The gulf between them is. . .
significant.
I really liked the economic plotting in Midnight Tides and Reaper’s Gale. Those were my favorite books in the series (of the ones I read. I stopped halfway through Dust of Dreams.)
Really? Hmm, I can’t imagine where else it could go. Isn’t relief for the garrison already on the way? Aren’t there tens of thousands of soldiers outside Aren, or did they all wander away while they were crucifying Pomqual’s army? If there’s really no siege, I almost want you to spoil it for me. Almost.
At any rate, at least tell me I’m right that there are some cool developments in the relationship between Felisin/Sha’ik and Tavore!
Warrens don’t work for specifically targeted point-to-point travel? I’ve read 1500 pages of Malazan stuff and I don’t think I ever knew that. I know there was a lot of fumbling around with the ghost ship in the flooded warren and Kalam and the family he rescued in the bone warren, but I thought that was because they weren’t mages. They couldn’t wrangle warrens into shape. They were in terra incognita. But can’t, say, Quick Ben use a warren to just pop over somewhere? Isn’t that how the merchant ex machina trade guild gets around? By opening warrens? Wouldn’t Kulp have been able to use a warren to get someplace he wanted to go? I’m almost positive some of the mages in Gardens of the Moon did that, but maybe I’m misremembering.
So if the quest for Fiddler et al. is to find the house of Azath so they can hook up with Kalam in Malaz City, why didn’t they just use a warren? Why didn’t they just get Quick Ben to send them? You’re saying that’s not how warrens work?
I understand what they discover about Azath and the tile map is dramatically different from warrens in that it can get you someplace you haven’t “unfogged” yet, and it reveals worlds they didn’t even know existed. But my understanding is that they were just looking for a way to link up with Kalam, who was hoofing it.
I also thought there was a real bait and switch with Felisin becoming Sha’ik Reborn instead of Apsalar. What was up with that? Was that just me?
Yikes, no. Was it not clear that I meant Iskarl Pust and Kruppe were exceptions? They have affected speech patterns that makes them distinct from the other characters. Why did you think I was saying he sounded the same as everybody?
Well, I suppose that explains my confusion about warrens. I guess that means we don’t get more people reincarnated into puppets, or flying castles, or crow familiars? :(
That’s a really good way to put it, jsnell! Erikson’s imagination is clearly top-notch and really, well, out there. I’m sure he made one hell of a dungeonmaster.
Yeah, I’m really glad when Deadhouse Gates won that you specified the importance of reading Gardens of the Moon. After I finished Gardens, I seriously stalled for a while. I did not want 800 more pages of that. But once I got to Deadhouse Gates, I enjoyed it a lot more, and part of that was because I’d read Gardens. Also, your enthusiasm is really nice to read. It makes me like the books more. :)
-Tom
I will save you a little heartbreak by noting that the relationship doesn’t really develop in a traditional sense by the end of that particular subplot. It was something that deeply frustrated me at the time, and wasn’t really followed up on in the ways I hoped it would be. In some ways this created a really interesting piece of dramatic irony, but the lack of follow through–even up through end of the series according to a Q&A I just peaked out, would probably bother you a lot :(
They’re not always the most optimal path for this task, and sometimes some areas may not be accessible at all (if they’re “cut off,” as it were–I’m simplifying and also probably missing additional details the final books in the series cleared up). For instance, the Trygalle Trade Guild guys often emerge from their warren-hopping travels literally on fire or beating away chaotic demons grasping for their soft, tasty bodies.
The Houses of the Azath are ludicrously overcomplicated and revealed slowly over time, but one takeaway they establish relatively early on is that they can make for a relatively safe, quick, and guaranteed means to travel from one House to the next. So rather than wending your way through half a dozen increasingly perilous and alien warrens, you just “figure out” the Houses (insofar as anyone ever actually fully figures anything out in the series) and can “easily” skip between them
This is one of the few points I can remember where Erikson was deliberately misleading, and yes, it was absolutely a bait-and-switch on the reader, along the same lines as how the Series of Unfortunate Events TV show played up a certain familial rescue operation in a very misleading manner (I haven’t read the books, so unsure if it’s the same there).
So on the one hand, it makes the “conclusion” of Felisin’s journey a little less impactful than it could be, insofar as you haven’t really been building yourself up for that particular moment and pondering that particular vein of possibilities, but on the other hand, the twist did genuinely take me by surprise, which then lead to a LOT of bug-eyed wondering on my part as the storyline got “put on hold” for the duration of a whole novel.
