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Ccs posted:Just finished the first book last month, good stuff. I got kind of annoyed with how prevalent magic is in the world, because most edgy fantasy these days (like A Song of Ice and Fire, The First Law, or the manga Berserk) has magic as a thing not many people believe is real or really know about. In Malazan it's just everywhere and some of the lore behind in all just seems excessive. I also felt the first book suffered from too much explanations of magic and history and not enough of making the characters seem three dimensional. I hardly felt anything for Paran even though he's basically the main character. And the ending with that magic tree thing that weakens the Jaghut tyrant and then turns into a house? What the hell was that about? Some characters are just more sympathetic than others. Ganoes Paran starts off as a spoiled merchant's son who's just been rapidly promoted through the system because of Daddy's money/influence. Is it any wonder you struggle to feel for him at first? As the series goes on, characters become far more rounded. Be prepared to later feel sorry for guys you used to hate. You may even end up rooting for some of them! As for the spoiler, The Jaghut's power / part of his soul was stored in the acorn. The Jaghut wanted it back, so he could return to his full self. Once it grew, it created an Azath, which you'll learn more about later. They are basically the Malazan universe's self defence mechanism though, growing from power in order to trap / contain powerful creatures. I won't go too far into the nature of the Azath, as they play a fair part in the later story. If you are more a low fantasy fan, you'll love the next book. While there is magic / magicians, the main storyline is following a bunch of mostly non magical soldiers escorting a huge bunch of refugees across a hostile, rebelling continent. Some of the best characters in it are pretty much 100% non-magical.
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Mar 2, 2011 07:59
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Habibi posted:Soo....I assume this probably gets expounded on later, but - did that short bit on QB early on suggest that he's at least part-Andii? Because if so I'm going to be telling a lot of people, "I told you so!" Nope. Nothing more is said beyond that. So maybe he is, maybe he isn't. I guess we have to wait and see! It does seem likely though.
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Mar 2, 2011 18:50
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A Nice Boy posted:Well, as we've said in the past, it never describes Quick as being Andii-like at all. It just says that he's black, along with Kalam and most of the other denizens of Seven Cities. Whereas the Andii are very specifically described as being midnight or onyx colored...Pretty big difference, I figure. Given that Quick has (early series spoiler, I guess?) 6 other souls in him. it's entirely possible one of those was Andii. That said, my understanding wasn't that he was (early TCG spoiler)Andii as such. He referred to Mother Dark as Mother, and spoke of Father. I can only assume that she was his mother in the same way she was Rake's. As for his father, who is "doing his own thing" or something (from memory here. I know it's made clear he's active) it seems likely that Draconus is the man. After all, he's active, was cozy with MD for a while, and has powerful mage kids already. So my reasoning is that one of Quick's souls is actually the son of MD and Draconus. He may be Tiste, or may not. After all, with MD as mummy and an elder god as daddy, who knows WHAT the offspring would "naturally" look like?
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Mar 2, 2011 21:12
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Nigulus Rex posted:I obviously haven't read tCG, but I don't feel like if one of his souls was Andii, and in fact the son of a Draconus/MD coupling, that he would have agreed to join Quick Ben's "body." That kind of mage would be incredibly powerful, and it'd be logical that they would all join HIM, and not vice versa. I also can't see how the bridgeburners could possibly chase down and kill members of that 'cabal' in the desert prior to the series if one of them was essentially a god ling. So what I guess I am saying is that I disagree with your theory. Though with the wording 'mother' and such that you cite from tCG, I feel like while I still disagree with your theory, it is obviously touching close enough to the issue to make me super curious to know Well, (early to mid series spoiler)Ben Delat was the weakest magically, but youngest, of the 7 people who set into the desert. One of the others was a mage who had made Dassem retreat a step in a sword fight, for instance. I believe there was some speculation that one was Toblokai. My theory is that Delat was the host because he was the least conspicuous. Some of those souls clearly wanted somewhere to hide out. As for the Bridgeburners not being able to hunt them down, we've seen many a time before that the most powerful ascendant can have the game turned on them, and mortals are ultimately the biggest danger to even an Elder god. Habibi posted:*snip* What I meant is he had 7 souls in him, that we know of. Those being his own soul and the souls of the other 6 people he went into the desert with. 6 being his extra souls, not including his own.
