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I got a Kindle a bit ago and, based on your recommendations, I gave GotM a try. I'm going to quote this from the Sci-Fi/Fantasy thread because I still find it hilarious and I have been showing it to people when they asked me "hey, what are you reading": quote:Malazan grabbed me by the balls about a third of the way into the first book. It's just a specific flavour that some people love and some people hate. I enjoy books with a million characters and no idea what the gently caress, personally. Infinitely rereadable because there is no time wasted "introducing" people or "settling you in" or "explanations" or any of that pansy poo poo. Instead it's just like BAM THERE'S A WAR BAM IT'S 30 YEARS LATER BAM YOU ARE IN A FAT GUY'S DREAMS BAM A FLYING PYRAMID IS SHOOTING THINGS AT YOU FFFF I have to say, I'm just getting back into the whole "reading" business (I used to read quite a bit, but most of the things I wanted to read are just not published here, so now that I got a Kindle I have the world's largest backlog), and at first I found the whole "let's drop you in the middle of things" deal to be quite daunting; but Erikson pulls it off amazingly well, and you never feel "cheated" or "off the loop", if things are not quite clear it's because you're missing pieces of the puzzle that are going to be revealed later and it leads you really well into wanting to learn more about the world, the characters and just keep reading. I've read comments about how his writing starts getting better, so I really look forward to the following books. On this particular one: I was kind of expecting/hoping that Adjunct Lorne would get fed up (or finally snap) with being the Empress' Adjunct and just leave with Tool, ride to the sunset and show up again in a few books completely changed. Instead, she got shanked by a fat thief. Oh well. Kruppe: I have to admit, when I hit his first chapter I hated the fat bastard. Then he started growing on me, and suddenly wham, he's the Eel. And two chapters after that wham, he's facing down a Jaghut who just battled 5 dragons and telling him "well, now you're in my dream, and I'm going to gently caress you up". And after all that? He's still a jolly fat man who eats cake and is happy to see his friends. Oh, and I loved Circle Breaker getting his due for his loyalty. Oh, and finally, I loved when everyone in the book goes "Hood's breath..." and Whiskeyjack suddenly says "Hood's balls". I have no idea why that stuck, but It caught me by surprise and gained me some weird looks when I laughed in the bus. Sorry about the big spoiler block, I don't know how you guys are handling spoilers around here. I didn't read the whole thread for fear of spoiling myself, but wanted to come by and do a quick trip report.
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Jun 27, 2011 04:23
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Edmond Dantes posted:I got a Kindle a bit ago and, based on your recommendations, I gave GotM a try. Haha, the short lived Malazan wiki we goons tried to make was called "Hood's Balls." 
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Jun 27, 2011 08:02
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Edmond Dantes posted:Sorry about the big spoiler block, I don't know how you guys are handling spoilers around here. I didn't read the whole thread for fear of spoiling myself, but wanted to come by and do a quick trip report. 
Habibi fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Jun 27, 2011 |
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Jun 27, 2011 20:10
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Just finished House of Chains and I gotta say I'm getting pretty tired of this poo poo. Despite the fact there were a couple of plotlines going on I feel the book is intimately connected with Karsa Orlong's journey: Badass action-packed start, tortuous ages spent doing nothing whilst someone spouts endless pointless words at you leading to no real resolution making me question why I set out to read the drat book (or quest forth from my homeland, to continue the metaphor) in the first place. Seriously? One thousand and thirty four pages to establish a couple of characters? Ugh. Does it get better or worse from here on out?
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Jun 29, 2011 03:54
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Fargo Fukes posted:Just finished House of Chains and I gotta say I'm getting pretty tired of this poo poo. Despite the fact there were a couple of plotlines going on I feel the book is intimately connected with Karsa Orlong's journey: Badass action-packed start, tortuous ages spent doing nothing whilst someone spouts endless pointless words at you leading to no real resolution making me question why I set out to read the drat book (or quest forth from my homeland, to continue the metaphor) in the first place. Seriously? One thousand and thirty four pages to establish a couple of characters? Ugh. Book four was probably one of the weakest in the series, in my opinion, though I still loved it. Book 5 is a completely new cast of characters, and is the best in the series imo, book six is crazy badass, seven is damned good, and books 8-10 vary in quality depending on who you ask. To be honest, though, if you didn't like book 4 you probably won't want to bother finishing the series. Lots of people love em, but they dont change that much, so if you're hating it and that bored they're not going to change pace suddenly.
