The Malazan Book of the Fallen: Too many wor'ds.

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The Malazan Book of the Fallen: Too many wor'ds.

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

turboraton posted:

Lmao kuru-almost destroyed the entire Tiste Edur. His team was just too heavy to carry and he had an elder god among them as well.

Dude spent a week faceplanting a floor to level up and he helped take care of business even after death.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2019 21:21

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 06:16

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

If you're getting into it the Malazan Reread of the Fallen over on Tor's website is a great annoted version of the series.

pile of brown posted:

I realize that this in no way makes it sound like a book anyone should read, but I enjoyed it immensely!

This is basically every summary I've ever given to people.

Also I generally describe it as a series that mainly appeals to people who have read mountains of trashy fantasy.

pile of brown posted:

The Tiste start off as Not-Elves and eventually become more complex Not-Elves.

I prefer his Orcs which is a pretty unique take on orcs.

VVVVV Jaghut

Jaxyon fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Mar 12, 2019

# ¿ Mar 12, 2019 00:30

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

pile of brown posted:

They're more like misanthropic elves than orcs, imo.

That's the point. They're described physically as "classical" orcs. But they're mostly pacifist academic anarchists.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2019 01:13

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

NoNotTheMindProbe posted:

I've been enjoying it a lot even though it does feel a bit like someone's DnD session or Let's Play report at times. The prose is very readable.

This is a noticeable change as the series goes on. GotM it's pretty basic. DG is noticeably better. The rest of the series has some pretty good prose, even with his philosophizing marine grunts.

His most recent book in the spinoff series Fall of Light I feel has gone to the point where it's not very readable and a bit navel gazy, though some folks seem to like it.

Not saying that Malazan is the peaks of literature but I think that Erickson is is pretty good at it, to the point where ICE is a noticeable drop off.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2019 00:22

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

thumper57 posted:

Yeah he's hugely guilty of this - almost every single romance is an absurd love-at-first-sight, occasionally elevated to like actual fate-shaking proportions. Most egregious being Trull and Seren, Lostara and Corporal Rando; but there's no shortage

He's good at writing faux mythology, cool climaxes, grunts talking like philosophy majors.

Not so good at : romance

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 01:34

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Gravy Jones posted:

Edit: Went back and spoilered a chunk of that because I guess where certain relationships do or don't go is technical a spoiler. Theres no real story/plot stuff in there though.

I think the it's good to have strong male relationshiops that aren't toxic in fantasy, giving how hetoronormative and toxic most of the genre can be.

On the other hand, you get the problem of straight(presumably I think SE is) people writing gay folks as aromantic/asexual, whether it's out of respect of not being able to write something they don't know about, which I think is bullshit, or because they want the representation but that's it.

It's a step above Dumbledoring.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2019 17:52

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

NoNotTheMindProbe posted:

I enjoyed it quite a bit although for all the moving parts it still didn't manage to reach the same clusterfuck levels of a Peter F Hamilton novel. Anamander Rake was by far my least favourite character. Yes, he is actually a Drow edgelord with a big edgelord sword, and he can even turn into a dragon. In a story full of powerful wizards and monsters he still managed to feel like a fan-fiction character.

Um that's a 300,000 year old drow edgelord dragon with a floating castle, sir.

Yeah he's 100% fanfic and doesn't get hugely better, but he's not really a main character in the series. And he does get more interesting. But GotM is pulp.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2019 20:06

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Cardiac posted:

Please get some better associations than D&D. Tia.

In a way, rake is the main character of the story along with the crippled god. Both are characters at the center of the story, but they don�t need to play such a large active role for this.

Rake is a central figure, but not a main character. He's not on screen very much. The Crippled God is not a main character either.

One of the reasons I like Erickson is that he takes ridiculous genre tropes and make's them interesting. It's not a knock on him. Jaghut are trolls/orcs that are mostly pacifist anarchists. Rake is a classic brooding darkelf but his actions are much subtler and oblique and his motivaiton is literally to stop dark elfs from brooding.

There's zombie velociraptors with sword-arms and yet they're still an interesting and somewhat tragic story.

That's what he does. He dresses up GURPS.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2019 23:53

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

The author is making it intentionally confusing because he's an archaelogist and this is the stuff he does.

Different cultures claim they were the First Empire and arguably they're all right, all wrong, or there was another empire not even mentioned even before that. It's all unreliable because it's oral histories and from disparate points of view.

Kallor claims to have an empire before either of the First Empires, which are 90k(dissem) years and 300k(Imass) before the events of the books.

