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Just finished up with TCG and it was pretty amazing. He managed to fit more into it than I thought he would in terms of character closure. Anyways I'm sad its over, one of the best series I've ever read  Some great sendoffs for most of the cast but I'll post more on those when I've had a bit of time to digest everything.
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Mar 16, 2011 23:24
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quote:Questions: (TCG)Is Tavore the Talonmaster, or merely a member? House of Chains & TCG spoilers - This is a great question that brings up an interesting point. It was previously revealed in House of Chains that Korbolo Dom was the Talon Master but Tavore is seemingly unaware of this fact despite being a member herself. I know Cotollion segmented them specifically but it still seems like a weak explanation for why a member of the Talon is leading her army at cross-purposes against the master of her order.
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Mar 31, 2011 19:18
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quote:i think the immense size of his canvas eventually caught up with him I loved the series and thought the TCG was more or less the best way he could have possibly ended it. That being said I fully agree with the size of canvas comment. He really needed to stop introducing so many new characters awhile ago, as in 2+ books ago. It's a bit strange that the Nah'ruk are foreshadowed so well but the rest of the antagonists are kind of thrown together. We also could have lived without a lot of the POVs, Deadsmell and company have several ones over the course of 3 books that could have been edited out for example. There were also some loosely tied together parts that felt like they got gutted by the editor yet more inconsequential stuff was left in. I hope in the future his editor puts him on a leash and makes him flesh out characters more. I'd rather have half of the cast and get more back story as opposed to 1000 small POVs. I liked re-reading to catch foreshadowing and whatnot but had to do a fair bit just to remember who was who after awhile. The smaller scope of the first three books really lets you get into the characters more, I think the sheer number of ones in later books just kind of dilutes everything.
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Apr 1, 2011 15:37
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quote:So I was up at like 4am the other night trying to finish Memories of Ice and came across something with Toc the Younger. Togtha the Wolf of Winter. Toc the.. Tocthe? It's probably a fluke but that's the kind of connections you make at 4 in the morning, I guess. On a different naming tangent... my girlfriend is trying the series now, she's on Deadhouse Gates. The other night she starts laughing out loud and I asked what was up. She said "Panpotsun Odhan" and giggled. I didn't get it and she said "Pan and Pots Sun". In the other thread we had a mini discussion about how Erikson's naming convention consists of looking around the room he happens to be writing in. Let's just say I'm convinced of that theory now 
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Apr 12, 2011 15:56
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On a side note thanks to the people ITT who recommended Joe Abercrombie for post-Malazan blues. The Blade Itself is pretty damned good so far, I think I'm going to ahead and order the other books too.
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Apr 14, 2011 16:00
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Abalieno posted:Well, Abercrombie is great, but not exactly similar to Malazan. So it's a good recommendation in general but not so fitting to someone who likes Malazan Oh for sure, I wasn't trying to paint them in the same style. I think after ten books I needed something dissimilar to Malazan and that's why I'm enjoying it so much. I'll check out Bakker when I'm done with The First Law stuff, thanks for the recommendations.
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Apr 14, 2011 17:42
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coyo7e posted:How dare they cram climaxes into the end of a book! He's referring to overloading the climax, no need to be so childish about it. That being said I didn't see that as a problem until Midnight Tides and even then it's not like the quality suffered as a result. If anything it just makes the pacing in some books less tolerable than others, Toll the Hounds for example needed a bit more conflict interspersed throughout.
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Apr 26, 2011 21:02
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A Nice Boy posted:Gah gently caress. Got my copy of Stonewielder from Border's online finally, and like fifty pages are cut off on top and are missing about half the text. So, I have to go to a Fedex Kinko's and send the damned thing back, and wait however long to get a new one. Fuckers. That same thing happened to me with Return of the Crimson Guard. In the middle of the book I found 30 pages which looked like the binding machine had been replaced with a cross shredder. Another bummer was my first copy of Midnight Tides had 10 pages right near the climax that were blank on just one side of the page. Anyway Stonewielder shows some promise but ultimately flops back into mediocrity. It's a frustrating experience, particularly when he's almost there with certain plot points and characters then just drops them to focus on tertiary stuff or make poor attempts at humor.
