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Malazan: High House Shadow edition


AncalagonTheBlack

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On 11/18/2018 at 10:03 PM, Britton said:

Midnight Tides is also my favorite.  I didn't realize it was so divisive. 

It isn't now, but on release it was, because it completely abandoned all of the established characters and settings, apart from Trull Sengar who'd just been this random dude who'd showed up in HoC.

In retrospect, the presence of the Crippled God, the mentions of the flooding of the Nascent (which go by so fast that you could blink and miss them), the cameo of a Crimson Guard squad etc should have made it clear a lot more important stuff was going on than initially appeared.

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Toll the Hounds is my favorite, so I guess I am one of the divisive guys. Even more divisive, Deadhouse Gates is the one I like least (but if you take away the first karsaorlongcentric fourth of House of Chains, that would be the one I like least).

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I basically stopped reading the series after attempting Midnight Tides. House of Chains sucked, but MT was basically so very dull to me that I didn't care to read any further. All the things that I did like about the series to that point were basically ignored, and I just wasn't interested in wherever they were going with MT. 

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23 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

I always thought of Toll the Hounds as the one that caused thew most, um, fan strife.

Now you got me thinking about rankings. I'd say MT is my favorite why my least favorite is DoD, but thats only the main 10. You stick Esselmont and the other stuff in there and everything goes bananas.

TTH is certainly the weirdest book in the series, and the book with the least amount of forward plot momentum despite being the biggest book in the series. OTOH, lots of people love it because of Darujhistan, Kruppe, the Bridgeburners and because Erikson got to go 110% Full Erikson in a manner he hadn't done before, and wouldn't do again until Fall of Light. This is not necessarily a good thing.

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I've been peaking a great deal in Toll the Hounds...and...well...I should not have done that. It's not new to me to do that with some books(I did it with Deadhouse Gates), but this one, er...I don't know what to think. Reading and finding out is going to be fun, especially since I've been aware for quite some time that my favorite character became an Ascendant. However, from what little I've gleaned, it sounds disappointing. Sigh...

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Count me in as another who counts Midnight Tides as their favorite, though it's been over ten years now- I'm curious to see how it's held up as I move through my slow re-read of the series. I do remember that it has some pacing problems early on, which isn't helpful when it's introducing entirely new characters. But in my memory, it was the most complete book, had the best characters and character development, an excellent climax, and showed Erikson at his wittiest. His humor can be very hit or miss for me, but I loved Tehol and Bugg in this book.    

Toll the Hounds completely lost me, and Dust of Dreams was even worse, from what I remember.  The Crippled God was a decent ending to the series, but I also remember endless descriptions of the Bonehunters crossing a desert. The books were always self-indulgent and overlong, but it's a problem that got real bad in the last five. 

 

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I was kinda of dreading Toll The Hounds on my first read as I only started the series shortly after the Crippled God was released and had heard it was most people's least favorite at the time, but I ended up really liking it.  It was different sure, but I was able to appreciate the slow burn.  My least favorite of the main series was between Dust of Dreams and House of Chains.  I haven't read the series in about 4 years (gearing up for a reread soon) but I remember the key moments in most of the books, those two though I can't remember much of anything other than the fact that House of Chains had Karsa for the first quarter of the book.  Thankfully I didn't have to deal with the wait between Dust of Dreams and The Crippled God that would not have been pleasant. 

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On 11/21/2018 at 4:30 PM, Werthead said:

TTH is certainly the weirdest book in the series, and the book with the least amount of forward plot momentum despite being the biggest book in the series. OTOH, lots of people love it because of Darujhistan, Kruppe, the Bridgeburners and because Erikson got to go 110% Full Erikson in a manner he hadn't done before, and wouldn't do again until Fall of Light. This is not necessarily a good thing.

Heh, I'm reading Rejoice, A Knife to the Heart right now and I was just thinking this is 110 percent Full Erikson, but in a good way, while Fall of Light is 110 percent full Erikison in a bad way.

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Yeah, I think there is a consensus, as much as there is a consensus, that Dust of Dreams is the weakest book, mainly because it could have been shortened and combined with The Crippled God with no great issue. At least TTH has its own, focused narrative.

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14 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Yeah, I think there is a consensus, as much as there is a consensus, that Dust of Dreams is the weakest book, mainly because it could have been shortened and combined with The Crippled God with no great issue. At least TTH has its own, focused narrative.

Losing the hobbling plotline would have greatly improved DoD.  It still leaves a bad taste.

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Oh god, the hobbling. That was so, so, so, awful. But pretty much the whole of DoD leaves a bad taste in my mouth, from the meandering, overlong plotlines to pretentious writing to the very, very random spaceship lizard battle at the end as the "climax" (it has been a while, so I may be misremembering exactly what happened here).

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3 hours ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Oh god, the hobbling. That was so, so, so, awful. But pretty much the whole of DoD leaves a bad taste in my mouth, from the meandering, overlong plotlines to pretentious writing to the very, very random spaceship lizard battle at the end as the "climax" (it has been a while, so I may be misremembering exactly what happened here).

I remember it felt like the first 500 or so pages was mostly the Bonehunters talking about the big journey they were going to embark on but not actually starting it. I think I would agree it is probably the weakest novel in the series, while Toll The Hounds also had serious pacing issues at least it did have a strong ending. 

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