I don't understand the love for Erikson/Malazan

[Ser Daxos]

Steve Erickson is an excellent writer. Arc d'X and Zeroville are just two of his novels that I really enjoyed.

It never fails to amuse me when I see someone start a post blasting the Malazan books and they fail to spell Steven Erikson's name correctly. :P

Good catch. Typo edited. Perhaps if I actually thought highly of him as a writer or had actually spent any significant time reading his books, I wouldn't have used the more common spelling for the common last name.

This whole thing was a huge mistake. Could a moderator or admin please close this obvious trolling thread with its completely invalid criticisms of the quintessential Erikson? I apologize for my horrid blasphemies and deliberate attempts to inflame the entire forum. :rolleyes:

[Snowborn]

I do hope you realize that starting a thread with a trollish, exaggerated statement and demanding serious replies isn't going to work. And it's not like you're entitled to get any replies, either.

The forum has this cool thing called search function, on the top right, where you can type "Malazan" and get a variety of threads containing a variety of opinions about the series, both good and bad reviews, objective and not.

[Anatúrinbor]

Is this the equivalent of all the 'Why do people like Stannis???' threads in general ASOIAF?

[Ser Daxos]

But your opinion is. This one book is bad and that means every other book in the series is bad. Don't judge a series by one book that may have failed to meet your expectations. Read another book before you decide it's the worst thing in published history.

YOU. CANNOT. JUDGE. A. SERIES. ON. ONE. BOOK. ALONE. :)

I'm not judging the whole series. These criticisms are specific to Gardens of the Moon. However, given that the first entry was so bad (in my opinion) then what incentive do I have to read the others? I literally forced myself to finish GotM and I don't feel like repeating that exercise again unless I have a very good reason to. That is why I asked these questions because maybe I'm missing something.

Many, many people share the same or similar low opinion of the first book and even of Erikson and the series as a whole. However, many people love it. Why? It's a simple question.

[Andrew Gilfellon]

You're saying that you don't understand why people like the series because one book didn't meet your expectations.

You don't have to read on if you don't want to. Opinion is an opinion. But the next books are fantastic, but you don't need to read them if you don't want to. I mean I liked the book when I read it, but I find the second book to be much crisper in description than the first.

I think the author himself admitted somewhere that the first book was too confusing for people and that he'd do it differently. I'd say read a sample online of the second book and see.

[Toblakai]

This whole thing was a huge mistake. Could a moderator or admin please close this obvious trolling thread with its completely invalid criticisms of the quintessential Erikson? I apologize for my horrid blasphemies and deliberate attempts to inflame the entire forum. :rolleyes:

The issue is the way you approached it. It was trolling and not open to actual discussion. You don't really care about why others like it based on the below quotes:

"you either love it or you hate it. I'm in the latter group and I honestly don't understand how anybody can be in the former. "

"The whole thing screams amateur and feels like it was written by a twelve year old who occasionally cracked open daddy's thesaurus in an attempt to convince us that he wasn't actually twelve."

" I kept thinking that maybe I was missing something like in the telling of a marginally funny or cryptic joke but it's the book (and Erickson) that was the real joke. It is the worst written piece of overrated garbage that I have ever purchased"

If you actually did want a real discussion, you need to practice your social skills.

[sologdin]

fairly sure we can judge a series on the basis of single volume. we can hardly allow the objection oh no you have to finish eating this faecalwich prior to declaring how shitty it is.

[BigBucket]

The whole thing screams amateur and feels like it was written by a twelve year old who occasionally cracked open daddy's thesaurus in an attempt to convince us that he wasn't actually twelve.

GotM reads exactly like something I would have written when I was twelve. I was considered a very precocious writer who was writing at a college level at age ten but I never bothered to further develop those skills in high school and pursued a completely unrelated degree in college.

People might take you more seriously if you didn't write such clearly rediculous and conflicting statements. The above quotes are just one example. First you say GotM reads like it was written by a 12 year old. Then you tell us it reads like something you would have written at 12 but you also tell us that at the age of 10 you were writing at college level. So does it read like it was written by a 12 year old or does it read like it was written by a precocious 12 year old who writes at adult level?

[matt b]

Many, many people share the same or similar low opinion of the first book and even of Erikson and the series as a whole. However, many people love it. Why? It's a simple question.

Well, I'll bite, although I'll probably regret this: While Erikson is never going to be Gene Wolfe, I find his prose to be serviceable at worst and at least slightly above average at best. I also enjoy the extreme "show but don't tell" angle that you don't care for. I really enjoy a writer that respects the intelligence of their audience enough to let them put things together for themselves. Admittedly, there's not a lot of answers in GotM, I know everything about the Azath house confused the Hell of me on my first time through. But rather than frustrate me, it just made me curious to continue. Such is the nature of a 10 book series, you can't expect all the answers in book 1. There is a certain over the top ridiculousness to Malazan that some can find off putting, but one person's ridiculous is another person's ridiculously awesome. With regards to Malazan, I'm in the latter camp.

