I’m just happy that Fiddler made it all the way through.
Ahhh, finished it last night myself. What a way to go out. I liked how the Bonehunter’s story wrapped up, and their final stands and the pulling together of all of those threads over the series at the end.
Things I liked:
- The little reveal that the 14th daughter’s handmaiden was a Seguleh.
- Gesler and Stormy’s final battle with the help of Bent.
- The elder god adopted by Roach.
- The happy ending for Tool and Onrack. The two T’lan Imass we knew the best and they ended up alright.
- Just a lot of the little endings and finishes for the characters.
I am looking forward to seeing what they have in store for the closure of Darujhistan and the Kallor storyline. As annoying as Kruppe is, I do enjoy his interactions with the powers of the Malazan world.
What’s going to happen now to Caladan Brood and his hammer? I’m assuming now Burn can awaken, now that she’s no longer needed to keep the Crippled God chained.
The nice little ending for Crokus and Apsalar was nice, but kinda tacked on.
Shadowthrone’s game isn’t done yet, it felt like the implication was at the end of the book. He’s got more he’s up to for sure.
Is it just me or did Draconius not fulfill the end of his bargain to free the three Eleint chained to his sword after their fight with the Orratal dragon?
Looking forward to see where Erikson and Esselmont cover next. Assail. Darujhistan. Karsa’s quest. The remaining pieces of the Chained God that didn’t take part in his rebirth - are these going to be a problem?
I always thought Burn awakening early and killing the crippled god is just one more solution to the problem. It was not his infection that would destroy the world when she wakes up. Any awakening of Burn will result in reshaping of the world and ending of all life.
Right…the CG’s infection was killing Burn through proximity, not intention. Brood was faced with the choice between waking her up to cure herself and destroy the world in the process or permitting her to die in her sleep.
I think he only had two chained to his sword at the end, there were 7 of them in total, the two being the two undead lizard sisters.
Also, this was Silichas Ruin with the triple dragon sword - Shadowthrone passed it over to him as part of his scheming. Draconus has a Draginpur Mk 2 sword made out of capital D Darkness or something ridiculous like that.
As far as I can tell there are two trilogies planned by Erikson; one to deal with the Karsa situation and one to cover Karkanas and much of the Tiste history. I wouldn’t be surprised if he takes a bit of a break before writing these.
Meanwhile, Esslemont has three more books to go in his run of six; one is the Darujistan versus Kallor situation, one is presumably going to cover the continent of Assail (which I’m guessing might be where Skinner has gone) which leaves one last one which I think is set to be a round up novel to tie up some of the other loose ends from The Crippled God.
I am really sad that he is writing these - I am more interested in these topics than the others, but I am not a huge fan of Esslemont’s writing.
Agreed, I really don’t like his writing compared to Erikson.
I’m a bit concerned that Assail isn’t going to live up to the hype. What do we know about it?
- The humans that live there are kicking T’lan Imass butt.
- The three brothers(?) that hung around in Return of the Crimson Guard were from Assail
- The CG fell there (I think?)
- Skinner’s there and, presumably, the much-hyped Ardata
Terrible.
I read this whole series and here’s my feelings on it:
Erickson does his absolute best to avoid any sort of hint of a logical rule or consistency to the universe. The Jaghut in the barrow from the first book was beaten, bloodied, physically and magically torn apart by a real dragon and could keep healing himself - without help from his Finnest. Sometimes ascendants or other superbeings fight like this, other times they die from superbly mundane blows. Sometimes they stay dead, other times this merely makes them more ascendant, or come back as undead, or stay inside a sword a few nights before coming back.
The Crippled God is killed why, again? You have two fucking epilogues and you don’t manage to address this single obvious question?
Of course you can’t, because nothing else in the series makes sense. Everything is lampshaded - the lack of an actual plan (and the inability to explain how it came together). What the fucking point of Grub was, if any. Same with Sinn. They just do random stuff at random times when it’s convenient for the author.
The character names are terrible. They’re not memorable or distinct, and yet absolutely stupid at the same time. Who or what is Skinner? I can’t remember and sure as hell can’t be bothered to go back and check. Why does one of the Bonehunters have fond memories of Leboric of the Flails? I might tell you if I remembered his name, and more importantly, if he the name was associable with other actions the character might have taken.
Who the hell is Apsalara (yes I know, mistress of thieves) and where the fuck did she come from? Why is she mentioned? She’s done nothing the whole time. Is she in any way related to Apsalar? And why did useless Crokus even get a mention in the book? Whiny emo boy took up valuable pages that could be used to have Cotillion explain to Shadowthrone why he decided to kill the Crippled God for no apparent reason.
I’m so fucking tired of desert strolls turning boring, mundane characters into demigods. I get it, Steve, you secretly want to be a Bedouin.
Did we ever get a resolution to Mother Dark/Father Light? Nope, just another stupid battle. Wait, never mind a resolution, how about the actual fucking story? And when did Osserc die?