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Mar 2, 2011 22:40
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My bad on Quick. When I spoke of him having (MoI spoiler)7 souls, I got confused. It's 12 souls, 7 warrens at a time.
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Mar 3, 2011 11:21
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A Nice Boy posted:Oh, brilliant, can't believe I didn't get that. That asked, I think this ending was way less confusing than some of his other ones. As I said, great stuff...So many crazy emotional moments at the end, I felt almost exausted after reading it. In a good way. BEst thing is, that explanation is the spoiler I forgot to spoil that you read. And still didn't get it! :')
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Mar 4, 2011 01:31
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Teenagers posted:Started reading tCG, gave up after the first couple of chapters because I couldn't remember who the gently caress I was reading about. I'm not really into fantasy or w/e, but this series is rad. o.O It's only been just over a year since the last book. In fact, there have never been any huge gaps. I can understand not remembering the odd name, but you really couldn't remember lots of the people in the beginning of The Crippled God?
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Mar 4, 2011 06:18
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Tooter posted:Yeah, I totally understand. I started the books 2 months ago because of this thread. Prior to that I had never even heard of them. I also spoil things for myself all the time. If I see a black box I have to mouse over and see what it says, it's like telling me not to look down. This thread just sticks to the spoiler tags unlike any other I've been in. I think the Wheel of Time thread had a month long redaction period after the last book came out and then once it was lifted no black boxes anywhere. The thing is, most Wheel of Time readers are caught up with the series. It's out there. Everyone knows it. Malazan is still a well kept secret in some parts of the world though. Here in the UK it's semi-big news (below Martin or Pratchet, and a million miles below Rowling in terms of coverage, but equal or above the rest) when a new one comes out. Even here though, there are still plenty of fans that haven't read the series. On top of that, I'm reading Wheel of Time now myself. I gave up on it when I was a teenager, so decided to actually start again and catch up 10 years later and see how it panned out. I can probably predict 80% of the book after the first few chapters. There's certainly no question of who's good and who's bad. There isn't, in truth, much worth spoiling. The Malazan world, however, is just... Realistic. Meet an utter rear end in a top hat and he may be a future big bad. Or he may just be having a bad day, and be a future sympathetic character, or hero. Or it may even be that the point of view you are following just dislikes him for some reason. Keeping it fairly unspoilerish, a good example would be Anomander Rake. At first glance, he's definitely being set up to be the series badguy. And if this was Wheel of Malazan, he would have been.
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Mar 5, 2011 11:45
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The Saddest Robot posted:Just finished TCG at 2am. Yeah, it's definitely more a series finale type deal rather than a Lord of the Rings style "And afterwards, here's a summary of everything that happens to everyone else until their lines die out in 20,000 years time". While I don't doubt the story has finished for the vast majority of characters, some of the real power players are still left as enigmas, ready to reveal more over subsequent series.
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Mar 6, 2011 12:48
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Evfedu posted:Didn't care about Karsa I hope you are ready to change that opinion! I think most of us were a bit put off by him at first.
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Mar 6, 2011 21:27
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I don't think anyone in the series can come even close to Kallor when it comes to suffering. Other than perhaps The Crippled God himself. Not that it isn't deserved, but still.
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Mar 15, 2011 23:45
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HampHamp posted:Just finished The Crippled God, loving awesome. The last 300 pages or so are just phenomenal, could not put the book down. And where, or rather who/what, is the throne of shadow? My pet theory right now, which may not survive a re-read, is that edgewalker is the Throne of Shadow.
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Apr 4, 2011 01:05
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the periodic fable posted:it was also a final nail in that he was not the real Redmask as they had thought, but an impostor not just an imposter, but worse yet one of the enemy.