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Jun 29, 2011 04:04
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Yeah, you have to hang on until you get introduced to the Bonehunters, they're the most badass collection of characters in the series.
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Jun 29, 2011 04:10
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A Nice Boy posted:Book four was probably one of the weakest in the series, in my opinion, though I still loved it. Book 5 is a completely new cast of characters, and is the best in the series imo, book six is crazy badass, seven is damned good, and books 8-10 vary in quality depending on who you ask. Fair warning. There's plenty of stuff I've liked in the books so far; I don't think I put the book down for the whole Chain of Dogs. But I spent most of four waiting for the story to start. And then it ended.
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Jun 29, 2011 13:40
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Fargo Fukes posted:Just finished House of Chains and I gotta say I'm getting pretty tired of this poo poo. Despite the fact there were a couple of plotlines going on I feel the book is intimately connected with Karsa Orlong's journey: Badass action-packed start, tortuous ages spent doing nothing whilst someone spouts endless pointless words at you leading to no real resolution making me question why I set out to read the drat book (or quest forth from my homeland, to continue the metaphor) in the first place. Seriously? One thousand and thirty four pages to establish a couple of characters? Ugh. I enjoyed the series but it has its ups and downs, its also definitely not for everyone. I would say it gets worse from your perspective and that it isn't your thing so I would move on. If you want to give it another shot then Midnight Tides and The Bonehunters are better books but after that the series can be fairly uneven. A few of the later books especially are almost exactly what you disliked.
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Jun 29, 2011 15:18
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The Gunslinger posted:I would say it gets worse from your perspective and that it isn't your thing so I would move on. I have a similar perspective. I'm halfway through Midnight Tides, but House of Chains was the best book for me. Action != plot movement, and HoC was PACKED with revelations. The internal journeys of characters are also becoming the most significant part, so if a reader doesn't follow on that level then it's better to stop reading. Not sure how one can say that HoC is only introducing a couple of characters. It does almost everything on every level. Even making a list is almost impossible.
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Jun 29, 2011 21:39
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I'm really not fussed about more revelations about a D&D campaign setting. Or internal journeys of characters so difficult to connect to. Was I the only person really nonplussed by Whiskeyjack's death? I felt like I'd been given no reason to care about the man. All the characters talk about how awesome he is but I could've done with some evidence, personally For all the expansive detail of the setting I've found it really difficult to screw up an emotional response beyond "Huh" to lore reveals. I guess I'm not the target audience.
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Jun 30, 2011 03:07
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Yeah, WJ died too early. I still cared, but not so much. I still HATED Kallor though, and I think it's a testament to Erikson's amazing character writing that he made Kallor not only empathetic, to drat near a hero turn. His will, his long, agonizing life, the decisions he's made, the guy is a tortured soul, and his character progression, I'd put on par easily with a Jamie Lannister. It's just there's so much other poo poo going on, it's kind of a buried gem.
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Jun 30, 2011 04:00
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Yeah, Kallor is one of my favourite characters which is pretty impressive for someone who killed his newborn children by dashing their heads against a wall. Also the Tor reread has just finished Memories of Ice, and SE has commented in the thread about it and also mentioned that he's halfway through Kharkanas One, which is feeling to him like MOI did when he was writing it. Hopefully a good omen.
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Jun 30, 2011 05:10
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Funny how I just finished commenting how Kallor is a shallow character (as of MoI).Fargo Fukes posted:All the characters talk about how awesome he is but I could've done with some evidence There's plenty of evidence. In fact every scene from his PoV is meant to do that. I have the opposite opinion: it's shown so much that it makes it unnatural. There's absolutely nothing "abstract" with him being considered the way he is. In fact the scene where he and Rake face the witches is made entirely to show WJ's choices and how those choices make an impact on the rest of the army. You just can't have more explicit "evidence" than that. The problem about "not caring" overall is that Malazan is written without "slices of life" scenes, so there's not much traditional space to sympathize with the characters.
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Jun 30, 2011 05:37
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Fargo Fukes posted:I'm really not fussed about more revelations about a D&D campaign setting. I'm sorry to say this, but your problem seem to be one of prejudice. It's quite obvious that you don't consider yourself as the target audience because you believe the target audience is the same of the D&D campaign setting. The problem is there, it's the opposite. If you are there for the action scenes then most of every book will feel like a burden.
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Jun 30, 2011 05:42
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You get shown and told many, many times how great WJ is. The only thing you never hear or know about up until a certain point was his physical prowess.