Wasn’t Mother Dark at the heart of Dragnipur? Wasn’t this well-established (or rather, as well-established as Erikson allows anything to establish itself)? Because I clearly remember Rake freeing Mother Dark from Dragnipur. Where does Draconus come up with a second Dragnipur?
Ever notice how there are no useful Malazan Wikis, in contrast to any other worthwhile fantasy series? That’s because nobody knows what, exactly, is fucking going on in these books, and if there ever is a consensus on it, we sure as hell aren’t ever going to find out why it happened.
Yeah - the online presence for this series is particularly bad. Also, it seems like you should’ve stopped shy of ten books in.
Yeah, I can’t believe you read all ten if you hated them that much :)
Most of the stuff you asked abut is actually explained, bar the exact reason why the Crippled God was killed.
GOTM was written a long while before the other books, was originally a movie script and was probably written with little hope of extending it to a ten book epic. Lots of it is therefore pretty inconsistent with the rest of the series. One of the most glaring examples to me, that he tries to explain a bit in The Crippled God, is the sudden change from ruthless to sympathetic of the shadow gods - particularly Cottilon. They start the books by massacring whole towns of innocents merely to cover their trail and end up helping out people in trouble and crying at injustice.
Even despite this, power levels are generally a bit wonky in the books you can nail down some rough approximates: Anomander Rake > Elder Gods > New Gods > Dragons > Jaghut > Forkrul Assail > K’Chain Che’Malle > T’lan Imass > Tiste races > Humans, but that power balance is going to be thrown out of whack by unique individuals, super powered weapons and the tendency for their to be far more of the weaker sorts. For Erikson though drama trumps power level nerdery every time so if it makes a good scene to have a human kill an elder god you better believe he’s going to put that in.
Grub is on a mini character arc to become the First Sword of the Malazan empire in the future. One of his unique powers seems to be to get anyone to trust him and believe in him including Sinn, he also gets super knowledge from somewhere. Sinn is possessed by the elemental force of fire. I think what they both represent by the end is different reactions to childhood trauma. Sinn was raped during the rebellion in Seven Cities and her damage makes her unpredictable and violent towards the world she sees only the worst. Grub on the other hand picks a different path he wants to help, he sees the best in people.
The character names are terrible. They’re not memorable or distinct, and yet absolutely stupid at the same time. Who or what is Skinner? I can’t remember and sure as hell can’t be bothered to go back and check. Why does one of the Bonehunters have fond memories of Leboric of the Flails? I might tell you if I remembered his name, and more importantly, if he the name was associable with other actions the character might have taken.
Skinner is a big character in the Esselmont books, he’s the baddest mofo in the Crimson Guard and currently leads the rebellious faction in the guard. During the course of the Esslemont books he was named the King of the house of chains and also grabbed a chunk of The Crippled God out from Korel during Stonewielder. Because of the Crippled God connection a lot of people thought he might turn up in this book. You’d definitely remember him if you’d read the Esslemont books.
Corrab has fond memories of Leoman of the flails because he was his number two during the last days of the rebellion when Leoman set fire to Y’Ghatan. Ultimately Corrab defected to the Malazan’s because he didn’t agree with Leoman’s plan. He has gradually become more and more integrated with the Malazans despite initially believing they were evil foreign scum. He also might be blessed by Oppon as he seems to miraculously save himself and others despite general incompetence several times.
Apsalara was trapped in Draginpur by Rake reluctantly after she attacked him when he caught her in Moon’s Spawn. She was eventually released at around the same time Draginpur came crashing down. She had a lot of time to think in Draginpur like most of it’s inhabitants and came to respect Rake enormously and regret some of her thieving actions. I think most of this background was in Toll of the Hounds where she was a viewpoint character. So she turns up in this book to atone for her past and use her powers for good rather than thievery.
He does like his never ending hikes against impossible odds.
Erikson is writing a new trilogy about the Tiste races explaining the fall of Kharkanas and the turning away of Mother Dark/Father light. So the resolution of this subplot is somewhat delayed. I don’t think Osserc/Osric is dead, he is just refusing to get involved in anything, especially not in being a god to the Tiste Liosian last we saw him he was hiding out in a secret warren.
As far as I understand it Draginpur represented the gateway from chaos to darkness/the rest of ordered reality. Once Mother Dark turned away the gate was effectively open for business. Draconus’ idea to save ordered reality from chaos was to simply keep moving the gate further away from chaos but to do that he needed powerful souls to keep the gate moving. Draginpur was the result of this central idea.
Rake realised that Draconus was a terrible person to go round picking souls so he took on that burden himself. At some point Draconus also realises that it was a terrible idea and comes to respect Rake’s decision. Rake does his sacrifice and gets Mother Dark to come back so the gate is now secure once again.
When Draconus is set free from Draginpur he is a somewhat reformed character having had a lot of time to think and develop his respect for Rake. When he arrives back the first thing he does is make a new super sword out of darkness using his elder god kung fu - I’m guessing with the approval of Mother Dark this time and I’m certain it grants a more peaceful death as well.
I always enjoyed the magic of there being some mysteries left unexplained. However this forums’ very own HRose claims to have figured everything out and got the nod from Steve himself so if you have any more questions I’d send a PM to him.
