Quote:
Originally Posted by Geralt
What I and many others noticed among the people who read almost exclusively fantasy is that when it comes to Malazan a peculiar thing happens. Some people like the series from the book 1. Those people tend to enjoy odd number books, #3, #5 in the series.
Other people really start liking the series from book 2, and they end up liking even number books.
It's quite weird but this seems to be the pattern. At one point the plots obviously converge, but it definitely happens for the first half of the series.
It is also worth mentioning that Book 1 was written about 10 years before the book 2, and anybody who has read them can easily tell that they are quite different. I personally enjoyed the heck out of book 2, while book 1 didn't really impress me much. Imo, Erikson really got better at writing in those 10 years.
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I really liked the Book of the Fallen and for the record I did not read any of the Esselmont books in-between.
I wonder if the odd/even book preference is because of the characters. Until everything comes together near the end, odd books follow one thread and a host of characters while even books follow a second thread with a second host of characters.
I actually enjoyed all the books and count books 2 and 3 as among the most depressing I've read, haha. The whole series is definitely darker than most fantasy but 2 and 3 were a step above.