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Steven Erikson and The Malazan Book of the Fallen

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I looked through this forum to see if there was a topic about the Malazan world yet. I promote these books to literally everyone that I know that enjoys fantasy novels. That said, they are definitely Tomes with a capital T so if you're not a fan of huge books I would definitely give these a pass.

 

I think the best way to introduce them is by giving the history of the world and the authors.

 

Steven Erikson came to writing fantasy after working as an anthropologist and practicing archaeologist, his interest in tribal people's specifically and years of tabletop gaming with his buddy and writing partner Ian Cameron Esselmont gives him a super interesting perspective.  Between the two of them they have written 16 books set in the world of the Malazan Empire along with a handful of novellas that have a much different tone. 

 

SE was heavily influenced by Glen Cook's Black Company novels (arguably the first "gritty and realistic" fantasy) and used those concepts in his tabletop games that he played with ICE. I keep mentioning the gaming that they did because it plays an interesting role in the development of nearly all of his books. When SE&ICE were gaming they were tired of the cookie-cutter adventures available through the DnD formula so they created their own game and moved away from stats and towards worldbuilding and character interaction. Something I find particularly fascinating is that they literally gamed the entire first book and only later Erikson decided to write a book using the characters they had created for that campaign 

 

This is getting kinda long, so I'll try to tie it up. He writes 3 dimensional characters with believable motivations in a world that is constantly changing as the reader learns more and gains context.  The world is rich in both space and time, there is a lot of it for the characters to experience physically, but the characters live on in the wake of extinctions and wars and forgotten cities that are cast off through time with a scale of eons. The magic system is good and mostly coherent, there are meddling gods and demi-gods and he is not afraid to kill off a main character (but at the same time you can tell he doesn't get the obvious pleasure out of it that a writer like GRRM does).

 

His tabletop buddy Ian has written 5 books set in the same world that focus on different characters. They're decent but not nearly on the same level as Steven Erikson's writing.

 

If you're interested, his main series is a 10 volume mammoth called "The Malazan Book of the Fallen". The first book is called "Gardens of the Moon", however, some people have difficulty getting into that one as it was his first book and he was a smug bastard and just drops the reader into a world where things are happening without truly introducing the players for a goodly number of pages. If that sounds like something that would annoy you I would start with the second book "Deadhouse Gates" and then double back, the second book is AMAZING and one of my favorites in the series.

 

If anyone wants to talk Malazan lore I'm down all day.

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My friend has been reading these recently, I think he's currently finishing up book 6.  I started reading the first book, but so far I'm only at 10% finished according to my Kindle so I don't have much to say about it yet.

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The Malazan books are some of my favourite genre books. I second the recommendation for starting with the second book, it's what I did and I can't recommend it highly enough. The first book is still good and worth reading, but it's the easily weakest one and because of the nature of these books reading the first two out of order doesn't matter much.

I would only recommend the Ian Cameron Esselmont books to people who already enjoy the Malazan world. They are enjoyable enough but the writing is far, far weaker. The Erikson books are about ambiguity of experience and compassion and loss. The ICE books just seem to be about the plot and the lore, for the most part.

 

TheLastBaron, unless you are really enjoying the first book, you should seriously consider just stopping and jumping to the second. You can come back to it later if you discover you enjoy the books, but man, it is a bad introduction to the series.

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The Malazan books are some of my favourite genre books. I second the recommendation for starting with the second book, it's what I did and I can't recommend it highly enough. The first book is still good and worth reading, but it's the easily weakest one and because of the nature of these books reading the first two out of order doesn't matter much.

I would only recommend the Ian Cameron Esselmont books to people who already enjoy the Malazan world. They are enjoyable enough but the writing is far, far weaker. The Erikson books are about ambiguity of experience and compassion and loss. The ICE books just seem to be about the plot and the lore, for the most part.

 

TheLastBaron, unless you are really enjoying the first book, you should seriously consider just stopping and jumping to the second. You can come back to it later if you discover you enjoy the books, but man, it is a bad introduction to the series.