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Apr 4, 2011 17:52
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Boogle posted:TCG spoilersIf anything Calm should've been one of the characters involved in the Karsa trilogy instead of being decapitated by Ubala Pung. Another big fat hint about the nature of Karsa's destiny when she was freed by Karsa back in House of Chains, it was another plot-thread that could've been picked up. Instead it was wasted. I wouldn't say it was wasted... I think it was meant to be a statement of sorts. It was very, very deliberate. From what I make out, with her thinking it's Karsa at first, her predictions that she'd be his downfall, and her asking his friends to betray him, only for them to end up in a position to do just that in the most lethal way, I think it's a statement on destiny. On how we're not tied to it. Nothing can ever truly be forseen. We all know she'd face Karsa, his sword would shatter as his friends "stood aside", and she'd quite possibly kill him. Instead we have her killed, and not even by Karsa himself but rather a follower of his. It's both a comment on destiny and one final word on the whole "old vs new" theme that's ran through the series. The meanest mofo from a few thousand years ago might wake up to find itself barely a threat in the new world.
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Apr 8, 2011 00:18
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Junk Science posted:I like the part where that guy turns into a dragon and eats people. To a dragon, pretty much anyone is
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Apr 11, 2011 23:01
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the periodic fable posted:approx. at book six or seven? Don't lie to him. Things become clear in about 8 years time, after we've read the prequel and sequel trilogies, the ICE saga and the Encyclopedia Malazanica.
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Apr 12, 2011 11:15
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silly posted:I read the first Bakker book but he lost me when a demon started cumming black semen everywhere. uh-oh! Someone's not going to like the first of the prequel books in the Malazan series then, when we get to see Mother Dark and and Father Dark make some baby Tiste!
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Apr 14, 2011 21:27
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:And the epilogue of DH has a Wickan child being born or conceived (been too long) as crows fly over. Not quite either... a pregnant woman had been told her baby had no soul so would die in childbirth or miscarry. Then the crows came and she felt him move. The idea is he filled a soulless body, rather than kicking a soul out and possessing a baby.
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Apr 23, 2011 15:12
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"HppyCmpr" posted:I highly recommend this series of books; both the ones written by SE and ICE. Bit of a controversial opinion to be coming round these parts with!
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May 16, 2011 16:04
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Levitate posted:Well, and they're talking about Holds instead of Houses and stuff like that and the impression you get from earlier books is that Holds were kind of the primitive version of Houses and all of that, and they talked about Holds all the time until Iron Bars suddenly shows up and you're like "wait, he knows about "modern" magic and poo poo how could that be the case if this took place a long time ago" Up until we start looking in on the Malazan world, that entire continent has been pretty much totally isolated from the others for a long time. Plus there is some funky magic poo poo going down anyway, which gets explained later. It's not set in the past, it's just kept pretty primitive thanks to isolation / other factors.
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Jun 5, 2011 23:48
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LtSmash posted:Yeah. I really liked how the pinnacle of ancient magic weapons doesn't just give +2 to hit but instead turns the wielder into an all but unstoppable threshing machine. It wasn't just the sword. I mean, we know that historically there was an army of Hust-blade wielders. The fact that he's The Watch also has something to do with it I'd imagine.
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Jun 6, 2011 10:44
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when Shadowthrone (TCG)
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WeWereSchizo posted:It's like Dragnipur or Vengeance/Grief. The sword itself has power, but it goes to a whole new level when it's in the hand of the right wielder. And god drat that son of a bitch is awesome. Comparing a Hust blade to those weapons is a bit like saying TNT is a little like a nuclear warhead. Sure they both make things go boom... the periodic fable posted:Many people who read this series have read the Chronicles of the Black Company and maybe they want to discover it for themselves. Is it a big deal for you? I wouldn't say that his name is a huge spoiler? He's the narrator of the first series isn't he? That's a little like saying "GOTM Spoiler: The wax witch talking to the fisher girl gets killed by a soldier! edit: Actually It's far worse. It's like saying GOTM spoiler: There's a Captain named Whiskeyjack, and he leads the bridgeburners.
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Jun 7, 2011 17:26
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Thats actually wrong. No need for spoilers here but it's named after napoleons book of the fallen. A list of soldiers who died in his war.