Grub is an ascendant created by the bonehunters, at least that’s the impression Crippled God gave me.
I thought he was more general than that a sort of Malazan common soldier ascendant, he was birthed in the chain of dogs after all.
One of the threads running through the books was that “Malazan common soldier” was something of an oxymoron. Their army was more-or-less ascended already, no other army could do the things they did, etc. The Bridgeburners getting there officially was more of sealing an already-done deal as well as things like Stormy and Gesler being the ones to survive the “annealing” process during that long-ago warren detour with the dragon fly-by.
Do any of the Esselmont/etc. side branches go into Icarium’s whole deal? I would have liked a bit more origin and history detail there, whether he was always another bit of embodied Chaos, or shaped that way by the less-than-benevolent minders circling around him originally.
AFAIK Icarium hasn’t yet shown up in an Esslemont book but I suspect he might in the last one. However his origin story is handed out piecemeal throughout the books. Essentially his dad (the ubiquitous Gothos) decided to become the guardian of an Azath but didn’t bother explaining what he was doing to his son. Icarium misunderstands and thinks that the Azath has captured his dad in that way they do. As a result he flips out and tries to destroy the Azath in question with his Jaghut powers. He manages to severely damage the Azath but doesn’t destroy it and he in turn gets at least some of his mental damage courtesy of the Azath. He was also involved in the shattering of Kurald Emurlahn in some way at around this time which may have unbalanced him further. He now has the problem where his memory wipes completely whenever he goes into a rage and his rage is apocalyptic. It’s possible there will be more Icarium details on this part in Erikson’s Kharkanas trilogy.
Anyway, this is where the Nameless ones come in assigning Icarium a series of guardians to limit the damage Icarium is able to do and also to control him and use him as a weapon. At some point in the series of guardians is Mappo unfortunately for the Nameless ones he starts a bromance and the Nameless ones lose any control they had over Icarium which is what prompts them to steal him back when they have need of him again.
Er yeah, the chain of dogs, that’s what I meant.
Ah ha, I’d forgotten about the Gothos connection; hazards of the piecemeal thing doled out over a few years. (At some point I need to take a deep breath and read the whole shebang from the start again.) Icarium’s was one of my favorite threads through the books overall, and Mappo’s end was satisfyingly grim; it was nice that he had a full moment of clarity of just how thoroughly dysfunctional his part in the relationship was. (Very tangential: that scene also made me realize that the reason the Assail were so bendy was because their peripheral vision is terrible.)
I lost some love for Icarium in TCG. In the earlier books, he was the Erikson version of the Incredible Hulk, wandering aimlessly around the world. He’d periodically Hulk out, smash a bunch of things, and then wander down the road trying to hitch a ride while sad music played. Then in the next episode, he’d smash something else. The madder he got, the stronger he got. It was a fun little trope, right up to the point where he fought Trull.
Then in the last book he’s “a direct gateway to Chaos” or some such. Why do that to the guy? He doesn’t need some justification or excuse. He’s the Hulk. It took away from his personality and made him a bland part of the already-haphazard magic structure.
I’ve read every book in the series. In fact, I re-read them after Toll the Hounds (my favorite book, along with GotM). Well, not all of them. I couldn’t stomach Memories of Ice and one other one. Reaper’s Gale was really good, too, and I loved Tehol/Bugg in Midnight Tides. On the other hand, Chain of Dogs is terribly over-rated IMO and the whole time I’m reading the book, I’m translating Eriksenese to Smurfish: “I’M TRYING SO HARD TO BE MEGA EPIC! LOOK AT HOW HARD I’M TRYING! AND I ADD ABSURD NONSENSE ABOUT DOGS AND AN ARCHER TO SHOW THE HUMAN SIDE.” Yes, Smurfish is all caps.
As all the cool kids know, trying is the opposite of cool.
In many ways, TCG was like an Erikson convergence. The forces of evil got together - all of Erikson’s tryhardness and terrible descriptions and insultingly, blatantly vague conversations - he clearly doesn’t have the subtlety to mislead, at least without blatant switcharoos (Karsa vs Icarium). All he can do is obscure. Anyway, then all his good parts were there - two of the last three books were great and the last one wasn’t terrible.
So it comes all together like an Erikson convergence and it ends like an Erikson convergence. Vagueness, obscurement, flat out lying to the reader - but there’s an epic battle to be had. Which ends in one of the two typical Erikson endings - the drawn-out hack 'em with a twist (see: Bonehunters.) The other Erikson ending being a completely unexpected Moment of Badass beatdown, which he uses frequently even though it comes at great cost to the work as a whole (Anomander Rake vs. in GotM, Icarium vs. spear elf, Malazans vs. Silchas, etc.)
But, Dan, thank you for those explanations. I mean it, they were quite good. I don’t give Erikson enough credit to do the Grub/Sinn morality play, however. Erikson is already barely eeking past the bashing of western civilization with the Letherii (it felt, to me, like a particularly pointed attack at America.) Then again, maybe I just showed I’m out of my depth.