 

My friend was sort of saying that, but I interpreted it as meaning I should slog through it with the knowledge that it would be better later on.  I'll try skipping to the second book then.

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My friend was sort of saying that, but I interpreted it as meaning I should slog through it with the knowledge that it would be better later on.  I'll try skipping to the second book then.

 

Definitely a good idea. Deadhouse gates is SOOOO good :)

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Signed up just to weigh in.

 

Stevie destroys me. Love the Malazan series so much. For any newcomers, yes it is dense, complicated and more philosophical than you may expect but just stick with it and you can turn into another Malazan preachy clone like the rest of us.

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Signed up just to weigh in.

 

Stevie destroys me. Love the Malazan series so much. For any newcomers, yes it is dense, complicated and more philosophical than you may expect but just stick with it and you can turn into another Malazan preachy clone like the rest of us.

 

Awesome! One thing he does that I think is super cool is how his chapters begin and end cyclically (I don't know the word for the actual writing device), For example he'll end a chapter with a house burning down or something, and then the next chapter will begin with some other group of characters sitting around a fire. Once I realized he was doing that I noticed it way more often.

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I started on the second book after picking it up in the library years ago and was sucked in from there. Deadhouse gates, Memories of Ice (book 3) and Toll the Hounds (book 8) are my favourite. Not sure about the final book cause I have only read it once while I think I have read the other three between 2-4 times.

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Awesome! One thing he does that I think is super cool is how his chapters begin and end cyclically (I don't know the word for the actual writing device), For example he'll end a chapter with a house burning down or something, and then the next chapter will begin with some other group of characters sitting around a fire. Once I realized he was doing that I noticed it way more often.

 

He does the same with start of the first book and end of the last one as well.

 

The those have a rare skill for breaking your heart  which is on display in the four books I mentioned above. 

 

I agree that the ICE aren't generally as good. I have read up to Blood and Bone and of the five so far the Crimson guard is the only one I would put on par with the main series (Stonewielder possibly upon re-read).

 

 

Also Tor.com have had a weekly re-read of the entire series going since the summer of 2010 and they are currently on Toll the hounds (they are also including some of the ICE books) which is word reading if you want to spend times thinking about the series

 

http://www.tor.com/features/series/malazan-reread-of-the-fallen

 

This guy does a decent job of summing up what I like about the series

 

http://nethspace.blogspot.ie/2011/04/review-malazan-book-of-fallen-by-steven.html

 

Also in an episode of Quarter to Three I am pretty sure Bruce Garick talked about how he would love to play an game set in the Malazan world which I would love to play as well.

 

Finally one thing no one mentions enough when talking about this series is that there is a  great sense of humour running throughout the series

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I started reading these a couple of months ago and I've been very impressed with them. Having each book sort of self contained and just relating to the others where they need to certainly makes them flow a lot better and it doesn't drag the tale out to the point where nothing happens for chapter after chapter (I'm looking at you GRRM)

They are still high fantasy (Gods, Magic and lots of rituals) but he does write it very well and grounds each race with very believable back stories of tribal culture and such. The blood and gore sometimes goes a bit over the top for me but then each to his own!

If you like his books then I would highly recommend Joe Abercrombie's First Law series too. Fantastic series of 3 books with a definite beginning, middle and end, which have much the same feel as the Malazan books, maybe turning down the higher fantasy stuff a not h to make it all the more believable.

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I read the entire series in a row with essentially no other reading between once the last book was out. Took me about four months and made for a really strange headspace but I feel like that delivers the most potent Malazan experience. It really has the feel of having been meticulously planned out from start to finish despite the several thousand page length of the complete work. I have not yet reread the later books, but I noticed all sorts of subtle implications in the first five or so on my second trip through them that make events in later books show in a whole new light. The depth is incredible. I think Erikson's prose itself is not a whole lot more than acceptable (and ICE's standard is enough lower that I couldn't bring myself to tackle Stonewielder or onwards), but he makes up for it with pretty much everything else.

