The obligatory Steven Erikson thread (possible BH spoilers)

[Xanrn]

What do you mean buy you can see why the rest of the books take place outside of the Mazalan Empire?

Does it fall?

Or do the Bonehunters set out for another continent?

Also does Ganoes Paran's wierd Shadow Hound Soultaken thing get explored more?

Come on spoil us for god's sake waiting till next year is going to kill me, I used all my frickin patience with books on aFfC.

[Bastard of Godsgrace]

What do you mean buy you can see why the rest of the books take place outside of the Mazalan Empire?

Does it fall?

Or do the Bonehunters set out for another continent?

Also does Ganoes Paran's wierd Shadow Hound Soultaken thing get explored more?

Come on spoil us for god's sake waiting till next year is going to kill me, I used all my frickin patience with books on aFfC.

Answering to the first to questions would be committing really big spoilers. I can only say that: SPOILERS

SPOILER: option

Malazan Empire doesn't fall but it seems to be rendered irrelevant to the central conflict

As for the third question SPOILERS

SPOILER: option

Paran does indeed do some shenanigans with Hounds

[Calibandar]

BoG,

*Any new characters that stood out for you? What races?

* Do Rake and Envy's two children (Nimander Golit and Phaed) get screentime in this book?

*Any new Forkrul Assail?

*When you were talking about Night of Knives giving background info that came in handy for TBH, did that also refer to Dassem Ultor/Traveller (since he got more background in NoK) ?

[Maltaran]

*When you were talking about Night of Knives giving background info that came in handy for TBH, did that also refer to Dassem Ultor/Traveller (since he got more background in NoK) ?

Has it been confirmed that Dassem is Traveller?

[Voland]

Release the damn book already

[Rhaco]

Thanks for the tidbits, BoG. Sounds great, though I'll admit to being disappointed that Fear's group doesn't appear.

Has it been confirmed that Dassem is Traveller?

I don't think so, but it's rapidly approaching the point of being silly if he's not.

[Arakasi]

Yeah I'm very much awaiting the release of this. More so than I am AFFC.

[Bastard of Godsgrace]

Cali;

SPOILER: option

No new races, since we have seen al of the I think. Alsono new ForkrulAssail. Rake's offspring are in the book, though., we also hear one character confirm that Dassem = Dessembrae = Traveller - but does he know what he is speaking about? I liked the character named Faradan Sort, since she is break from typical Eriksonian mold of stupid and incompetent martinet officers. Here we have a martinet officer who is extremely competent, and it is nice change, IMHO.

[Werthead]

This is a quote from a post posted at Wotmania's Other Fantasy board (itself a quote from a post on Malazanempire) about Steven Erikson's recent signing for the US version of MoI. Enjoy.

Following up on an earlier thread. Lots of stuff, not all of it is new. Steve was really nice, and took plenty of time to talk to everyone who wanted to talk to him. Tor wanted him to do more cities, but he's still working on =Reaper's Gale= and didn't want to take more time away. Though he is writing a little with his palmtop.

Werewolfv2, I know that they got your info, so your copy will get shipped out. It's a good store. If anyone else wants a signed copy of whatever they might have in stock, give Mysterious Galaxy a call. I think they might have a few UK editions as well as all the Tor editions.

Reading

There was less than 20 people there, maybe four other than me with big stacks of S.E. books. I think I was the only one with the UK trades that didn't have a tpb of Gardens . Most people hadn't read =Memories of Ice= yet so Steve read a few pages from =MoI= where Quick Ben is talking to Bauchelain, the bit with Emancipor and the wine. He was ready to read something from his palmtop from the in-progress =Reaper's Gale= (maybe just one of the poems) if most people had read past =MoI=, but they hadn't, unlike one city (maybe Portland?)

The Dark

I asked about "The Dark" and got some new information, but I'll defer to Patch before spilling any of his beans.

What Steve reads

He reads lots of histories, and while writing fantasy, a lot of science fiction. Doesn't want to have any external fantasy influences while he's writing his own. He's going to start Richard K. Morgan's =Woken Furies= on the plane home to Victoria, where he and his family recently moved.

Politics and writing

Lack of sexual discrimination in the books is intentional, since magic is a matter of discipline not genetics, and healing spells would reduce infant mortality. There was a spirited discussion about that in San Francisco.