There’s definitely some more of that stuff–flying castles are a surprisingly major player in an upcoming book, though you hardly see them coming!–but yeah, there’s just some weird little bits of the (very extensive and complicated) lore that changed subtly (or completely) between GotM and the rest of the series. For instance, one character just swaps genders; a race’s name is corrected, etc. There were some elements of the role of Chaos that seemed like they were totally idiosyncratic that apparently get pulled back into the main storyline very late in the series, to some fans’ chagrin :)
I’m glad for that, if nothing else. Damn, I really wanna dive back in and finish this damn thing once and for all now.
This reminds me that I marched through Gardens of the Moon, but also absolutely adored the Chain of Dogs storyline in Deadhouse Gates. And that was a longass time ago, and I still haven’t gotten around to Memories of Ice and beyond. I guess I should re-read the first two books.
That particular plot-line does not appear in the books at all, though the series is mostly pretty faithful to the books.
I want to make something clear BTW.
Gardens is a huge outlier for the series. While the scope in each book is large - large casts (even if we tend to focus on a few among them; IMO there is less focus in Gardens than the other books, although not by an order of magnitude) Gardens has the largest cast of characters and it can be bewildering. It was written well before it’s 1999 publish date, as I recall. Starting at it’s publishing, though, the series hits a very regular schedule. 10 books in like 13 years. In this respect, I feel like Erickson just sort of steadily picked up steam and really got into a freaky sort of groove.
But starting at Deadhouse, what you see is what you get. There will be plots in the future you love, maybe as much as the Chain of Dogs. There will be ones you don’t (whether as a matter of taste, or because that’s how it goes sometimes, or because you have a void where your heart is, etc). But Deadhouse is, in effect, what Erickson is. The rich world (and by this I mean everything; history, etc) is revealed to very slowly but surely. I think several later books are better than Deadhouse in many respects but in terms of plot threads, only at times equal to Chain of Dogs.
That’s why I say I wonder if you’ll make it through the series. You have to love that peeling back of the lore, the occasional stunning revelation (and those are missable sometimes), the crock-pot charater arcs. Everything in the series is better than Gardens although you appreciate it more in hindsight as you keep going. Although circle breaker is awesome. If you overall like Deadhouse you’ll enjoy continuing I think.
IMO, the journey is more than worthwhile. But I can completely understand it not being for people. I love it personally.
I may be misreading you here, so bear with me.
You can 100% enter a warren and then travel some where (exiting when you hit your destination), and there are a number of potential benefits to doing so when traveling by certain warrens (e.g. travel in the Imperial Warren is usually very safe; of course when iirc Adjunct Lorn comes across the signs of that battle in Gardens, and Hounds start running around, things get a little scarrier). I believe travel via warren is faster insofar as it lets you cover more ground for less travel. In fact I’m sure of this now that I think about it more. It’s not instantaneous though, like teleportation (you knew this already of course). But it can also allow you to do things you wouldn’t normally do. I compared Serc to casting fly in D&D which is overstating it but … well if you keep reading you’ll see :)
Travel through the Azath houses is not like this though. It’s superior, although it seems like you get that too.
You’ve seen the “map”, and how people have used it to travel large distances. That’s what I was getting at. You cannot use Warrens to replicate that means of travel and cover that much ground. Likewise, Warrens don’t allow you to enitrely ignore physics. There’s nothing stopping you from crossing the ocean in a warren. Unless you don’t have a boat (or aren’t a dragon, heh). And the safety of the Imperial Warren was something of an illusion. No Warren is really safe. There’s no telling who, or what, you’ll bump into when cruising through one :P
Well, they didn’t have anyone who could get into a Warren (remember, Quick Ben is on another continent). And the “toy” Quick Ben provided them was for a very specific use (and essentially limited in that use). But Quick Ben, had he been there, could not have done with any warren what they do when they travel via the Azath. Nobody can, point of fact. So they were able to cover more ground via the Azath.
Yes. And hoofing it a pretty long way from where they were at the time if memory serves? Also, they pop up in Malaz City at one point. which is on another continent. Well an island actually. But one far away from the seven cities and Raraku (it’s south and east of Quon Tali). Many days journey, by any other method.
Sadly I don’t remember this part as well.
My fault, I completely missed that part in the review. Don’t ask me why, go ask your pop!
I have good news on this front. The series doesn’t get less alien as it goes, even as you start to understand more about the world and how things work. And a lot of other weird stuff. You like Crone as a “familiar”? Wait until you meet Greyfrog. Also, you’ll see her again. And lots of other crazy shit.
I’ll just say that if you move on to Memories, your “Meanwhile, on Genbackis” is going to be a lot different than what you got in Gardens and I think you are going to be a lot happier overall compared to that book. Except for the [thing]. I do not think you are going to be entirely happy with [thing]. But, oh, so many good things in Memories (and some extremely bittersweet ones, just like Deadhouse).
