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Abalieno posted:That's true for everything. It's the habit of reducing everything to poo poo.
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Apr 15, 2011 00:01
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:Take Dragonlance and throw in some Raistlin rape scenes and have Tanis and Flint talk like autistic philosophers and suddenly it's a whole new take on the genre. Maybe you should make each book three times as long, just to make sure. You can, uh, fill that space with your bad poetry I guess. Aww. I'm sorry Jordan died. 
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Apr 15, 2011 15:15
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OK, we got it, you enjoy dragon/alien rape. It's cool. Free country.  **I just called the cops
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Apr 15, 2011 19:16
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Loving Life Partner posted:Makes sense since powerful Wickans have a penchant for reincarnation, see: the child warlocks. That, and we know that the crows came for him en mass at the end.
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Apr 22, 2011 20:13
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Junk Science posted:Tell me again about that Tiste Edur with the spear... With the spear...in his hand, or through him?
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May 3, 2011 17:50
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Vanilla Mint Ice posted:That crazy race of people of that the Emperor and the High Priest of Shadow is from. Not every Dal Hon we meet is crazy...
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May 4, 2011 14:46
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Hondo82 posted:No it's not Assail, it's Shal-Morzinn, on the same continent as Seven Cities, Nemil, the Perish, etc. This was the nation that Tavore's fleet almost stopped at on their way from Malaz City to Lether, right?
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May 4, 2011 18:51
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Edmond Dantes posted:Sorry about the big spoiler block, I don't know how you guys are handling spoilers around here. I didn't read the whole thread for fear of spoiling myself, but wanted to come by and do a quick trip report. 
Habibi fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Jun 27, 2011 |
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Jun 27, 2011 20:10
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hello clarice posted:I'm not saying that his women aren't capable, and if you read my post you'll see that I sorta revised my opinion with the development of Tavore's character. I'll say that he handles women well (much better than say Robert Jordan, who I love, but who writes all women as the same character over and over and over again) but I still just really couldn't get over the constancy of rape all the damned time. I know this is like the in thing with male fantasy writers or whatever (GRRM), but it still annoys me that a huge amount of female characters in fantasy are either raped or threatened with rape. Two comments: 1) In the sort of medieval setting the Malazan book inhabits, rape or the threat of rape were/are constant issues for women. 2) The bit about somewhat spontaneous attachments I think has a LOT to do with the situations they're in, which are ridiculously stressful, constantly life-threatening, etc... The issue you bring up with regard to this is evident not only among women, but also among men, and more than anything else struck me as a side-effect of some form of PTSD. When you are spending every waking hour in this group of often unsavory individuals with whom you form a bond, are constantly under threat of death, constantly have friends die / get hosed up, and so on, your entire perception of 'normal relationships' becomes twisted. I guess I'm trying to say that with very few exceptions, I didn't really find anything wrong with how his women (or men) were written when you consider the context most of them dwell in.
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Aug 5, 2011 18:15
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Fuzzy Mammal posted:I don't know who's supposed to be in the other. Lostara? Shaik? Levitate posted:Apsalar would be my guess Given that rear profile and the copious descriptions in the book, if she actually featured in this novel I would have voted for Masan Gilani. But, yeah, Apsalar seems the likely suspect.
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Aug 8, 2011 20:02
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User posted:Medieval? Rape and war have gone together longer than peanut butter and jelly, and that's never going to change. Yeah, I realized that soon after I posted. It was a poor choice of wording - I wasn't referring to the medieval period specifically, just the general...uhh, shall we say uncivilized nature of the times? :
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Aug 8, 2011 20:36
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A Nice Boy posted:She doesn't show up named until book 4, does she? I want to say yes, as it's whenever the host that becomes the BH first appears.
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Aug 9, 2011 01:05
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Loving Life Partner posted:Just seeing Veed's stupid name reminded me of him hocking loogies into his hands to slick back his hair, yuck. Made me wonder if this was common practice at some point in history that Erikson decided to focus on it so much.