Doesn't want to convince anyone of anything in his work, so politics and his beliefs are kept out of the books. Wants to write about the human condition. Really doesn't like fiction that tries to promote or convince anyone about political or social issues -- he was reading some military sf from a particular author and and wanted to "throw the book through a window" because of its heavy-handed viewpoints. He doesn't believe he has the right answers to anything, but hopefully he can write about the right questions.

Good and evil

He and Cam agreed early on that there would not be any simple good and evil, admitted that decision might be a reaction to the modern world and/or current events, hopefully that's close as he gets.

Cam

Lots of props to Cam and Cam's equal part in the creation of Malaz. In particular, Dragnipur and the wagon and chains was one of Cam's ideas that blew Steve's mind. Malaz wouldn't be what we all get caught up in without Cam. Steve loves being able to use little bits of Cam's stuff in his own books as cameos.

Night of Knives

=Night of Knives= did very well, and PS is looking into a larger, more affordable printing of it.

Return of the Crimson Guard

Cam is close or very close to being done with the first draft of =Return of the Crimson Guard=, Greymane plays a part in it. Cam is currently a stay-at-home dad with two kids, so has some time to write. I got the sense that =Return...= is the first of Cam's five novels, and "Night of Knives" doesn't count as one. =Return...= is a hefty book, of equal size as any of Steve's.

The big picture

The major story arcs were all well established when he started writing, and the series is on track. Sometimes he gets caught up in ideas and stuff as he's writing that go off in an unexpected direction, but eventually he brings that back to the original big plan. There are lots of bits of foreshadowing and hints about what's to come in the early books, and the folks at malazanempire.com catch =everything.= He mentioned the site a few times, complimenting the community here.

Midnight Tides

I asked about how =Midnight Tides= fits in. =MT= is "third point of the triangle", and it needed to be introduced by the fifth book. There won't be any other new big thing, everything that follows will move around between what's been introduced. This implies that the timing is a lot more contemporary with the other books than it might seem.

The world is bigger than the story

It's also intentional that significant parts of the world won't be seen in the books. The Malazan Empire is big, powerful, and significant, but it's not everything. There should always be parts of the world that known about but out of sight, and can be referred to *in* the story with out having to be *part* of the story. In Steve's books some of these things are Cam's stuff, and some are just outside the story.

The funny

He is very aware of the balance between humor and dark stuff, that's part of the reason for how funny KB & B are, even though they are very, very dark and evil. It was either before =MoI= or during the early part of =MoI= when he wanted to do something slightly different, that was influenced by Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. But he didn't want to use these two evil necromancers as the viewpoint characters, that's where Emancipor came in. Anyway, having written "Blood Follows" he couldn't resist having them make an appearance in =MoI=.

Also the humor in =Midnight Tides= comes from the same place, Bugg and Tehol to balance out the darkness of the Edur.

Korbal Broach & Bauchelain

There will be six Korbal Broach & Bauchelain novellas, expects to collect them when all are released. He really likes the illustrations in the Night Shade release of "Blood Follows".

Illustrations

Steve did a large oil "American Gothic" style painting that he'd like to use as the frontispiece of the collection. The maps in =Night of Knives= are the original maps from way back when that Steve and Cam did, and scanning technology was finally good enough for them to be used in a book rather than having the publisher get someone to redraw them for publication.

Gardens of the Moon discrepancies

When Tor bought the rights to the books they gave Steve a chance to correct =Gardens of the Moon= which he jumped at. He's pretty happy with it, and considers it cleaned up and fixed in regards to continuity with the other books (other than the things that always get missed). Don't forget that it was written eight years before he started =Deadhouse Gates=.

The act of writing

He writes for four hours a day, in cafes and restaurants, five days a week, occasionally more especially near the end of a book. Writes (and looses) lots of notes. Recently got a palmtop, has pdfs from Bantam of all books, does searches. Also, not loosing notes now that they are on the palmtop, and collecting lots of stuff for the Encyclopedia in the process.

Encyclopedia Malaz

Bantam wants to hold off on =Encyclopedia Malaz= until after last book, he and Cam have lots of raw material for it. Made a very light-hearted comment about maybe convincing Tor to do something before that. But there would be lots of holes and empty spots if so, like a map of the globe with no detail just outlines for some continents.

Music

Listens to music while writing, sometimes even just a single album for an entire novel. Pink Floyd, Bruce Coburn, U2, &c. One son recently discovered Led Zepplin, so S.E. put together a mix CD with Led Zepplin, Rush, &c. that's handy for battle sequences. He loves classical music but can't listen to that while writing because he ends up just listening to the music and not writing. Needs good lyrics and guitar riffs.

