Starting Malazan Series
- Thread starter General Antony
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I had to bribe one of my friends that I trade books off with pretty often to push through the first. It's rough.
I'm with everyone else (except Asmadai I guess) with the second novel though. Deadhouse Gates is way up there for me and the Chain of Dogs portion is probably the most epic thing I've ever read.
There are a lot of great moments in the series as a whole though. Everything involving Toc and Tool for example.
Anyway, whatever. Point being it's worth it to suffer through the first book. It gets exponentially better immediately after.
Grimmlokk
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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The series is filled with epic, heartwrenching moments, but don't ever expect to fully understand what's going on. When you get a grasp on something Eriksson will just introduce something new that won't be explained for at least a book.
This means a few things in the last few books simply won't get explained. There is still plenty of meat there to enjoy though.
This means a few things in the last few books simply won't get explained. There is still plenty of meat there to enjoy though.
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I honestly just don't think Gardens of the Moon is very good. Sure, you get dropped into the middle of things and this ends up being the biggest complaint, but the plot is predictable and there is very little character development for anyone outside of Paran. The story meanders until the very end and then the action that does come has very little to do with the overall story arc.
Deadhouse starts with a bang. The prologue is intense, but after that you're dropped into the same 'what the fuck is going on?' type story as Gardens. I have no clue what they're talking about in the scene where you're first introduced to Coltaine. Erickson pulls the rest off by doing pretty much everything he didn't do in the first novel. The story isn't predictable. Multiple characters are fleshed out. The arcfeelsepic in scope.
Gardens feels to me like it wasn't ever meant to be the start of this giant series. Do you finish that novel and feel likethe main protagonistis going to be the one mainstay of the story? I certainly didn't. Isthe main antagonisteven hinted at? Maybe he is, and it's super subtle, but I don't remember it. Pre ritual T'lan Imass are referred to just as T'lan in the book, which feels like a pretty glaring mistake considering the world he builds in later novels. I don't know if there is any truth to this, but that is just how things felt to me.
Anyway, long story short. Keep going.
Deadhouse starts with a bang. The prologue is intense, but after that you're dropped into the same 'what the fuck is going on?' type story as Gardens. I have no clue what they're talking about in the scene where you're first introduced to Coltaine. Erickson pulls the rest off by doing pretty much everything he didn't do in the first novel. The story isn't predictable. Multiple characters are fleshed out. The arcfeelsepic in scope.
Gardens feels to me like it wasn't ever meant to be the start of this giant series. Do you finish that novel and feel likethe main protagonistis going to be the one mainstay of the story? I certainly didn't. Isthe main antagonisteven hinted at? Maybe he is, and it's super subtle, but I don't remember it. Pre ritual T'lan Imass are referred to just as T'lan in the book, which feels like a pretty glaring mistake considering the world he builds in later novels. I don't know if there is any truth to this, but that is just how things felt to me.
Anyway, long story short. Keep going.
Intrinsic
Person of Whiteness
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I believe, and haven't Googled it in a while, but Gardens was originally developed as a movie script or something that Erikson and Esslemont wanted to do, but it went nowhere and was adapted to the novel we have today. Then like 8 - 10 years later someone actually picked it up and signed him to the series. So you have a book written much earlier in an authors career, primarily as a set up for their P&P tabletop game, turned in to a movie script, then a novel.... and being asked to flesh it out 10 years later.
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If this is the truth it makes a ton of sense. It would also explain why I've read some interview comments from him where he says people should just start with the second book.
Randin
Trakanon Raider
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The thing that sticks with me the most from Gardens of the Moon, and which I think really epitomizes Erikson's "don't worry, I'll explain it eventually" style of writing, is that business with the Azath. Sure, he starts to explain Azaths a few books down the line, which make the scene interesting in retrospect, but at the time it seemed like the most random bit of Deus ex Machina I had ever read.
You really don't quite know what to do with that, the first time through the series.
I mean really, the evil orc-lich thing they've been foreshadowing throughout the story finally gets to the city, only to beeaten by a housethat just popped out of the ground. No foreshadowing, no real explanation; guy just gets eaten by a house.
You really don't quite know what to do with that, the first time through the series.
Asmadai
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Yeah, this is one of those series where if you enjoy enough for a second read through after you've finished it, you'll enjoy it even more because you won't be near as confused as you were the first time. I'm on my 2nd read through now, and as confusing as Gardens seemed my first time through, it's miles better now that i'm not flipping back every 30 pages to see if I could find an explanation for (insert any part of Gardens here).
Grimmlokk
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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The first 2/3rds to 3/4ths of each book seems to just be almost random set up for the epic action set up of the final act of the book. The problem is in some books this giant set up section seems to tie in to the whole series and feature shit that will have an impact from start to finish(House of Chains) and sometimes it seems like Erikson shoved random vaguely relevant story elements in his dickhole and just jizzed them at a whiteboard(Toll the Hounds).
Wombat
Trakanon Raider
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I went into it knowing that it was essentially an archeologist/anthropologist's extremely detailed D&D (specifically, Forgotten Realms) setting, which helped immensely.
Seeing magical analogs to neanderthals, ice ages, etc. was neat, and I found it interesting that as the books progressed, he dealt with older and older history (ice age megafauna in House of Chains, then finally up to stereotypical elemental forces in Dust of Dreams / The Crippled God). For most of the series, I was expecting him to pull a FASA Earthdawn and reveal that "It was Earth all along!", before magic was destroyed (hell, I'm still not sure that possibility is closed).
That said, I thought Erikson became more and more firmly wedged up his own ass as the books went on.
Seeing magical analogs to neanderthals, ice ages, etc. was neat, and I found it interesting that as the books progressed, he dealt with older and older history (ice age megafauna in House of Chains, then finally up to stereotypical elemental forces in Dust of Dreams / The Crippled God). For most of the series, I was expecting him to pull a FASA Earthdawn and reveal that "It was Earth all along!", before magic was destroyed (hell, I'm still not sure that possibility is closed).
That said, I thought Erikson became more and more firmly wedged up his own ass as the books went on.
What the fuck was going on with ghost wolves? Some eco-nonsense about how humans have killed off other species? Spoiler alert, the majority of species on earth went extinct because some superior species came along and outdid them in their niche. Where's their ghost armies? And why exactly did he spend hundreds of pages on the Barghast being shitty to each other in Dust of Dreams? Because humans suck? Well, shit, thanks for that revelation, I couldn't work that out from actual history. Etc. etc. ad infinitum.
Intrinsic
Person of Whiteness
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This is delving off in to territory probably best discussed in the actual Malazan thread but...
It always seemed like he spent at least 50 pages a book explaining the plight of one group or another and how they over hunted to extinction their only source of food / raw material / whatever.... Which always motivated one group to run in to another and so forth. It has been a while now since I finished TCG and the subtleties (or lack thereof) of some of his points are lost on me now, but the over hunting was something that has still stuck with me. At the end of the day I never felt like it was commentary, and had much the feeling that he agreed with the concept and used that for part of his world building. Again unless there's something with the Ghost Wolves that has completely been lost in all the Vodka since then.
And with my that said, he certainly became firmly wedged up something with all the eventual Snake bullshit and some of THOSE metaphors that made no sense.
And with my that said, he certainly became firmly wedged up something with all the eventual Snake bullshit and some of THOSE metaphors that made no sense.