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May 20, 2011 14:22
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Juaguocio posted:Let us know how you feel when you're done with it all. I personally feel that the series starts to get weaker with Reaper's Gale. Yeah I'm in the middle of a series re-read before I donate it to the local library and just get Kindle versions for archive. The series hits a high at Memories of Ice and seems to level off until Reaper's Gale. Post Reaper's Gale is too convoluted, it's hard to discern intention and meaning when everything is so muddled. That's all despite having a ridiculous amount of filler that should be fleshing things out too but instead feels wasteful. Toll the Hounds and Dust of Dreams in particular were really hard to read, I had to push myself through them at times. Looking at the series in retrospect I think his editor just needs to snap the whip more often. Some of those books could have lost 100-200 pages without really detracting from the overall narrative threads.
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Jun 9, 2011 17:25
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Fargo Fukes posted:Just finished House of Chains and I gotta say I'm getting pretty tired of this poo poo. Despite the fact there were a couple of plotlines going on I feel the book is intimately connected with Karsa Orlong's journey: Badass action-packed start, tortuous ages spent doing nothing whilst someone spouts endless pointless words at you leading to no real resolution making me question why I set out to read the drat book (or quest forth from my homeland, to continue the metaphor) in the first place. Seriously? One thousand and thirty four pages to establish a couple of characters? Ugh. I enjoyed the series but it has its ups and downs, its also definitely not for everyone. I would say it gets worse from your perspective and that it isn't your thing so I would move on. If you want to give it another shot then Midnight Tides and The Bonehunters are better books but after that the series can be fairly uneven. A few of the later books especially are almost exactly what you disliked.
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Jun 29, 2011 15:18
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quote:I find Toll the Hounds the most interesting book in the series thematically, but by the heavens, it's very boring, dry and long. The ending is amazing though. Agreed. On the surface Toll the Hounds has some interesting concepts and takes the story in a more character level dramatic direction than some of the previous books which by all rights I should enjoy. Unfortunately it's a very poorly executed book that ends up meandering all over the place and comes off quite boring as a result. This is one of three books in the series that really needed his editor to step on him a bit. quote:All three examples have in common the fact that they do not bow to power, but they all do from their own, specific perspective. For the handful of pages they get the characterization is brilliant. It's inconsistent though was the original point. There a lot of characters that come off sounding too similar both in characterization and even dialogue at times. I'm not sure if this is the result of the sprawling size of the project, a failing on his editors part or just simply how he writes. I don't think it detracts too much from the books personally, it only becomes annoying when you're picking things apart due to other issues. I might feel differently about Nimander for example if TtH hadn't practically put me to sleep.
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Jul 5, 2011 15:33
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Abalieno posted:Thankfully writing a book is not a democratic act. And not all editors bow to conventional demands. Writing one? Sure. Getting one published on the other hand can be a very democratic process quote:Cook reminds me of someone who had a great idea for a world/characters, and then fell in love with the writing when he should have stopped. Everything after book 3, while somewhat enjoyable to read at times, was pretty uninspired and none of the characters were really that great. Erikson takes a lot of inspiration from Cook which can be unfortunate at times because he seems to have picked up some of his better qualities while also adopting some poor ones. Cook was always great at writing character level drama while encompassing a grander background epic. He was always very poor at descriptive narrative and characterization unfortunately. Erikson is very good at description but applies it haphazardly to whatever he feels like, there isn't a lot of consistency. Sometimes you will get a very good picture of a character, their background, appearance and whatnot. Sometimes you will only discover that their name rhymes with a kitchen tool. It's not that he doesn't do it well when he wants to, it's just that its inconsistent. Every character doesn't need to have a fully fleshed out, storied background like Anomander or Karsa. On the other hand when we get continual POVs or large sections dedicated to them then we need a bit more than their funny name. Cooks first three books were fairly focused and then he starts to meander quite a bit, mixing his personal experiences and vietnam war stuff into the thing which becomes a bit muddled because its difficult for the reader to relate to a lot of that. He wrote a fair number of characters but only ever did about 15 worthwhile ones and the worst part is that he realizes it so he keeps (literally) bringing them back from the dead. This is something you see in Erikson's work as well but at least it fits more thematically in his world. I still think he didn't need to rely on a lot of that though. Anyway it'll be interesting to see what he comes up with next now that he isn't chained the overall narrative anymore. I'm looking forward to it. It would be nice to get a series of smaller books about new characters or something.