Finishing the series

He told a story about being at a store where a very old lady asked about the next Robert Jordan novel and the clerk couldn't tell her when it was coming out. He suddenly got scared about having people die before he finished the last book. So he promised that it would be done in ten books. Very emphatically.

Bonehunters delay

He was a little late on delivering =The Bonehunters=, and the Bantam/Transworld has been slow in publishing it, but -- other than knowing that people are waiting for the book -- he believes that the delays are best for the book. It's bigger than =MoI=, over 640,000 words, so it takes longer to write, typeset, copyedit, proofread, and all that. Also, it's being released at a time when the publisher can support it better than if they just got it out as quickly as they could. So it does suck that we've had to wait, but these things happen sometimes.

Reaper's Gale

He's making good progress on =Reaper's Gale= and there haven't been any problems with ideas, writer's block, or anything like that with either =The Bonehunters= or =Reaper's Gale=. Everything is moving along well and is on track.

Book Sales

I asked about book sales and how the US releases are being received. Steve doesn't really pay attention to that, but he's happy with how it's going. Tor bought all ten books when the deal was made. The bookstore staff were all fans of the books and felt good about how they were doing. They had =plenty= of copies of all the Tor editions.

Movies

There's a finished draft of the "Chain of Dogs" script, but it's =huge=, I think like 400+ pages, which is more HBO style mini-series than feature. He said the current idea was to film in Australia, but that's still a ways off. Steve gave props to Patch and said if it can be done, it will get done. None of the Malaz rights have been sold to Hollywood, they're all still in the family.

Graphic novels and RPGs

Currently negotiations are in progress for a comic adaptation with the Dabel Brothers. Also there are negotiations with an unnamed party for the RPG rights; OGL was specifically mentioned.

Covers

Steve commented that the fans did make a difference in the covers. He wasn't keen on the Tor =Gardens...= hc cover, saying something like he's never imagined Sorry in low-cut armor, and she's a little more Asian in appearance. I hadn't known that they removed "Sorry" from the massmarket pb cover. The Bonehunters cover is depicting Keneb.

--Nathan

[Cap. Paran]

Some questions (hopefully you'll be able to answer...):

1. Is Ganoes Paran gonna have a big role in this book?

2. Will he act alone or will Picker and the rest be with him?

3. Is he gonna use the mage and the assasin actually sleeping in the Finnest House?

4. Is Quick Ben present in the book?

[Attilles]

Some questions (hopefully you'll be able to answer...):

1. Is Ganoes Paran gonna have a big role in this book?

2. Will he act alone or will Picker and the rest be with him?

3. Is he gonna use the mage and the assasin actually sleeping in the Finnest House?

4. Is Quick Ben present in the book?

1. Yup

2. alone...well not entirely, but he's not leading around the ascended or remaining mortal Bridgeburners, which seems to be the thrust of your question

3. nope, interesting suggestion re: these two by another party tho, kinda subtle

4. very much so

The tie-in with NoK is so minimal as to be nonexistent, IMO and BTW

[Rhaco]

Gardens of the Moon discrepancies

When Tor bought the rights to the books they gave Steve a chance to correct =Gardens of the Moon= which he jumped at. He's pretty happy with it, and considers it cleaned up and fixed in regards to continuity with the other books (other than the things that always get missed). Don't forget that it was written eight years before he started =Deadhouse Gates=.

I had no idea the US GOTM had been corrected. I'll have to find a copy.

Anyone know what exactly was changed? Just little things like Sorry's age, Toc's missing eye, Orfantal's sex, Icarium's last meeting with Rake, Tlan/T'lan & Ritual of Imass/Tellann, etc.?

Or were more significant changes made?

[Attilles]

I had no idea the US GOTM had been corrected. I'll have to find a copy.

Anyone know what exactly was changed? Just little things like Sorry's age, Toc's missing eye, Orfantal's sex, Icarium's last meeting with Rake, Tlan/T'lan & Ritual of Imass/Tellann, etc.?

Or were more significant changes made?

Um, what was wrong with Sorry's age? she was with the Bridgeburners for 2 years or something after we are introduced to her as the fishergirl and remains young..looking... do you mean Fiddler's age? that is kinda screwy...and Toc's eye? what about it? Orfantals' gender is a real contradiction, but I don't recall any of these others being an issue...could you elaborate?