[Prince of the North]

I think the OP is a bit over the top if real discussion was the goal. But...when I read GotM I found it to be just "meh". Now, I may eventually get around to reading more of the Malazan series but it won't be soon...and quite possibly never.

[Snowborn]

Exactly, it's cool if you don't like it, but there's a difference in saying "I didn't like it because the prose wasn't as good as I expected" and saying "this sucks I was a precocious child who wrote better at age 10 I don't understand how can anyone like this crap". Which is a stupid way to go over it, if what you want is serious opinions.

[sologdin]

oh FFS. all'y'all need to thickskin up already.

[Diziet]

Someone should start an "I don't understand the love for Bakker" thread, only to see how it would end and whether the Bakker fans have thicker skin.

[aceluby]

I've found it to be mediocre so far. Not great, not terribly awful. Like you, I found GotM to be a sludge of a read. The character development wasn't that great, the plot was hard to follow, the names of people are too similar (and sometimes have multiple names for the same person), and it is badly in need of some editing to correct his tendency to change POV after sections of dialog.

Despite these flaws I kept on with Deadhouse Gates and while I enjoyed the first 200 pages or so, it too suffered from a lot of what was painful about GotM and was again a sludge until the last 100 pages or so. It was ok with some good parts, but lots of boring travelogues about characters I was given no reason to care about.

And despite ALL of these things, and not really enjoying either book immensely, I will give Memories of Ice a chance before I make a final judgment on whether I will continue as I've heard that MoI actually brings in an overall theme/plot for the series of the books that has yet to be presented 2 books in. And this is a genuine problem with this series, prose and character development aside, an epic fantasy that gives you no real reason to continue on with the series after almost 2,000 pages is a hard sell.

[Darth Richard II]

Someone should start an "I don't understand the love for Bakker" thread, only to see how it would end and whether the Bakker fans have thicker skin.

They don't.

[Wulfram]

Book 1 is a muddle.

I think books 2, 3 and 5 are good. But as the series went on I ran out of characters I cared about.

[Callan S.]

Wish I could have cashed that cheque. I'd happily read your scathing reviews and wipe away the tears with cash. It'd kill me if I genuinely knew I could have written a best seller because it would leaving me asking why I didn't. Then again, I'd happily write something others considered garbage as long as some loved it. I guess others have higher standards which I can only applaud.

Fair point - if all it takes is your own 12 year old writing skills, then just write a book as well!

This should be the inspiration to write "Wow, it's so easy to get into the market!"

Unless the extent of ones writing skill it to complain about books. Then one realises the author is better at writing than you are when you were 12 or whatever age.

[Darth Richard II]

I dunno, I'm suddenly motivated to start a I don't understand the love for Outlander/Dresden/Iggulden thread.

:P

[wolverine]

It seems that everywhere I go, people rank the Malazan Books of the Fallen among their all time favorites in the fantasy genre. I've also noticed that opinions of it are very polarizing -- you either love it or you hate it. I'm in the latter group and I honestly don't understand how anybody can be in the former.

Count me in neither of those camps. The first book was kinda meh, the second was better. I love some things about the series and really like some of the books, but I don't love it enough that I finished it. I actually kind of hated the last one I read (TTH). For the most parts I liked the books but I would not list it in my top 5 series even, but nowhere near the bottom of books I have read either. It has some of my favorite dialogue of all time and some of my favorite characters. I think the writing is fine when it doesn't get too philosophizing for hundreds of pages.

[polishgenius]

But your opinion is. This one book is bad and that means every other book in the series is bad. Don't judge a series by one book that may have failed to meet your expectations. Read another book before you decide it's the worst thing in published history.

YOU. CANNOT. JUDGE. A. SERIES. ON. ONE. BOOK. ALONE. :)

To be fair to OP, I think it's perfectly okay to judge the quality of something after 1,000 pages of reading. Malazan is a special case in which the style gap and the manner of the series makes it worth continuing if you weren't quite feeling it after GotM, but if he loathed it that much, I doubt Deadhouse Gates is going to change his mind very much.

However: OP, you want us to shoot down your reasons for why Malazan was bad, but there isn't really much to shoot down: the dialogue was absolutely fine (though it does get a little smoother from book 2), the extremity of 'show don't tell' is half the fun as you slowly work out what's going on, and flow and pacing are one of Erikson's strengths, especially in the first half of the series. So really your opinion is just out of whack with what most people who love it think; there isn't some big secret that's gonna reveal all.