It's in line with his theme that history becomes legends and the legends are often wrong and copied from other people.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2019 22:51

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

kingturnip posted:

Reading Fall of Light and struggling to get through the interminable inner monologues every loving page. (I'm about halfway at the moment).
I understand it's a feature of the book (similarly to Toll the Hounds), given who the narrator is, but when the plot is spread as thin as it is it makes it really hard to not just skim read my way through.

I'd have preferred Partially-Sighted but Mute Gallan.

I enjoy Erikson but I found Fall of Light to be very hard to read, and just read a summary.

# ¿ May 1, 2019 19:15

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Yeah pretty much.

A few pages of interest, then a bad take on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern for 3 chapters.

# ¿ May 1, 2019 23:34

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

NoNotTheMindProbe posted:

Erikson is leaning heavily into his habit of Orientalising the Seven Cities inhabitants, right down to depicting female genital mutilation. It also ages the book directly into the post 9-11 era when a bunch of authors lost their poo poo.

I don't disagree that there's some otherizing going on but I read that section specifically as a religious figure using his power to abuse children.

FWIW, the author is pretty liberal compared to other fantasy authors(faint praise I know) and specifically says that he wanted to show how basically all cultures can be cruel and terrible and that the Karsa storyline is specficially refuting noble savage mythology.

quote:

What are all these spooky jade statues about? I thought maybe the crippled god was trapped in the otataral. But are the statues on his side or not? I guess we'll find out. I'm still not convinced the Crippled God is the bad guy of the saga. Or at least if he is, the various ascendants deserve all the poo poo coming their way.

It's never directly explained. And yeah ascendants/gods being petty dillholes is a major theme.

# ¿ May 16, 2019 19:58

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Infinite Karma posted:

Basically, the Kharkanas trilogy hosed up explaining that backstory and now we may never know because Walk in Shadow is shelved indefinitely. Everything in the MBotF main series about the Andii politics and families seems to be written in permanent euphemism.

Erikson likes to play with the idea that, like actual history, we're going by corrupted and second-hand sources and some stuff may have been lost or subtletly forgotten, so what people say happened and actually did diverge. Which is great for him, he's an archaeologist. But not great if you want a definitive answer about aspects of his world building.

It's a pretty groovy way to avoid having to be consistent in your cross referencing I guess.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2019 20:28

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

The author has written an essay on that particular character.

http://www.steven-erikson.com/index.php?s=Karsa

# ¿ Jun 24, 2019 19:25

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Infinite Karma posted:

It's a subversion because he isn't "noble" in his savagery or ignorance. There's no folksy wisdom or insight into civilization's flaws stemming from his caveman ways. He's just savage and ignorant and violent. And likewise, civilization doesn't make him horrible and petty like all the civilized people... it actually teaches him empathy. Erikson also messes with the noble savage trope with the Barghast. Common wisdom of the world is that they're gross, stupid savages, but once we get to know them, they seem above the petty politicking and backstabbing of the "civilized" Malazan, like maybe the simple warrior nomads could teach a lesson to the protagonists... and then oops nope, they actually are gross violent monsters and are no good.

Exactly so. Even his father in the book spells out this explicitly. And as far as the Barghast, yeah, he goes out of his way to show that basically every culture is capable of being gross monsters and idealizing "savage" cultures is stupid.

The Tiste series also does this with "no this ancient noble race of elves is also loving disgusting and terrible"

Jaghut culture is probably Eriksons ideal.

e:

thumper57 posted:

Well first off, people always refer to Karsa as a "subversion" of the noble savage (including Erikson himself in that essay), I'll admit I don't really get how anything is being subverted - by subverting does he just mean playing it straight? Or is the big revelation the fact that Karsa's journey from barbaric society -> civilized society is a journey from disorganized atrocities -> organized atrocities? Am I too dumb for this subtlety, or is everyone just nodding sagely because they like how this big guy kills lots of stuff and bangs unwilling chicks till they like it?

Maybe too dumb.

You're supposed to be horrified by how he behaves in his introduction, but since it's written from his view he thinks he's amazing.

By later on in the books he basically kills nobody who isn't also a bad person.

Jaxyon fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Jun 25, 2019

# ¿ Jun 25, 2019 02:26

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Yes his Author Opinion insert always seems to be "civilization blows"

Lunchmeat Larry posted:

arguments for Reapers Gale being bad: Redmask is introduced

arguments for Reapers Gale being good: Redmask dies

Even as someone who likes the series, I skip the Redmask parts.

I mean, I get it, it's supposed to be an preamble to the KCM finding destriant/shield anvil/mortal sword in the next couple books, and also supposed be a "subversion" if the tribal warlord rises up and challenges the oppressor with unique tactics and wins freedom for his people story. He doesn't, he actually gets them all killed.