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Jun 30, 2011 07:25
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The Gunslinger posted:I enjoyed the series but it has its ups and downs, its also definitely not for everyone. I would say it gets worse from your perspective and that it isn't your thing so I would move on. If you want to give it another shot then Midnight Tides and The Bonehunters are better books but after that the series can be fairly uneven. A few of the later books especially are almost exactly what you disliked. I have to agree here, Midnight Tides and Bonehunters seem quite a bit better, though I still enjoyed HoC a lot. BTW, I have to thank all of you in the thread. I was on a long stretch of time where I did not have any good series to read and was just frankly bored of reading trash or reading old books over and over again. Then I happened to stumble on this thread and gave this series a chance.  to everyone here.
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Jun 30, 2011 08:11
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Vanilla Mint Ice posted:You get shown and told many, many times how great WJ is. The only thing you never hear or know about up until a certain point was his physical prowess. Indeed. The scene where he volunteers to kill the people so Rake doesn't have to was pretty great insight into his personality, and why his troops would follow him into hell and back.
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Jun 30, 2011 09:06
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My name is Spermy Smurf, and I'm an ICE hater. I read Night of Knives and hated my life for the 2 months it took me to get through it. I got RotCG as a gift, and figured that I was waiting for GRRMs new book to come out (hahahaha, never gonna happen) and I started reading it despite saying I never would. I'm 50 pages in, and I dont hate hate hate it like I did NoK. Does it get worse?
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Jul 1, 2011 00:47
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Spermy Smurf posted:My name is Spermy Smurf, and I'm an ICE hater. I'm 200 pages in to RotCG and it seems better than NoK.
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Jul 1, 2011 00:49
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Spermy Smurf posted:My name is Spermy Smurf, and I'm an ICE hater. I think it gets better as it goes along. The ending is pretty epic. Meanwhile, I just started Stonewielder, and about 100 pages in. Plot is fine so far, but man, ICE's conversation/characterization is pretty rough. His people don't talk or act like real people a lot of the time, but caricatures of people. He also doesn't like convo flow without interjecting constantly. Still, worth reading so far.
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Jul 1, 2011 01:53
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Lunchtray posted:I'm 200 pages in to RotCG and it seems better than NoK. It's better than NoK, but still 10x worse than Erikson at his worst. The characters don't act like complete nonsensical morons as they did in NoK, but they're all drawn in very broad two-dimensional strokes. Also everyone in the Malazan world has fantasy type names, and then there's one dude named Kyle.
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Jul 1, 2011 01:55
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Bar. Iron Bar.
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Jul 1, 2011 02:35
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Yeah, why does he have to call him "Bars?" What the gently caress is wrong with "Iron Bars?"
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Jul 1, 2011 02:46
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Abalieno posted:I'm sorry to say this, but your problem seem to be one of prejudice. Yeah, I'm prejudiced. I believe all the things you say I do. Normally it's difficult for people to grasp the exact beliefs of another person across the internet, especially over the course of two, one-paragraph posts, but you have managed it so easily and accurately that to you my whole personality and reading comprehension are "obvious". All books are hard for me because I am so thick. 
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Jul 1, 2011 03:02
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I make some stupid comments to my friend at work who got me reading this series. Started RotCG and I was all "Kyle" are you serious?
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Jul 1, 2011 03:04
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There's a character called Will in Stonewielder. Also every name has four letters. Maybe five if ICE is feeling racy.
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Jul 2, 2011 00:20
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I know Kyle is dumb, but what is this hostility against regular names in fantasy novels? I dun get it. Does it rip you out of the world? GRRM has Robb Stark and probably a few I'm forgetting, Sam is a main character in LOTR. Does anyone even notice if its spelled Kile? Or Kyill or something?
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Jul 2, 2011 02:48
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Loving Life Partner posted:I know Kyle is dumb, but what is this hostility against regular names in fantasy novels? I dun get it. Does it rip you out of the world? GRRM has Robb Stark and probably a few I'm forgetting, Sam is a main character in LOTR. Does anyone even notice if its spelled Kile? Or Kyill or something? Sam is a short for Samwise. 
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Jul 2, 2011 02:53
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I can accept names like Sam and Will in a fantasy setting because they sound fairly old-timey, and can be abbreviations of longer names that don't come from our world (in the LotR example, Sam is short for Samwise and not Samuel), but Kyle just sounds really goofy for some reason. It's like having a Knight of a High House named Mike.
