
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I just finished Reaper's Gale last night. Really fantastic throughout, probably one of my favorite of the series. Some of the stuff that happened at the end just wrecked me. I don't think I've ever rooted as hard for a character to survive as I did for Trull Sengar during that confrontation with Silchas and Clip. After that scene I decided that Trull is my favorite character of the series. Erikson is such a bastard. As soon as he survived that, I actually thought "Hey, maybe two characters in this series will actually get a happy ending!" Then when he told Seren he had to leave I thought "Oh poo poo. There's only 15 pages left in the book. Surely he can survive that long!" Welp. Now I want to kill myself. Other highlights: - Everytime an ancient badass thought they could just wreck poo poo up, only to get swatted down before they started (Quick Ben holding back the three sisters, Fiddler and Hedge shooting Silchas out of the sky) - Onrack and Kilava reunion - Tool showing up a minute too late (does any character in this series suffer more than Toc?) - Tehol becoming Emperor - Beak's sacrifice (very reminiscent of Itkovian) - Brys coming back Yeah, pretty much the whole climax was awesome. Now to read...sigh...Return of the Crimson Guard. qbert fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Mar 15, 2011 |
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Mar 15, 2011 18:44
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Nigulus Rex posted:I feel like if Rhulad had books in his perspective during his countless times being killed he would be more tragic, but for the reason you listed that Toc is so fleshed out, we feel for him more. Well the thing with Rhulad is that he chose to get killed over and over. Sure, he didn't choose to be immortal, but no one was forcing him to fight champions and get killed over and over. The Crippled God gave him the means, and then relied on his inherent greed to do the rest. A Nice Boy posted:RotCG ain't bad, don't fret. I hope you're right. NoK was so painful to get through, and the only reason I did was because it was relatively short. I can't take 700+ pages of that same quality of writing/characterization.
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Mar 16, 2011 04:54
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Just finished Return of the Crimson Guard. This being my first time reading through the Malazan series, I made a commitment to read the IES books as well. First off, I hated Night of Knives. One of the worst books I've read in a while. I kind of dreaded picking up RotCG, which is like 5x as long, after finishing the utterly fantastic Reaper's Gale, but I decided to give it a chance. Overall, Esslemont's 2nd book is a massive improvement over NoK. The first half of the book or so is still kinda lovely. He introduces way too many new characters too quickly, and they all had some variation of the exact same thoughts ("What are we doing here? What's going on? Who's that guy? What's he doing? What are they talking about? etc) Somewhere around the halfway point, however, right at the contingent of Crimson Guard landing at Unta, I'd say, everything suddenly got much better. Characters became more distinct, interesting plot happened, and the general terribleness of the writing went away. Even though the 2nd half of the book basically consisted of 4 extended major battle sequences, I actually for once cared about some of the characters and understood their motivations, something that was utterly lacking in NoK. Also, actual major plot stuff happened. I'll be interested to see if and how Erikson makes references to these events in Toll the Hounds. Kind of like what happened with Erikson in Deadhouse Gates, it seems to have taken IES a bit of experience to develop as a writer. He's still not a fraction of the writer Erikson is, though, but he's getting better. Hopefully Stonewielder won't suck when I eventually get to it. Four books to go!
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Mar 31, 2011 01:44
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Azure_Horizon posted:I'm the opposite -- I thought RotCK was bloated, unfocused, and ultimately contributed little to the Malazan world, but Night of Knives was focused, had interesting characters and fleshed out that particular world-changing event really well. Night of Knives had two main characters who put themselves in constant life-threatening situations for no reason whatsoever. Some other character: "Hey, there's a bunch of dangerous poo poo happening that doesn't concern you! Why are you heading towards the danger?" Kiska and Temper: "Because I haaaaaave to! I just doooooooooooo!"
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Mar 31, 2011 04:08
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Just finished Toll the Hounds. While I enjoyed it overall, it was still probably one of the weaker entries to the series for me. Usually I'm okay with the philosophy to action ratio Erikson exhibits in these books, but TTH was tipped just a bit too much towards the former for me. Ultimately very little happened for the first 90% of the book, and then in the last 2-3 chapters, EVERYTHING HAPPENED. It was a fantastic climax, to be sure, but the buildup to it wasn't quite as interesting. This really did feel like a book that could have been half as long and not have lost anything important. For all the crazy confrontations that happened at the end, Cutter avenging Murillo was still the most satisfying moment for me. Question: So where had Mother Dark been hiding all this time, and what exactly made her come back at the end? Also, what happened to all the chaos inside Dragnipur? If these are answered in the last two books, just let me know and I'll keep reading. On to Dust of Dreams! The end of the series seems so close!