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Jul 6, 2011 14:30
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A Nice Boy posted:About halfway through Stonewielder and I have to say that it's going to take a BIG second half to make it as good as RotCG was for me. It has some interesting parts, and a few interesting POV's, but man, a lot of it kind of drags and meanders and doesn't seem to know what it wants to do with itself. Esslemont seems to really want to match Erikson's effortless "marine in the trenches" type conversation/POV style and he really doesn't have the style for it. Stonewielder is really frustrating because it's very much a two small steps forward, one large step back thing for Esslemont. His world building has improved dramatically since RoTCG and he does a better job with characterization overall despite some very thin personalities and gimmick characters. On the other hand he has not improved his ability to juggle multiple POVs in the slightest, if anything the book manages to be more jumbled despite what should be a more straight forward plot. He gets lost in meaningless side POVs and ends up hurting the overall arc as a result. He's moved to "wait for many reviews" in the future for me, I love the Malazan universe but his stories don't really do it justice in my opinion.
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Jul 15, 2011 15:55
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AcidCat posted:There is still kind of a hole that these books left in me. I really doubt I will ever read something so epic again in my lifetime. Yeah, I'm curious what other books people are reading after this. I marathon'd all of the Black Company books again by Glen Cook and read some Joe Abercrombie. I don't care for GRRM unfortunately. I'm looking for new stuff in this vein but a little less epic/doorstopper, anyone found anything interesting? My list of authors I like is getting depressingly small.
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Aug 10, 2011 14:49
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quote:I'm not so sure about that. I'm not sure Erikson, or anyone, could pull off a whole book of Kellanved being both true to the character and readable. Second there is a poo poo ton we don't know about Anomander. Remember that the Tiste Andii of malazan verse have had 300,000 years of ennui to get that whiny and in flashbacks young Anomander came off as fairly different from present Anomander. Forget Anomander, Kellanved is interesting precisely because most of our understanding of his character is based on second and third hand hearsay. When you start deconstructing all of those events and explaining everything in detail I doubt the character would live up to what our imagination has filled in based on bits and pieces we get. I'd much rather most of that pre-godhood stuff stay as it is, I wasn't terribly impressed with most of the old guard characters in the series anyway. Sometimes the legend is more interesting than the man.
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Oct 1, 2011 16:26
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LtSmash posted:I think a fair bit of the slog mentality is that the book doesn't lay much out for the reader so you are confused a lot of the time. And since the writing and dialogue can be rough a reader can't always get by on them. The plot is also rather confusing even if you know the world where DG you can follow the chain without getting lots of stuff and not feel lost. I think that guy a few pages back was pretty spot on with his criticisms and I surprised to see people get so bent out of shape over them. A big one I've always had with the series is that he expects you to have read the books several times out of order to get the full context of situations. It makes for great re-readings but can also be lovely for first time readers. I've always thought of Erikson's writing as a guilty pleasure because it's the kind of thing I would never recommend to anyone but still love myself, warts and all. Gardens was extremely confusing at times (the whole section with Paran in Dragnipur stands out to me) and for everyone saying it wasn't I bet if we went back far enough we'd find a forum post asking what the hell was going on half the time
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Nov 7, 2011 15:11
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the periodic fable posted:I haven't read the second one yet because it's only out in Soft Cover Leviathan Edition but I was looking forward to it quite a bit. Is it as bad as you're making out? I really hope you're just exaggerating. We should really just discuss in that thread but yeah it's pretty bad. Actually to clarify that the writing is excellent but the plot meanders all over the place and you won't always like where you land when it does settle. For a massive book it essentially goes nowhere which is really frustrating too.