[Rhaco]

Um, what was wrong with Sorry's age?

Whiskeyjack says she's 15 in 1163 in GOTM, then later that same year that she's 17. Could just be him revising his earlier estimate, but the 17 felt like a mistake to me since her age in 1161 was given as 12-13.

and Toc's eye? what about it?

It says in GOTM that he has a patch covering his right eye, then later that he's lost his left eye.

Nothing big, like I said.

Edit: I'm not sure if you were asking for elaboration on all my examples or not, but if so:

In GOTM it's said that Icarium and Mappo last visited Rake 800 years before 1163. In 1164 in DG, however, it's said that Mappo wasn't assigned to Icarium until 200 years ago.

In GOTM it's said, or at least strongly implied, that the mortal T'lan Imass were known as the Tlans (with no glottal stop apostrophe), that they went through the Ritual of Imass to become the undead T'lan Imass, and that there were no Bonecasters until the Ritual. In the later books, however, it's said that they were known as the Imass, that they went through the Ritual of Tellann, and that Bonecasters had existed before the Ritual.

[kyuss]

I'm sorry, I know that everyone's entitled to their opinion, but what is all this Steven Erikson praise?

To be honest, I loved Deadhouse Gates even though a lot of it wasn't up to par with my expectations.... then I picked up gardens of the moon...

....

.........

............horrible

[Werthead]

I imagine it's because this is a Steven Erikson thread, so you'd expect Erikson fans to come on here to talk about the books. Cause = Effect. I think most people in fantasy would now agree that the title of best epic fantasy author out there is a two-horse race between Martin and Erikson (with Bakker coming up on the outside). Jordan is some way behind and Goodkind was shot before he left the stables. That said, I think it's also well-acknowledged that Erikson didn't do himself too many favours with Gardens of the Moon, which was rather overwhelming the first time I tried to read it (suggestion: don't start halfway through a battle with no context, jump to another landmass and then jump to a third landmass in the midst of another battle within the opening two chapters). On the other hand, many people love that hardcore "Take no prisoners" attitude. Erikson's work is deep, complicated and pretty unrelenting. It also works better after rereads.

Gardens of the Moon was also problematic in that Erikson wrote it in 1991, developing it from a movie script. He then went off and wrote several other books and matured his style before he sold the book and went off to write Deadhouse Gates. There are a lot of inconsistencies between GotM and the rest of the series. If you did like Deadhouse Gates I'd suggest giving Memories of Ice a try. It's my favourite of the series to date.

N.B. Notice I siad "epic fantasy", so no Mielville etc arguments please.

[Arakasi]

Erikson is easily my favorite writer and Malazan my favorite series, over Martin, Bakker, etc. GotM throws you into the middle of things, but I never was bothered by it. It is still my third favorite behind DG and MoI. My wife has read all 5 as well and her favorite is actually GotM, which is rather surprising considering many people's opinions on it. Just tells you everyone appreciates books differently. Kyuss I respect your opinion on whomever you like best, and I'd hope you would give the same respect back. If me and others love Erikson deal with it.

[Werthead]

Indeed, as GRRM is my favourite author over Erikson. That said, now that it's been revealed that Bonehunters is going to be a pretty monumental step forward in the series, with the Edur and the Malazans and some of the Genabackan crew hurled together, rather than just another 'regular' instalment of the series, I'm looking forward to it immensely (*fingers crossed for a world map*).

[Annelise]

Rhaco,

Yes, could you please email that tree to me? Thank you!

Do Rake and Envy's two children (Nimander Golit and Phaed) get screentime in this book?

Crap. Where were these two mentioned previously? The children, not Rake and Envy.

Hehe, thanks for the overviews and tidbits guys; I was looking forward to BH, but now I'm officially psyched.

Oh, anything about Pearl and Lostara (sp) in this one?

[caladanbrood]

Rhaco,

Yes, could you please email that tree to me? Thank you!

Do Rake and Envy's two children (Nimander Golit and Phaed) get screentime in this book?

Crap. Where were these two mentioned previously? The children, not Rake and Envy.

The draconic family tree:

http://www.malazanempire.com/forums/attach...=1&d=1131981498

note, though, this is only the tree as ascertained by Baruk. It's not neccesarily 100% correct This is the only place there is mention of Phead and Golit though. None in the books so far.