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Apr 12, 2011 23:29
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I just finished Dust of Dreams and am about to start The Crippled God. Question, though. Should I read Stonewielder first? I've read Esslemont's other two books, and I plan to get to it eventually, but I heard that what happens in it isn't nearly as important to the main story as RotCG was. Is there anything big that happens that ties into The Crippled God, or am I safe in just plowing through the end of Erikson's series first?
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May 1, 2011 22:52
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Oh Snapple! posted:The Tiste Edur are worth dealing with solely because without them we don't have Trull Sanger. Trull Sengar does things that made me, sitting alone in my apartment reading a book, yell out "gently caress yeah!"
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May 3, 2011 06:50
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pile of brown posted:I would be a jaghut so I could hang out with the other jaghuts because they are the loving coolest "coolest" heh heh. Jaghut humor.
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May 5, 2011 19:19
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Heisenator posted:This might be a silly/obvious question, but I was wondering where the title Gardens of the Moon comes from? There's a scene in the first book when Crokus takes Apsalar up to the rooftop of a temple in the city. They look at the moon and she mentions some story about gardens on the moon. At least if I'm remembering correctly.
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May 5, 2011 22:33
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Dead Alice posted:Didn't they only do this after the Imass started getting uppity, so as to appear like they were less empire-y? No, they've always been solitary by nature. It's why the T'lan Imass managed to wipe most of them out. Even after they started getting hunted down, they never thought to band together. They're kind of hippie-ish. They won't band together to fight off a direct threat against themselves, but if there's a big threat against "the world", like a Tyrant or...other things...they'll team up for a while.
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May 5, 2011 23:43
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Lunchtray posted:Just finished Midnight Tides and now have started Night of Knives. I'm so sorry in advance.
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May 12, 2011 20:30
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Lunchtray posted:You know I've been bracing myself on how bad Night of Knives could be but I'm 50 pg's in of 230 and so far it hasn't been so bad. Well I guess as long as you don't ask yourself why the two main characters do what they do, you might be fine...
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May 13, 2011 05:53
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Finally finished TCG last night. Just starting to hit me what a ridiculously massive series this was that just came to an end. Overall, I enjoyed the last book, even if there were a bunch of plot stuff that didn't make sense or were left unresolved: The Crippled God's personality basically did a massive 180 at the end. Throughout the whole series he has been a huge rear end in a top hat and delighted in thousands of deaths, and all of a sudden he's like this nice guy who's so happy to witness soldiers dying for him? I don't think Erikson built his change of heart up enough to make me buy it. I was kind of hoping Crokus and Apsalar would have more of a role in the events of the last book. Their little scene in the 2nd epilogue felt thrown in there just to wrap up that story, but in retrospect both their journeys went nowhere after Book 2, and if Erikson wasn't going to do anything with them, he should've finished off their story several books back. Did not really understand Karsa's role at the end there. How could anyone have possibly known Gessler and Stormy would inadvertently call Fener down during the Spire battle, and instruct Karsa on what to do to kill the god? Even I don't buy that Shadowthrone and Cotillion could have predicted that. I guess I don't mind Karsa's tiny role since I know Erikson's gonna write a whole other trilogy wrapping up his storyline. Kinda wish Trull Sengar would've made an appearance, what with so many dead folk popping back up. Or was he supposed to be the lantern guide at the end there with Mael and K'rul? No explanation for how Hetan gets to live. No explanation for who Rathan Gudd was, unless it was explained in Stonewielder, which I haven't read yet. Where did Draconus go? What about his daughters? Why did Gruntle and Tool's sister fight? Didn't really understand that whole thing. Udinaas' dragon son basically did nothing. Also thought Grub would have a bigger role in the end. Where did all the dragons go after Korabas was rechained? I still wish Tavore found out she had killed her own sister, but that's just a personal preference. Why did Cotillion stab TCG in the back? It was from Koryk's POV and meant to look like some sort of betrayal, but I guess it was to help him actually go home? If someone could clarify this that'd be great. Also nothing ever came of Caladan Brood and his 'Destroy the World' hammer. Despite all the nitpicks, I did really enjoy it for the most part, and I really enjoyed the series as a whole. I have no problem with Erikson writing more books in this world, and I will continue to read them. Gonna take a little break now before reading Stonewielder. qbert fucked around with this message at 20:16 on May 25, 2011 |
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May 25, 2011 20:10
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Lunchtray posted:I'm 200 pages in to RotCG and it seems better than NoK. It's better than NoK, but still 10x worse than Erikson at his worst. The characters don't act like complete nonsensical morons as they did in NoK, but they're all drawn in very broad two-dimensional strokes. Also everyone in the Malazan world has fantasy type names, and then there's one dude named Kyle.
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Jul 1, 2011 01:55
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