But I don't enjoy it at all.

# ¿ Jun 25, 2019 18:44

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Alhazred posted:

I honestly think that male authors should stop writing about rape.

Can this be the forum subtitle for the Book Barn

# ¿ Jun 28, 2019 17:42

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Cardiac posted:

Why?
Cause mixing politics and fantasy/scifi is inherently a bad idea that never turn out well.

You're one of those folks who gets upset when X-men "started" including politics, huh.

Jaxyon fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Jul 2, 2019

# ¿ Jul 2, 2019 18:08

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

BlindSite posted:

He's addressed the inclusion of sexual violence in his work before if you bother to look.

The scenes are done because they're supposed to be upsetting and disgusting and they are. They're not glorification or anything else. Even his wife read the scenes he'd written and gave her approval of them being hard to read and tolerate without being gratuitous. Yeah it's fantasy and yeah fantasy has a history of handling it poorly but I dont think in Erikson's case it's some indefensible narrative crime.

Sometimes stuff is ugly and hard to swallow because that's the point. This is like when people tried to criticise Drive for the brutality of the violence in certain scenes. It was meant to be confronting.

You can read the post in the author's own words here(he's the first comment in reply to the blog). Spoilers for DoD and later obviously.

People aren't saying that it's an unforgivable narrative sin, they're saying that fantasy authors in particular, but many many male authors, have a tendency to use rape for plot movement or characterization. While SE is better than many, and wrote a pretty good explanation of what the was trying to do, it's a vastly over-used technique. I suspect it's one you find male authors doing way more than women, yet whom are less likely to have had that as life experience.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2019 01:53

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

BlindSite posted:

And I'm saying just because some authors suck at it, it doesn't make it a fair criticism of someone who doesn't.

Yes it does, and SE is more of an author who sucks less on it, than doesn't suck.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2019 17:19

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Alhazred posted:

That doesn't make what he did in Midnight Tides better.

You see because he includes 1 male rape victim for every 6 female rapes, he may not be criticized on his treatment of rape by passing the very high bar of "better than most fantasy authors on the subject of rape"

# ¿ Jul 3, 2019 19:19

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Jan posted:

Does Bottle and the Eres'al count?

Yes. I forgot about them.

Also unless I'm forgetting something else, I'd argue that both male rapes in the series are kinda pointless as well.

I was just reading the wiki and apparently the Eres'al also "steals Trulls seed" but with surgery.

There's a lot of rape in the books.

I'll take back my earlier ratio but not my earlier point.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2019 20:19

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

User posted:

I thought Mieville was a card carrying communist. This is all news to me, Any references?

Hey I would hate to break it to you, but being on the left does not prevent some dudes from being awful scumbags.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2019 19:11

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

1994 Toyota Celica posted:

if goons have a spiritual representative in the malazan books it's Hedge

Ganoes.

Privileged and spends way too much time with Magic cards.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2019 02:08

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

dwarf74 posted:

And yet his girlfriend is, like, twelve years old, so...

"She looks 12 but actually her consciousness is hundreds of years old so it's not bad"

Hrmm where have I heard that before

# ¿ Jul 30, 2019 17:31

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

anilEhilated posted:

It's great and really deserves an ending we are not getting thanks to Karsa being more popular.

It's less Karsa being more popular I'd say than the writing style of Kharkhanas turning off a bunch of people.

But also Karsa is more popular.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2019 19:15

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Submarine Sandpaper posted:

Yeah we have people multiple hard science PhD's literally working in finance doing nothing of value to anyone beyond other finance people.

Though Erikson doesn't really say he's a socialist, he's fairly left of center.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2019 03:48

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

COOL CORN posted:

drat the scene where Paran gets sucked into Dragnipur's warren was incredibly grim and impressive. But good grief I'm 3/4 through GotM and I just... can't bring myself to care about all of the Darujhistan politics (the guilds, the council, etc.) It's like Erikson hasn't really given me any reason to get attached to anyone on that level. Kruppe? Sure, I'd die for him. But all of the other players from Darujhistan (outside of like Murillio, Coll, Crokus of course) are just very generic feeling.

Overall I still love the book and I can't wait to power through the rest of it, I'm just sharing my first-time-through thoughts so I can read back later and remember how I was feeling.

Also whoops bye Hairlock, haha

Darujhistan politics aren't really relevant at all, unless you read the ICE books. Mostly it's a backdrop for the viewpoint characters.