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Aug 18, 2011 18:35
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Electronico6 posted:The reason Rake took Dragnipur is quite simple. He hated Draconus, so for Rake the ultimate irony was to kill Draconus with his own creation. The actual purpose of Dragnipur was oblivious to him when he took it. He just thought Dragnipur was a funky sword. Yeah, this is closer to my interpretation of the whole thing. Not really buying the whole 'he needed a powerful weapon to kill all the bad guys he killed over the millennia and then get them taken down inside Dragnipur just before breaking the sword' deal, especially since he already HAD a really powerful weapon. The way I interpreted the exchange is that despite the fact that Grief/Vengeance could turn its wielder into an unstoppable force if he had sufficient INT (or whatever), Dragnipur is hardly something he could have just left lying around or given to someone, since just carrying the thing is an enormous burden, let alone giving its power to someone else. And then, yeah, as he started running out of evil things to kill and / or became more merciful with time, the wagon began slowing down and he struck a deal with Hood to figure out a 'final solution,' as it were.
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Aug 24, 2011 18:33
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Lyer posted:I thought the curse on Draconus was being taken by his own sword. Yea, or something to that effect.
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Aug 25, 2011 17:37
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zokie posted:But the swords wasn't made yet! So Draconus, knowing that one of his inventions would be used against him made one that would protect him from what would happen to all other Elder Gods. Within Dragnipur he would still be forgotten, but apparently not lose as much of his power like the others. When he got out he was full of kick-rear end and power. Compare him to the other Elders, only Mael is probably doing as well as him. Or maybe K'Rull, but he got power again by accident... Actually, I'm pretty sure it was strongly implied that the sword was already being forged when Kallor cursed the gods. In any case, I don't think Draconus' power functions quite like some of the other ascendants. You have gods whose power is dependent entirely on worship (a lot of the old 'Holds' crew - Mael, Errastas, etc..) and then some whose power seems independent / internal (Draconus, Rake & Family) and others whose power seems to only have traces of explanation (Shadowthrone).
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Aug 25, 2011 21:07
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Junk Science posted:He changed it from a sword that would annihilate to one that would imprison. Seems pretty clear to me. Likewise how I interpreted it. I wonder, though, if his plan all along had been to imprison the Gate of Dark within Dragnipur somehow, or if that was an improvisation he made after the curse and necessity for making some alterations to the sword's 'finality.' That must have been a fun conversation. "Heeeey Anomander, yeah, I'm gonna need to go ahead and uhm, borrrow your mom, yeaah...*sip coffee*"
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Aug 26, 2011 18:53
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pakman posted:I think this book has grabbed me in a different way than most books. I don't really care about the characters that much up to this point. But I keep reading because maybe the next chapter will explain wtf is going on. Webs within plots within webs and plots. The first book explains a bit. Books 2 and 3 explain a LOT more, and then it just snowballs. Edit: Snowballs in a good way, not in a 'Clerks' way.
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Sep 26, 2011 19:35
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Metonymy posted:Well, there's obviously something in the series that people enjoy and respond to, so I'm not trying to give a blanket "gently caress Eriksson and this series". To me, what he seems to say in that interview is that he isn't using a 'guiding' element to move the reader along - something that is common with plenty of experienced fantasy writers, let alone new ones. Wheel of Time is filled with so may convenient little things that just happen to point all of the characters and the reader in the direction they want/need to go (because, you know, ta'veren). Instead, he's basically putting the reader into a world where people know about as much as you might expect them to know, and leaves them to piece it together. Yeah, as you say it's something that flows together over the course of many books (and is significantly better the second time through) but once it all starts coming together, it's magnificent. Also: 02-6611-0142-1's observation that Erikson "expects you've read all his books at all times" is quite insightful. GotM is significantly improved if you've read all of the other books, and the same goes for every book. This is a bit of a unique property for a series, IMO. Reading ADWD doesn't really make ASOS any better or clearer (if anything, maybe it makes it more depressing ), but reading, eg, Reaper's Gale really affects what you get out of, eg, House of Chains.
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Sep 27, 2011 22:46
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Popular Human posted:Goddamn does it ever get better. quote:1. What was the whole deal with Panek's backstory, the T'lan Imass were crucifying children or something? Or did it go back to that clutch of magic Duiker stumbled across where he got caught up in the one tribe murdering the other one? quote:2. What the gently caress are Forkrul Assail? Don't answer if it's a giant, multi-book spoiler. quote:3. In the epilogue, were those gremlin things collecting Duiker's body, and are they going to resurrect him? Just a yes/no - I just would hate for that to be the last we see of him. He deserves awesome revenge. quote:edit: one other question, what was the deal with the guys who come out of the sky while Kulp and the gang's boat is stuck in that Warren? They give Stormy a sword, then they fly into the sky and it's implied one of them is sacrificing themselves for all eternity to get them out or something? quote:Goddamn, looking back there was a LOT I did not follow in this book.