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I started on these after signing up for Audible (slash wizard) and I quite like the audio books. However I've never seen the texts themselves, so, take that as you may. The narrator does an excellent job of characterizing specific voices and keeping them consistent.


I would only comment so far that only having read the first two books, the world seems a bit like it was invented on the fly to coincide with the particular story he is telling - for example, I cannot recall ever hearing Calarm(? the assassin bloke) ever discussing his home (Seven Cities?) before book two when they start the whole

revolt of the downtrodden masses

thing. Also, being perhaps a bit dense myself, it took me going online to a wiki to understand what was happening during the first book when the mages cadre was first introduced, and I had no idea what the heck a warren was.  :getmecoat

 

 

I read the entire series in a row with essentially no other reading between once the last book was out. Took me about four months and made for a really strange headspace but I feel like that delivers the most potent Malazan experience. It really has the feel of having been meticulously planned out from start to finish despite the several thousand page length of the complete work. I have not yet reread the later books, but I noticed all sorts of subtle implications in the first five or so on my second trip through them that make events in later books show in a whole new light. The depth is incredible. I think Erikson's prose itself is not a whole lot more than acceptable (and ICE's standard is enough lower that I couldn't bring myself to tackle Stonewielder or onwards), but he makes up for it with pretty much everything else.

I guess I have that to look forward to - I love when this kind of writing reveals itself.

 

I'm committed to going on through the series, most likely a book a month or so, assuming the book club that month doesn't override.  :)

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I'm around 400 pages through Gardens of the Moon, and I think the series has finally clicked for me. I tried getting into GotM a while back but couldn't get past the lack of explanation for anything, and read Deadhouse Gates at the suggestion of this thread and liked it (The tone and setting especially.) even if I couldn't keep track of a lot of the characters and felt as if I was reading the sequel to something without knowing having read the original (Which, you know, is what I was doing.  :violin: ). I think in retrospect I disagree with the idea of skipping to Deadhouse Gate first, the first book at least explains what a warren is and introduces the cast, although I guess when I finish Gardens of the Moon and start rereading Deadhouse Gates I'll have a more fully formed opinion.
 
I've also been reading the Game of Thrones  gain at the same time, meaning I'll finish both series sometime next decade, but the two series are interesting counterpoints to each other. Both are part of the same wave of gritty epic fantasy with massive casts where "Anyone Can Die™", but A Song of Ice and Fire is set in a  historic mishmash of the middle ages (Or stereotypes of the middle ages.) while Malazan is a lot weirder. Erikson's prose is blander then Martin's, but is also mostly practical while Martin often stumbles in his attempts to be poetic or descriptive. On the other hand, you get a lot more into the heads of the pov characters in ASOIAF then in Malazan, which is the former's main strength especially in the later books when the lot slows to a crawl. From what I've seen of the Malazan series so far it seems like things keep at a pretty steady clip, as opposed to ASOIAF's "big thing happens, different character react to it, nothing else happens for a while" pacing.

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I read all 10 of the books, and enjoyed them, but found them inconsistent -- the character switching sometimes resulted in long sequences, sometimes most of books, focusing on characters and plot-lines I didn't really care about. The other problem I had with the series is one that I think any series of this style and scope runs into, and that is it introduced many more plot threads that it could keep track of or resolve, leaving most of them unresolved at the series' conclusion. I probably could have not read the last half or so of the books and gotten just as much out of it, though that isn't to say I wasn't entertained. I've heard Erikson has written other books set in the same universe, and that some of them address things left unresolved by the series, and also that books by Esselmont address some of those, so perhaps had I read those as well I would have gotten more closure.

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I am intrigued by a fantasy series that spends time looking at the nitty-gritty details, but I'm worried about the writing style. How would this compare to, say, Ian Irvine, or Daniel Abraham?

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I am intrigued by a fantasy series that spends time looking at the nitty-gritty details, but I'm worried about the writing style. How would this compare to, say, Ian Irvine, or Daniel Abraham?