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Jul 2, 2011 02:58
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Yeah, it's not like there's some list of what's acceptable and what's not. It's just about what sounds good, really. If there was a warrior named Bob or Zack it'd be stupid as hell, but I can deal with Robb or even something like Charles.
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Jul 2, 2011 04:50
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His name should have been Kryle. There, that was easy enough to fix.
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Jul 2, 2011 04:58
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Grammaton posted:His name should have been Kryle. There, that was easy enough to fix. "What is this? Some kind of Kruppe rip-off? ICE sucks Eriksons dick and expects us to assume he's a real writer?"
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Jul 2, 2011 05:15
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Whenever I see Kyle pop up I think he's a fourteen year old farmboy and then ICE starts discussing his giant mustache and it jars me out of the story.
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Jul 2, 2011 09:44
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bigmcgaffney posted:Whenever I see Kyle pop up I think he's a fourteen year old farmboy and then ICE starts discussing his giant mustache and it jars me out of the story. This, I keep imagining him as a young kid who'd been pulled into the crimson guard. Especially since there's so many in there that seem to be "looking out" for him.
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Jul 2, 2011 16:55
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Lunchtray posted:This, I keep imagining him as a young kid who'd been pulled into the crimson guard. Especially since there's so many in there that seem to be "looking out" for him. Seconding this? Then again all ICE's characters seem juvenile to me.
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Jul 2, 2011 17:13
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I haven't read the ICE books so I don't have any sense of Kyle the character but the name sounds out of place compared to the rest of the names in the Malazan world. Erikson did a good job of conveying a sense of culture and ethnicity with the names he uses. Marines have marine names, but almost everyone else has a name that feels connected with other names from the culture they come from. Its not perfect but it's something I noticed and liked about the books. Quick Ben's name kinda sticks out, but so does a lot else about him so that could well be intentional. I haven't heard anything about Kyle that mentions the oddness of Ben so the name is kinda strange. In general I don't have a problem with normal names in fantasy books. But when done poorly or mixed randomly with fantasy names its distracting. It would be weird if the three musketeers were Athos, Porthos, ans Sean, right? Its also kinda weird that it's Greymane, Tayschrenn, and Kyle (I haven't read the books, are the three ever even in the same room?).
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Jul 3, 2011 03:29
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Juaguocio posted:I can accept names like Sam and Will in a fantasy setting because they sound fairly old-timey, and can be abbreviations of longer names that don't come from our world (in the LotR example, Sam is short for Samwise and not Samuel), but Kyle just sounds really goofy for some reason. It's like having a Knight of a High House named Mike.
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Jul 3, 2011 04:09
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Okay so I'm almost finished with book 3 of the series, and while it's been fairly exciting and set up a lot of places for the plot to go I just have a hard time caring about any of the characters. Paran didn't seem very interesting to me when he first showed up. And now that he's changed so much I still don't feel like he's a full fledged person. In fact all of the characters strike me this way. Whiskeyjack is cool, Quick Ben is cool, Kalam is cool, but they don't actually seem like real people. And then there's guys like Rake and Icarium which I don't care even a little bit about. Then you have your token wacky/funny characters like Kruppe or that Shadow priest from the second book who add a little flair but still seem sort of empty as characters. Maybe it's because all these guys are adults and experienced in ways that your typical fantasy protagonist who is still growing up isn't. But I just find it really hard to identify with any of these "people." In fact my favorite character might be Tool. Just because he doesn't really pretend to have a character. Except the one time in book 3 he got all weepy. That seemed forced. Anyone else get this problem?
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Jul 3, 2011 20:27
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Ccs posted:Okay so I'm almost finished with book 3 of the series, and while it's been fairly exciting and set up a lot of places for the plot to go I just have a hard time caring about any of the characters.
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Jul 3, 2011 20:41
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LtSmash posted:Quick Ben's name kinda sticks out, but so does a lot else about him so that could well be intentional. I haven't heard anything about Kyle that mentions the oddness of Ben so the name is kinda strange. It is pretty odd that the short form of his name is "Ben," since his full name, Adaephon Ben Delat, seems to suggest a Hebrew or Arabic type of patronymic system. If that were the case, his name would mean something like "Adaephon, son of Delat," but since he uses different parts of that name as aliases throughout the series I don't know if that's what Erikson intended. Juaguocio fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Jul 4, 2011 |
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Jul 3, 2011 23:52
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