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Jun 9, 2011 12:24
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:Everyone speaks with the same voice. Every character feels the same but with a different backstory, and none of them feel developed. You can describe nearly every single character with a five word sentence fragment. Kruppe, Tehol, Pust, Whiskeyjack, Fiddler and Rake all speak with the same voice? o.O They have one hell of a vocal range then.
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Jul 4, 2011 08:28
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LtSmash posted:There are very good characters that I found both distinctive and engaging. But there are also characters that were pretty flat and you wouldn't notice much if they were shuffled around except for the names. It kinda comes with the territory of a vast story and world that you see from so many points of view. I think Erikson is a great writer and I love his work, but he wasn't quite good enough to pull off so many points of view distinctly. He probably would have done better if he cut the lesser points of view and focused on developing the weaker remaining ones more. This would have also cut the sprawl that popped up in the latter books which would have made it tighter overall. I'm either misunderstanding your claim, or it's totally bogus from my perspective. Are you telling me that Kruppe the character could have delivered Whiskeyjack's lines and led the bridgeburners? That Pust acts and speaks the way that Rake does, and would have been fine as the leader of the Andii rather than high magi / priest of shadow? Ganoes Paran couldn't have led the bonehunters. Tavore would have been totally out of place in Whiskeyjack's place in book 3. No-one but Coltaine could have played out the Chain of Dogs storyline. None of the major characters could have been shuffled. Some of the minor ones may have worked in different roles, but the stars of the series were distinct. The only swap I could see working would have been Pust and Shadowthrone.
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Jul 4, 2011 10:12
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Abalieno posted:Just because they talk funny doesn't make them swappable. And they even talk funny in completely different ways. They also think funny. I'm not entirely convinced that Pust isn't a stretching of Shadowthrone, just like that priest of shadow in Stonewielder.
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Jul 4, 2011 22:06
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Abalieno posted:I only read Night of Knives, which is passable and not particularly striking. Return of the Crimson Guard was very much early to mid Erikson-esque. Stonewielder was a bit of a step backwards though. If we're listing the worst Malazan World books, they'd probably be (worst to best) Night of Knives, Stonewielder, Gardens of the Moon. RotCG would probably be closer to the top of the list than the bottom, somewhere solidly mid table.
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Sep 11, 2011 17:02
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WeWereSchizo posted:You mean where he turns out to be the high priest of Kurald Galain, an ascendent soletaken on equal footing with Anomander Rake, and he's been using his influence to put Whiskeyjack on the imperial throne? One thing I have to ask... FULL SERIES SPOILER. DO NOT READ UNTIL DONE! Are you sure none of it is true? I mean, he's a former high priest of Meanas, but he's also something more, something much more linked to Kurald Galain itself, as we see when he appears in the start of Crippled God. He's also a soletaken, could quite possibly be on the same sort of footing as Anomander, and who knows what his real plans have been, what he's been using his influence to move towards? At one time putting Whiskeyjack on the throne probably was a plan of his. As for Ascendent, between all the various souls in him at least one would have been right from the start, whatever the tiste or pre-tiste hiding in him (the one that called Mother Dark mother and Draconus Father in Crippled God) is, it must be either an ascendent or something more. Plus he's a bridgeburner, and we know what happens to them! Before we say goodbye to the world of the Malazan Book of the Fallen once and for all, I'd be careful when claiming Quickben ISN'T anything.
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Sep 14, 2011 01:19
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A Nice Boy posted:Someone recently asked Erikson in one of the fan interviews if there are enough hints in the entire series to determine what Quick Ben is. I think it's quite clear, especially given that di'ivers human mage in RotCG, that Quick Ben is Di'ivers god. All gods are merely a part of him, split. When he sembles back into his main the world becomes an atheist paradise.