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Sep 27, 2011 23:06
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Electronico6 posted:Well the T'lan Imass have been explained, not well though. You had Tool in the first book. The basic gist is that there was this race formerly known as the Imass, and they used to be slaves to the Jaghut, and one day the Imass said "gently caress you assholes!" and started a war with the Jaghut. At the end of the war the Imass formed a pact between themselves, they would never rest again until the world was rid of Tyrants(Jaghut). OF course this did not go according to plan.
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Sep 27, 2011 23:49
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02-6611-0142-1 posted:That scene in Deadhouse Gates on the boat gets explained piece by piece in books 4, 5 and 7 if I recall correctly. You're supposed to be thinking "what the hell?" but little bits of context appear eventually. It's sort of like a microcosm of the series as a whole.
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Sep 28, 2011 18:43
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LtSmash posted:The T'lan Imass were used sparingly but more than just once. We know there was also the massacre at Aren. Apsalar claims it was Laseen but the T'lan Imass weren't bound to her. Dujek claims that it was Kellanved who did it to weaken Laseen's hold on the empire so chaos would follow once they ascended.
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Sep 28, 2011 20:13
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The Ninth Layer posted: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! I see so many people complaining about this last bit - the amount of badasses everywhere - and I might too, if it wasn't tempered by the fact that even the strongest badass can (and has) been brought down by a weak mortal with very little badass about him.
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Sep 29, 2011 20:02
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NovemberMike posted:There's a fairly standard thing in fantasy where you just have everybody be a bunch of dicks in an attempt to be dark and edgy. Kind of like you have knights in shining armor but underneath they're all monsters. Erikson did a good job of inverting this, where instead you'd have to people covered in mud and stabbing the poo poo out of each other but under all the dirt they're human and they have families and reasons for being there. Or sometimes they have no reasons and they've just been swept up and away by circumstance, which is an equally rare perspective in fantasy novels.
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Sep 29, 2011 23:22
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NovemberMike posted:Yeah, that's part of what I'm talking about. The two common perspectives in fantasy have good guys who made a decision to be good and bad guys who made a decision to be bad (it's just that in one of the perspectives both sides are bad guys). The Malazan series tends more towards people doing what they think they have to do. Beak. 
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Sep 30, 2011 17:51
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NovemberMike posted:Beak's a good example because he's an inversion of the standard mental retard in fantasy. IIRC the standard is to have the "slow" guy get a little bit of power and then turn into a tyrant or else they have a minor victory that wouldn't be special for a non-retarded character. Beak could have been replaced by Quick Ben or Tayschrenn without changing the basics of what happened, just how people reacted to him. Not entirely true - I was using Beak as an example of the guy who gets swept up in events beyond his control and just tries to stick it out best he can. He's a bit of an extreme example, what with being not right in the head. Someone like QB or Tayschrenn I can't really see winding up in a similar situation. They don't get swept up by poo poo. They sweep poo poo up.
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Sep 30, 2011 20:53
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uh zip zoom posted:I just finished the last book and would like to know why so many things were left unresolved. And also, what's wrong with me that I want to read through it a second time? 1) Some will be resolved in spin-off novels / series', and some will probably remain unresolved because they are related to other bits of history in the Malazan world and no one will be able to get around to writing them. 2) No - it's better the second time around. Try it. Read the first 50 pages of GotM. I can almost guarantee that: - it will be 200% more interesting than the first time around; - it will make 200% more sense; and - you will notice things you completely missed the first time around.
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Sep 30, 2011 21:55
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Popular Human posted:...there's none of the memorable, awesome "stick in your head" lines like you find all over ASoIaF or even (early) Wheel of Time.
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Oct 27, 2011 07:47
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IncendiaC posted:House of Chains is a sequel of the Deadhouse Gates storyline
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Jan 14, 2012 07:13
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NovemberMike posted:Yeah, it's supposed to be a criticism of strong hierarchies in general. IIRC he said that he based it partially off of some BC era Mediterranean crisis. Yeah he's said numerous times that if it's based on anything, it's much older civilizations than the US.
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Jan 23, 2012 06:16
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02-6611-0142-1 posted:(TCG)It seems like Shadowthrone and Cotillion were heavily involved all along too, so maybe they were in cahoots with Tavore. What do we really know about her, anyway? Her girlfriend turned out to be a random pre-humanity goddess? What was the eres'al up to? To my reading, launching the plan to free TCG was what set Kellanved and Dancer on their path to attain ascendancy.