The people you mentioned are the only ones who matter so you can devote your brain space elsewhere.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2019 19:20

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

CaptainRat posted:

A persistent motif in this books is some ancient gribbly showing up and getting clowned on by the modern denizens of the world, and Yedan Deryg slots right into that.

Yeah. People keep trying to do DBZ/Bleach style rankings on who's a bigger badass, but Erikson doesn't seem to care because that's not his point. The point is that there almost always is a bigger badass, and people consistently underestimate the changes that progress brings by mythologizing history.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2019 23:00

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Guyver posted:

Not really?

What is the acceptable level of rape?

Also I'm assuming almost everyone who thinks the level of rape is OK is a dude.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2019 22:44

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Have the long talk. It's not as if this is fast-moving thread.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2019 00:46

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

OneSizeFitsAll posted:

A few chapters into The Crippled God and have a question. Maybe I'm missing something.

Why/how is the gate to Akhrast Korvalain sealed? Or does this get explained later?

I think you mean Starvald Demelain. And as always the answer to whether it gets explained is "kinda".

# ¿ Jan 8, 2020 22:13

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Geisladisk posted:

I kind of hated this series at first, but somehow I'm at House of Chains and I love it and can't stop reading.

It's kind of addictive how this series just throws tons and tons of dumb fantasy names at you with no explanation, leaving you in a state of deep, frustrating confusion, until it all starts coming together and making sense.

Kind of funny how a lot of the big superpowered characters are blatantly RPG characters originally. It feels like the author had a bunch of superpowered, dumb as hell player characters from his campaign as a starting point but somehow manages to turn that into a compelling narrarative.

That's literally how the whole thing was written, a GURPS campaign while on archaeological digs.

Erikson's a gifted writer, even if he rambles. I've read a lot of bad fantasy and he does better with obvious mega-edgelord PC's like rake than most.

Esslemont writes a bit more like the standard genre stuff and it's more noticeable.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2020 21:50

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Alhazred posted:

Its like a reading a section written by someone who knows that things are funny but not why.

I find them amusing as a comedic break to the awful things that are happening elsewhere, and not as grating as, say, Brandon Sanderson's attempts to write witty dialog.

Alhazred posted:

The characterization of the Crippled God isn't really good. In some books he's mustache twirling bad guy, in others he's a messiah like character.

I thought this was intentional. That he's supposed to be a (relatively) benign god who is trapped by a bunch of assholes for selfish reasons, tortured, split into pieces, drained of power, and just generally poo poo on for thousands or hundreds of thousands of years and this makes him mad at everyone and a nihilist.

In the end he was never supposed to be there, so he only real answer was to kick him out so the planet could heal.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2020 19:31

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

I get what Erikson was going for and the transition works with me(I'm largely OK with his "I didn't tell you everything" style), but I also get why folks might not like it.

Playing Tavore as a cypher with essentially no visible motive until the last book strikes me as a bit of a cop-out for the author.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2020 20:18

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Ben Nerevarine posted:

I also felt some whiplash from this character turnabout. It wasn't so much taking him from "bad" to "good", which I thought was a neat twist given Tavore's arc (I think calling it an arc is generous, but I digress) as it was the shift in tone of his dialogue. He went from a coughing, robed husk in a tent who was lovely and shifty to everyone, to a benevolent, gentle giant. It was bizarre. I felt like I had missed a major scene at some point.

It's supposed to be about how people aren't inherently bad but get molded into bad people by how they're treated, which is a theme that he covers many times in the series in varying quality, such as the Pannion Seer, Felisin Younger, the Imass.

He has several characters state that the CG is the result of a lot of bad poo poo and wasn't necessarily evil but I get that showing is better than telling when writing.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2020 20:59

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

anilEhilated posted:

The House of Chains itself could be used as an indicator - the Crippled God started with some real assholes there but by DoD it's pretty much all good guys.

Worth pointing out that none of that is explicit, the only stated members of House Chains are all pretty bad people like Skinner, Poleil, Bidithal, Kallor

# ¿ Jan 24, 2020 01:49

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Apparently this happened

# ¿ Feb 12, 2020 02:47

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Toughy posted:

O man what was the $$$ difficulty?

$1200

Here's the video, stats at like 15:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nhfvYoCw7c

# ¿ Feb 12, 2020 19:01

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 06:16

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

anilEhilated posted:

Yeah, that's a character that never made any sense to me. One possible explanation is that he was SE or ICE's favorite to roleplay so maybe they kept rewriting him to be better and better?

Fireball-loving evocation wizard with ridiculous stats whom he would not stop playing.

"Oh you're going to be playing Tayshrenn this game again....cool....wonder what you're going to do in fights....."

# ¿ Feb 28, 2020 19:06

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