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Dec 9, 2011 17:41
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Juaguocio posted:RotCG takes a long, long time to get going, which is easily its biggest flaw. ICE is not able to tie all his disparate elements together as well as Erikson, so a lot of the characters seem kind of pointless. Things pick up towards the middle of the book, however, and the ending is really good. I would actually recommend skipping Ghelel's chapters, since she is annoying as hell and hardly contributes at all to the overall plot. Yeah that was a really puzzling set of chapters that seemed to do nothing but setup a future book. RotCG in general is kind of a lovely book, ICE can't write combat to save his life "X swordsman seemed to be everywhere at once!" but it does have a great ending. It is one of those books where if you're really hating a chapter you should just skip it, I generally dislike making that recommendation but there are some pointless ones that don't really serve the overall narrative or inject any useful humor/etc.
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Jan 25, 2012 16:48
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Ammanas posted:I'm four chapters into the last book. I was shocked to discover this because I had assumed I was still in the prologue. I'm wondering if a story ever actually starts or is the entire novel even more of the morose blather, the monotonous ramblings of characters inner thoughts that has defined (and ruined) the last few books? It does seem like his editor just let him go wild towards the end but I still thought the last two books were decent enough if you can ignore the cruft. It is a bit of a shame seeing the contrast between his earlier books and later ones. quote:trouble reading Memories of Ice The beginning can get a bit tedious but it really picks up later on and is considered one of the best books in the series. Stick with it a little bit and let us know how it turns out.
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Jan 26, 2012 15:08
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angerbeet posted:Wasn't there a goon-run Malazan wiki? Hood's balls or something? Yeah, I think the domain owner went AWOL, the domain appears to be unregistered again so I think I'll grab it. There's also Enyclopedia Malazica but the quality is really hit and miss.
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Feb 2, 2012 16:20
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Juaguocio posted:Erikson's inconsistency is the problem for me. Sometimes he is able to balance the fantastic and meditative sections perfectly, and other times it comes off as a mishmash. Same with his interviews- sometimes he's humble and accommodating, but other times he comes across as an arrogant dick. Yeah, that was basically my problem as well. His characterization is another example of that. Sometime he hits it out of the park but many of the supporting characters seem to share the same vocabulary and constant reflection prattle. I think it's most apparent amongst the Malazan soldiers but there's a fair amount of ennui in the Nimander stuff as well. Oh well, Erikson usually manages to bring it all together for the climaxes and ties up the major plot threads well enough. I have no idea what hes like in real life and don't really care, I just wish he would listen to his editor a bit more. His actual world building is incredibly well done though so I can forgive the flaws. quote: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. Sure that's a fair point. I just couldn't shake the feeling that they many of them felt too similar and some seemed unnecessary as a result. The Gunslinger fucked around with this message at 06:25 on May 13, 2012 |
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May 13, 2012 05:55
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Vaniljcola posted:There are audiobooks for all main books. I've borrowed MoI from a friend and the reader is pretty good. Much better then the reader for song of ice and fire. I'm pretty sure those were fan-made and uploaded to torrent sites for distro, I've never had any luck finding Malazan audiobooks on pretty much any vendors site (including Amazon, Audible, etc). There are Kindle editions of everything now though which is nice.
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Jul 4, 2012 20:06
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Fleve posted:I just finished Toll the Hounds. All the previous books gripped me to no end and all of them have been the source of some sleepless nights where I stay up far too long to finish those last few pages, TtH included. However, I'm wondering, do the last two books return to the style of the earlier books? Because, although I like Kruppe, a Kruppian narrator went a bit too far for my tastes. And while I don't mind my authors waxing eloquent and verbose at times, I found TtH to be a bit too far off the deep end. Like TtH, Dust of Dreams had some annoying meandering chapters with characters that you don't really know and aren't explained sufficiently for you to care. It wraps up well in the end as usual though. The Crippled God is back to the original style for the most part. TtH is a bit of an outlier in the series, its the only book I didn't really care for at all and the big finale didn't make up for the chapters I felt like I had to skim through.