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Feb 1, 2013 20:52
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Cardiac posted:One good example of how intricate this series is This moment seems to get brought up on a monthly basis here. I think I still prefer everything that ends up revolving around the Silanda. Specifically, the corpse we originally find speared to the Captain's chair, and which initially seems to be just a minor curiosity quickly forgotten.
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Feb 5, 2013 21:16
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moment of the series.
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Leospeare posted:And I believe the corpse was Binadas Sengar. All correct. You find the corpse, then find out from his killer's perspective how it got there, then later from a third party who that corpse would have been, and then even later those events influence the resolution of both the Edur conquest of Letheras and more specifically of Rhulad. All from a seeming side detail mentioned in passing in Book 2 (this stuff doesn't resolve completely until the end of book 7). I admit I did manage to put these separate things together on my initial read-through, but don't worry because it took until my current go-around (fourth, in preparation for the Karkhanas novels) to catch the conversations between Paran, Draconus, and K'rul in freaking GotM that set the groundwork for the Gate of Darkness being intentionally bound within Dragnipur . Three times through the series before (I reread for each of DoD and TCG) , and I still thought that concept wasn't really introduced until the last 3 books.
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Feb 6, 2013 18:40
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pakman posted:So I think I have just read some of the most important chapters in TCG. I started this morning watching Hood eat the face of a Fokrul Assail while Shurk Ellale and Felash were standing by. The Perish have basically deposed Mortal Sword Krughava and are going to "kill all humans," it seems instead of helping the adjunct. Brys has figured out that he's been given back to the world to so something, but he's not sure what. And lastly, I read the chapter where Erikson goes up the column of the little groups and their thought on the night's march across the desert where it ends with Fiddler basically saying they're all going to die, and that historians are going to say they worshipped the Crippled God and failed in defending him. I think. Don't worry too much about Tavore. Nothing she has done or will do is as it seems, which you've probably gathered by now. And I don't recall the stuff you mention re: the Perish, but I've only read TCG once. Still, may be worth revisiting their last chapter for a clearer idea.
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Feb 6, 2013 18:44
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moment after another.
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Scott Bakula posted:I'm onto Midnight Tides in my reread. Would I be making a mistake to skip it and continue on? I remember it being very slow reading last time and vaguely remember the important plot points, just not the characters. With the speed I'm reading I don't think it'll matter too much mind Yes, you'd be making a mistake. MT is always slow for me at first, because it's sort of like starting a different series. But it picks up and also lays groundwork for books ...well, pretty much the rest of them.
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Feb 8, 2013 00:32
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coyo7e posted:I've bee n on the internet too long because I can only see that turning into a horrible slashfic. That's normal. When all you can see is it turning into some overly expressive erotica, then you'll know you've been online too long.
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Feb 8, 2013 19:25
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rizzen posted:It also introduces you to some great characters. Tehold and Bugg, how I miss reading about you. Yeah, I considered that part of the 'laying the groundwork.' That was even intended to be a sort of pun on those two (think along the lines of what they used to crash the economy)...
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Feb 8, 2013 19:28
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coyo7e posted:Worst dirty talking ever while Kruppe is railing Tehol. Actually, Pust would be sitting in the very same room, in the corner, perched on a stool with his hands over his face, muttering, "Look at these fools, blithely satisfying their basest needs, all the while unawares of my presence, seated as I am on the other side of this wall, observing through a virtually undetectable peephole. But, wait! See them stop; glance in my direction. Aiee! Am I discovered? But no, they resume their blasphemous pleasuring. No doubt their momentary distraction was caused by my unequaled masculinity, creeping - creeping? - striding purposefully, yes, through the very wall to snag their attention with its thick, calloused hands..." (does this really need a spoiler? who even knows anymore?)
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Feb 9, 2013 06:00
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Lemon Curdistan posted:I think they were basically trying to get TCG to gently caress off back home and stop poisoning Burn, which all the other gods wouldn't let them do because it was too much fun repeatedly pounding him and syphoning off his power. Except they had plenty of gods on their side of the field. I think their big idea was in realizing HOW to free TCG, and that doing so would end the stupid cycle of chainings and his poisoning Burn/interference in the world (plus the whole Forkrul Assail business with his heart may have been a motivator).
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Feb 15, 2013 16:37
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