This series is one of the things I wish I could experience for the first time again.
See, now that’s funny! I hope Erikson appreciates that it’s funny. As I mentioned, from what I’ve read, he’s a pretty humorless writer. I think his stories would flow a lot better if he appreciated why comic relief is considered relief. :)
Yeah, Erickson implied that pretty tidily with a squadron of dragons. I seem to recall the observation was that the dragons just flew into a section of map tiles like they knew where they were going. Almost as if it was just another commute for them.
Yeah, that’s a great point. I like that a lot, too. In keeping with the idea of magic as trying to harness something unpredictable and combustible.
Okay, now you’re really making me want to keep reading. You’re doing that on purpose, aren’t you???
So what are your thought on the way Armando recommended it, by basically saying, “Hey, you should read Deadhouse Gates!”, but admitting that I was going to have to read Gardens to appreciate really appreciate it. My feeling is that he’s right, and that it might have been too abrupt or confusing to go straight to Deadhouse Gates. But my feeling also is that if I hadn’t been reading these for a Patreon review, I probably would have bailed after Gardens.
Oh, and I meant to ask you guys this: how do you pronounce Duiker? Surely it’s not “dweeker”? That’s how it got stuck in my head as I was reading, but that can’t be right.
-Tom
I’ve got to chime in as someone who recently finished the series as a first time reader. I will echo a lot of the sentiment here that the Malazan series is one of my favorite (and i think one of the best as well) fantasy series out there. However it didn’t make it into that list until I’d finished the entire series. As has been previously mentioned this is really more of a very large story broken up into 10 “smaller” (haha 1000 pages) books. I’m not sure you could ever just read one of these novels without the others and really get a sense for what Erickson is doing.
That said Erickson could very much have used the services of a good editor. He has a tendency to wax philosophical to the point of distraction and i think that only gets worse as the series goes on. Tom is right that he is not the strongest writer out there, although i will say by book 10 he’s much better than he was at the start. I do think he writes character pairs exceptionally well, much better than individual characters. Tehol and Bugg, Fiddler and Whiskeyjack, Cotillion and Shadowthrone, Karsa and…(well maybe not Karsa). The way those characters interact and react with and to each other is far more interesting and rich than how they are as individuals.
All that being said, to me the true genius of Erickson is the way he writes soldiers. As a military man myself i can say with confidence Erickson gets the camaraderie, the tension and release and boredom of a military campaign, the sense of family that i feel is pretty unique to the military. He writes soldiers the way that I would expect someone with a military background to write soldiers even though I’m pretty sure he’s an archaeologist (?) by trade.
Also for anyone who struggles with the way Erickson essentially throws you into the middle of the plot with little to no explanation and rarely holds the readers hands with even simple things like “Okay who is speaking right now?” I would highly recommend the Tor.com reread series. It’s a chapter by chapter breakdown of each book where two people with cover what happened, what was significant, what it means to the larger story, how it fits in to what’s already happened, etc. I realize that’s just more reading to add to the already heavy workload Erickson expects but it did make things much easier to understand and I was able to pick up on things that i never would have seen myself.
Oh, and I meant to ask you guys this: how do you pronounce Duiker? Surely it’s not “dweeker”? That’s how it got stuck in my head as I was reading, but that can’t be right.
I’ve always read this as Dwi-ker definitely not “dweeker”!
I focused a lot on what you didn’t like in the review at first but on re-reading I appreciate your appreciation more. I could tease (i.e. tempt) you further, of course. But the truth beats “you don’t even know what a Shield Anvil is, Tom” and “hey, I wonder what Dragnipur’s real purpose is oh wait I know haha” every day of the week. And the truth is that the story is bigger than you imagine. Yes, there’s save the world shit. But never quite in the way that you might expect. And the stakes always seem personal, and all the better for it.
I mean, you haven’t even seen Kruppe dance.
“Here’s a doorstopper series that’s 10 books in length and you have to read the first book and you’ll hate me a little for reading it but it will start paying off in Deadhouse gates and keep doing so for the next 9 books” is not an easy sell, but I’ve done it that way before. Which is to say, I pretty much agree with Armando.
It does help that Gardens has some points it can be sold on “it’s got weird magic and demons and betrayal and there’s this awesome dragon that doesn’t bother with fire because it breathes raw sorcery and a swrod like Stormbringer only much much cooler although you won’t find that out for a few books and also Kruppe delights”. But it’s a lot to ask people to wade through all those characters and spend so little time with the native crew (who are the nominal main characters, plus Tattersail and Ganoes Paran really).
I alternated between “dooker” and “doo-e-ker” and never felt definitive with either. Except that I know it isn’t “dweeker”, because science.