 

The prologue for Deadhouse Gates showcases the best and worst of the writing, read it for free here.

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Glenn Cook's The Black Company series (which I think Erikson said was an influence on Malazan) is pretty good for that, though I never finished that one. I got mostly through the Books of the South, but then there was a book that starred all the characters and events I didn't care about and stopped reading.

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Glenn Cook's The Black Company series (which I think Erikson said was an influence on Malazan) is pretty good for that, though I never finished that one. I got mostly through the Books of the South, but then there was a book that starred all the characters and events I didn't care about and stopped reading.

 

That one, The Silver Spike, is a spinoff and doesn't actually have any bearing on the plots of the other books, so you could have skipped it. Me, I like Glen Cook. He has a very distinct feel and knows how to make a viewpoint character fun to ride along with.

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I am intrigued by a fantasy series that spends time looking at the nitty-gritty details, but I'm worried about the writing style. How would this compare to, say, Ian Irvine, or Daniel Abraham?

 

Irvine's middle series with the war would be the closest of his works to Erikson, also respect for mentioning Irvine, rarely see his name when people talk bout fantasy fiction. Writing style wise don't really remember. I would say he is a better writer than Abraham or at least his Coin and ?/ series although I hear his previous series is meant to be better.

 

Also if people that like Erikson should check out KJ parker. Her book Sharps is a pretty good into to her work. They both have a very similar sense of humour that I enjoy.

 

Also cause tor.com started a re-reading of it check out the daughter of the empire series by Janny Wurts and Raymond feist.

 

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/05/rereading-the-empire-trilogy-daughter-of-the-empire-part-1

 

and they also just started the re-read of the final book of the Malazan series.

 

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/07/malazan-reread-of-the-fallen-the-crippled-god-chapter-one

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That one, The Silver Spike, is a spinoff and doesn't actually have any bearing on the plots of the other books, so you could have skipped it. Me, I like Glen Cook. He has a very distinct feel and knows how to make a viewpoint character fun to ride along with.

 

I actually got pretty close to finishing it, but didn't quite make it through. Not bad, just not what I wanted and it came in the kindle 3 book collection called the books of the south, but was out of place and killed the momentum. I'll probably pick the series up again at some point.

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Irvine's middle series with the war would be the closest of his works to Erikson, also respect for mentioning Irvine, rarely see his name when people talk bout fantasy fiction.

It's odd: he's quite prolific, with a dozen books to his name, but I can imagine he'd be an acquired taste because he's Australian, so can't do book tours in America as easily, and writes fantasy that doesn't really invite you to share in the fantasy. Most fantasy has an undercurrent of 'go with these protagonists on an adventure!' whereas Irvine's stuff is more 'join the protagonists as they experience the most traumatic year of their life'. I appreciate how different it feels, and how much his protagonists feel like ordinary people who are vastly out of their depth.

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It's unfortunately usually pretty difficult in the USA to get a hold of foreign genre fiction that's not British, even from other English speaking countries. :\

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It's odd: he's quite prolific, with a dozen books to his name, but I can imagine he'd be an acquired taste because he's Australian, so can't do book tours in America as easily, and writes fantasy that doesn't really invite you to share in the fantasy. Most fantasy has an undercurrent of 'go with these protagonists on an adventure!' whereas Irvine's stuff is more 'join the protagonists as they experience the most traumatic year of their life'. I appreciate how different it feels, and how much his protagonists feel like ordinary people who are vastly out of their depth.

 

I never thought about his books that way - they really are people being put through the ringer. I think you would like Erikson since he does the same.

 

I still see Irvine's books on sale here in Ireland. 

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I tried to read Gardens of the Moon a couple of years back and I think I got about halfway before giving up. The lack of exposition was probably a factor - although I did know about that going in and usually that sort of thing doesn't bother me too much - but I was also put off by the writing, which as I recall had too many cliches for my liking, especially in the dialogue. I have heard that his writing improves as the series goes on, so I might return to it one day and slog through it in order to get to the good stuff later on.

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