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Sep 14, 2011 11:11
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pakman posted:I picked up Gardens of the Moon at the library yesterday, and got through the first chapter before I passed out last night (it was a long day). I like how it dumps you in the middle of a revolution(?). I assume that things will become clearer later, like why the blue woman assassinated the Emperor, and who the Claw are, etc. I am liking it so far. The small scale (yes, the biggest empire around is small scale!) stuff is cleared up, but even bigger mysteries replace them. Even having finished the series there are HUGe mysteries future books will uncover.
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Sep 24, 2011 19:39
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WeWereSchizo posted:I hope it covers his visit to the island of the Seguleh. Just needs like a single chapter. I kind of hope it glosses over that. We've already heard that story.
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Oct 3, 2011 10:57
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Victorkm posted:Some of Ben's origin story is in Memories of Ice. But as to his actual question, there isn't enough information in the entire series to actually answer that. :p
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Oct 4, 2011 18:54
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I'd suggest alternating between Dresden and Malazan. I find Malazan (even rereads) need me needing something lighter when I'm done, while Dresden is a blast, but sort of cleans the palate and leaves me ready for more malazan. If you start with a dresden, you can read the 3 weaker books (first two Dresdens, first Malazan) and get them over with, then really have a blast.
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Oct 15, 2011 23:14
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33rd Degree Idiot posted:On-topic: What do you think QB's ##### is? And who do you think his parents are? Forgive me if this has been covered ad nauseam. This is a big thread. Whole series spoilers... Ben Delat himself isn't a mystery. We've seen his childhood and met his sister. He was a normal, albeit magical and good with his string magic, boy. The mystery is who else is hitching a ride inside him. We know that the mages he went into the desert with gave him their souls, and that they included a toblakai who drove dassem back a step in combat and something who calls mother dark mom and draconus dad. As far as that goes, who knows? His soultaken form? My latest guess is di'ivers human like that Mage in return of the crimson guard. I think having more of himself put away in a safe place (like the spar of andii) is his ultimate shaved knuckle. Masonity fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Oct 17, 2011 |
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Oct 17, 2011 09:24
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Vanilla Mint Ice posted:Just soldier through it, hopefully soon you'll start picking up names of people and slowly begin to see the picture unfold. Yeah, Midnight Tides seems like the worst book ever when you start it. Who the gently caress are these people, and why should I care about them? Get me back to the characters I know and love! Then, bit by bit, you start to realise that it's actually one of the best books in the series.
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Oct 21, 2011 12:08
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I have to admit, it is real weird and unrealistic for a bunch of sentient beings to decide another bunch that look different ALL need to die, because a few of them wronged them. I mean, it's not like human history, the very thing Erikson draws his inspiration from, is littered with genocides, is it?
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Oct 27, 2011 20:34
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I wish I'd read the books in Ebook first. Toe the Younger is an awesome name. 
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Nov 24, 2011 17:43
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pakman posted:I wouldn't be surprised that I am. Now that I think about it, the woman from the prologue is now travelling with Toc and Tool and the two Goombas. Still confusing characters. Toc and Tool are with Spite or Envy, one of Draconus's daughters anyway. The three gods in the prologue were K'rul, Draconus and "Sister of Cold Nights", who we've also met. Don't worry, Memories of Ice is, in part, about said woman. I can't remember if you are told, should have assumed by now or would simply be spoiled by more information, so I won't say anything more. If you're still confused at the end, just say. 
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Dec 12, 2011 10:01
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savinhill posted:Yeah, I don't think Bakker was trying to copy Erikson at all. I said I like him for some of the same reasons as in both series have very deep world building and lots of philosophy. While Bakker doesn't have humor in his books like Erikson, I think his characterization and prose are better. Yeah, Bakker is "copying" Erikson in the sense that Erikson was one of the trailblazers in the whole "gritty adult fantasy is okay!" movement we've seen recently, opening the way for Bakker, Abercrombie and the like to follow... But beyond that they are pretty much polar opposites. I like Bakker, but he can be a little heavy at times, and more than a little disturbed. On the other side, while Erikson can do serious, there's usually an undercurrent of comedy, even if it's only comedy in the tragic greek sense.
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Dec 12, 2011 10:05
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Think of them less as gods and more as kickass characters. :-p
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Dec 12, 2011 15:07
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