Reading Erikson, somewhat turgid and ‘janky’ poetic, but it feels so overtly dense to be dense, but I can get why people dig it.
I read he was influenced by Glen Cook, and I can totally see it. Its like somebody took Glen Cook and decided to go all out verbose. And Glen Cook always conjured in my mind as of Hemingway writing fantasy (not saying Cook is Hemingway, but he is just as sparse and brief in descriptors). And seeming as Cook seemed to be telling some Vietnam era Green Beret stories but as a fantasy cold war.
I really want to get into Erikson, because a true military fantasy campaign of books sounds so damn cool. I just need to get into his prose. But I’m getting old and fall asleep fast reading dense prose, maybe i should drink more coffee…like when i read ALOT in college.
I just looked up ‘military fantasy epics’ and wow there is alot. Besides Erikson, is this list the general consensus for those of you who read more fantasy?
http://bestfantasybooks.com/best-military-fantasy-books.html
I’ve heard of Abercrombie, Bakker and Sanderson. are they worthy of our time? Who else can we go to for ‘Epic military fantasy’?
btw, I am not a super snob or anything i loved most of the DnD books from Savatore and Weis and Hickman back in the 80s… just wanted to know what you guys considered ‘essential’ epic fantasy… besides RR Martin and Erikson. Also, are there some better on audio books? my library has a ton of these i think.
I think Erickson is a mediocre to bad writer with a great imagination for a role-playing game campaign. Esslemont (who was his partner in that campaign, btw, as I’m sure you know) is just a bad writer.
The scope of the fantasy world is pretty remarkable, and the way he writes it makes it seem even more vast than he portrays. It’s like he has this amazing universe in his head that he can’t wait to tell you about. But like so many nerds, he gets stuck on things that aren’t super interesting, or can’t express them terribly well.
Just my opinion. I read six or seven books before I petered out on the book that was all about free trade and environmentalism. I had a couple months of constant flying across the country about ten years ago and these books were absolutely perfect for long plane flights. But when I stopped traveling, I had no interest in going back. I really envy his fantasy imagination, though. I sure couldn’t come up with that stuff.
Memories of Ice was supposed to be the 2nd book in the series but a hard drive problem came into play (much like some of the Gods). Rather than trying to start MoI again from memory, Erikson decided to start fresh with Deadhouse Gates. Dust of Dreams (book 9) and The Crippled God (book 10) were originally going to be ONE monstrously heavy book. Gardens of the Moon started life as a screen play. Pronunciation of Duiker - dooker. Audiobooks are great for this as Steven Erikson did have a hand in how character and place names where pronounced.
Abercrombie is damn good, as is Sanderson. I got tired of Bakker pretty fast. Glen Cook is classic. I guess the Codex Alera would count as military fantasy but it’s not how I would think of it. I do prefer it to Butcher’s Dresden Files series, although I like both a lot. I can also recommend Naomi Novik but that’s minimally fantastic - it’s the Napoleonic Wars but with the world full of dragons. There’s no magic or anything, just a lot of big, talking (but mostly uncomplicated) flying reptiles. This has some pretty dramatic implications in some respects (in particular, dragonback aerial warfare is a huge part of the conflict), but surprisingly little in others.
I haven’t heard of a lot of the rest of that list or read most of the ones I have heard of.
Joe Abercrombie is great, and his Heroes is the best military fantasy I’ve read. But I wouldn’t call it epic, in any sense of the word. That book is gritty, boots-on-the-ground, war-is-hell military fantasy. It’s Hamburger Hill, but with swords and shields.
I just created an account to chime in! I’ve loved reading everyone’s thoughts on Malazan. It’s my absolute favorite, as well, having read and reread some of the books upwards of half a dozen times. I did the thing where I reread all the books leading up to the latest release, read that, and then started over. It gets better every time. With a world and a plot so complex, you catch new things and make new connections with every reread. I highly encourage you to continue.
I’ll close with this… Duiker is pronounced “dyker”. It’s a Dutch word that’s the name of a smallish antelope. https://youtu.be/C75qEZTiK0g
Eriksen isn’t good at characters. Bwaha. Eriksen can’t do female characters. Bwahahaha. Eriksen doesn’t do humour. Bwahahahahaha. Never read a book review that desperately flailed around so cluelessly.
Ok, @malkav11 and @ArmandoPenblade… I will buy the first two books and read them over summer.
I’m not sure they will be for me (I’m really picky on prose quality) but if they are at least bearable I will most likely persevere, since I do not like leaving stuff unread (only series I’ve had to drop so far due to abysmal writing quality has been the Expanse, and I did get like 6 books in or so, and hated it from book one).
Oh dear. I would rate the writing on The Expanse as very good to great, so…