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Nov 11, 2012 02:55
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TtH spoilers I really didn't care for Rake's sendoff at all but I understand why Erikson had to do it. The whole Dragnipur/Chaos setup always felt strange to me (a GotM-ism I suspect) so the stakes didn't seem real and the impact wasn't there, it all felt kind of pointless. I enjoyed the stuff with Kallor a lot more, you gained a lot of insight into his character and there was more nuance to him than I realized. But again TtH pretty much put me to sleep so many times that by the time the climax rolled around I just wanted it to be over. That was the only book in the series I didn't like though and 9/10 ain't bad
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Nov 11, 2012 08:29
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Very nice! Amusingly I have the same terrible Bonehunters edition making GBS threads up an otherwise stellar looking set of books. Santa's sleigh meets clownshoes in some sort of automobile accident. I remember someone telling me the UK edition has good art though, have to see about picking that one up sometime.
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Dec 7, 2012 03:18
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echomadman posted:The walls of philosophy/sociology texts are what make Ericksons books better than most other fantasy for me, if you take them out you might as well just read D&D novels. Sometimes I agree with that but the later books lay it on pretty thick. There are times where it doesn't really seem to serve anything and even seems to be out of character and context for some situations. There is a middle ground between D&D novels and some of the more exhaustive sections people are talking about, one I think he had down pat already in other books even. Anyways I'm reading Orb Sceptre Throne finally after getting some free time. One thing I like about ICE is that hes a more descriptive writer than Erikson and he seems to have found a good balance here. Unfortunately he seems to always go a POV too far and this trend has continued where I'm at in the story. Will post more when I finish.
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Dec 12, 2012 18:33
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The Heroes by Abercrombie is probably his best work so far but having read the rest of his stuff for background makes a big difference. I wouldn't say Forge of Darkness is the best thing Erikson has written but it's definitely a better read than anything else there.
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Dec 13, 2012 15:09
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Stew Man Chew posted:I love that even people who have read the entire series can post here about events and characters and I, another person who has read the entire series, can have no loving idea what they're talking about nor be able to adequately answer questions. You forget a lot from not doing rereads too, I've already forgotten half of the minor plot points and names of one off characters. That's the strength and weakness of such a large series.
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Jan 29, 2013 14:50
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:The Crimson Guard has never stopped being boring. I find it really hard to care about them. Also, ICE usually has at least one plot in every book that goes nowhere, has no real connection to the rest of the book, and could be completely cut without losing anything (the army in the jungle, the half Thel Akai in Stonewielder, OST is the best ICE book and doesn't reall suffer from this as much) Yeah the Crimson Guard were really squandered on ICE, they seemed so interesting on the surface reading about them in Erikson's books, Bars was great for example and then became utter poo poo in the ICE stuff.
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Jun 19, 2013 15:28
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Took a break from the Malazan universe for awhile. Came back and picked up Assail. This book is really not jiving with me, Esslemont doesn't do this many POVs well and the geography is really confusing with his uneven description of directions and locales. He seems to be trying really hard for the Erikson convergence goal but its very clumsy so far. Not sure if I should bother with the rest, about halfway through.
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Nov 21, 2014 15:42
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Spermy Smurf posted:It doesn't really end. It just fizzles out and nothing finishes. No wrap-up, no nothing. It just sort of ends at a chapter and you're like "Thats it? What the gently caress." That is...not at all encouraging to hear. Esslemont 
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Nov 21, 2014 20:08
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Ok I gave up on Assail after Kyle lumped off the 17th pair of forearms. Also Kyle. Again. Gotta get him in every book. I thought Esslemont was improving after OST but Assail is a painful regression in every way. I'm done with his stuff, its just not worth the time. The Crimson Guard were so much more interesting when not fleshed out by him and I don't want to know what he'll do with the Silverfox storyline after seeing how Iron Bars has turned out.
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Nov 22, 2014 05:20
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Sanderson is one of the most bland fantasy writers I've ever come across. Malazan chat. Against my better judgement I went back and finished Assail. What a letdown that finish was in every possible way. I don't care if they planned the series together or not, ICE just bungles everything Malazan. Forge of Darkness on the other hand was really satisfying and I enjoyed Willful Child for what it was. What's Erikson working on these days? Any word on that Karsa trilogy?
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Jan 6, 2015 21:21
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