Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen

[AndrewH]

Thank you. Aecardenas, that was a great review and gives me a little more insight into why people like this series so much. Dune, (Frank Herbert's books, not Brian Herbert's) is one of my all-time favorites. The Dune universe was incredibly complex, but at no time was I ever confused as to what was going on. While I don't need to be spoon-fed exposition every step of the way, I don't think a tiny bit is a bad thing.

I'm going to abandon Gardens of the Moon for now. I'll try again in a year or two.

[H.P. Lovesauce]

100 pages? Bravo! I gave up after the seventh A'po'strophi'zed Ap'pelati'o'n in the prologue.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by H.P. Lovesauce

100 pages? Bravo! I gave up after the seventh A'po'strophi'zed Ap'pelati'o'n in the prologue.

Apostropocalypse?

[H.P. Lovesauce]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Apostropocalypse?

Oh my god, we need a new entry for the Turkey City Lexicon. Brilliant!

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by H.P. Lovesauce

Oh my god, we need a new entry for the Turkey City Lexicon. Brilliant!

I can't claim it.
I got it from Neal Stephenson's REAMDE.

[aecardenas]

Originally Posted by AndrewH

Thank you. Aecardenas, that was a great review and gives me a little more insight into why people like this series so much. Dune, (Frank Herbert's books, not Brian Herbert's) is one of my all-time favorites. The Dune universe was incredibly complex, but at no time was I ever confused as to what was going on. While I don't need to be spoon-fed exposition every step of the way, I don't think a tiny bit is a bad thing.

I'm going to abandon Gardens of the Moon for now. I'll try again in a year or two.

Yeah, I will be the first to admit that Erikson's narrative is incredibly dense and complex. He's one of those writers who will put in a crucial detail in a sentence, and then bury that same sentence in a deluge of other details and descriptions. The result being that you might actually misunderstand a very important scene later on down the line because you had the misfortune of skimming over a tiny sentence.

it is definitely a series that requires repeated reading for fuller and deeper knowledge and appreciation. I liken it to reading Finnegans Wake or Ulysses, books that have its own logic and language and eccentricities. I'm one of those people who gets pleasure from finding unexpected treasures hidden deep inside a labyrinth prose.

[Gandulf]

6 years later and the question is did they try again.

Definitely 1 of my favourite series. But yes you have to be patient.

[philandjan]

I also felt like giving up early but persevered, hoping that either it would get better or I would have a cataclysmic experience where, suddenly, all things to do with magic, wizards, seers, witches suddenly became clear.

Sadly, that moment of everything clicking into place never happened and, to this day, I couldn't write a synopsis of the book other than "some forms of magic are more powerful than others and don't mess with anybody who is either dead, 1,000 years old or claims to be a magician but doesn't wear a pointy hat or doesn't come from Ankh-Morpork".

I might return to the second book when my subscription to the Magic Circle comes through!

[kyrilson]

I've never understood why people find Gardens of the Moon to be a difficult read. I think it's because they're expecting it to be the typical fantasy novel with the farm boy and contain all the typical fantasy tropes and have the stupid typical characters explaining to each other how the world works. Erikson's work isn't that way. He writes the world in a way that's more like real life. Meaning, you're in the middle of it and you're not seeing the full picture, you're just seeing bits and pieces and you have to infer what you can from what you read/take in. The passage of history isn't really about one hero saving the world like a lot of your typical fantasy, it's really about many players, some small, some a bit bigger and a lot of moving pieces moving around a massive world. That's Malazan in a nutshell. A lot of people can't seem to handle it. I loved the series because of that. It's completely original, and when you're reading it and something clicks in book 7 that you remember reading about back in book 3 or so, it's an amazing experience.

[Gandulf]

Originally Posted by kyrilson

It's completely original, and when you're reading it and something clicks in book 7 that you remember reading about back in book 3 or so, it's an amazing experience.

Agree. Definitely 1 of my favourite series.

[Luffy]

Originally Posted by kyrilson

Erikson's work isn't that way. He writes the world in a way that's more like real life.

People aren't used to real life in books. They're used to verisimilitude. For a book that dabbles in real life, the Malazan series have incurred considerable income for the author, given that other books that try to buckle normal books, eg Mrs Dalloway and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man are not popular books by most standards. In your haste to absolve Erikson from 'blame', you did the Fantasy genre a disservice by limiting it to the farm boy trope. We all know, and expect, Fantasy books to be more diverse than that.

[Bricorn]

I normally get through 2-3 books a week. This series took me 6 months. Huge, and hard reading - vast arrays of characters, many having more than one hard-to-pronounce name, most of whom have back stories that may be explained in detail, current and past character interactions & deeds have big effects on the current plot(S), sometimes.

Stable-boy finds magic sword and becomes king, it is not.

I'm glad I read it, but I will never reread it, I burnt the copies and buried the ashes in assorted corners of the world in case I was ever tempted. Or I would have if I wasn't using eBooks.