Malazan Re-read Order

[Rhom]

3 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Perhaps my problem is that I abandoned this book too early.  I don’t think I read more than 10% of this one either time.  (memory is foggy; it’s been a long time)

10% of Toll the Hounds is still more pages than some novellas I’ve read!  

[IlyaP]

On 9/29/2023 at 2:20 PM, Iskaral Pust said:

Toll The Hounds is where I dropped the series.  I even did a reread at some point and still dropped it here.  I think it was partly the book itself felt boring and partly that in the eighth book of ten it once again breaks away from all of the open plot lines and introduces another setting and more new characters.  The lack of any convergence toward resolution at this stage of the series makes it difficult to care to finish this boring book.

This is still probably my favorite of the main books, either before/after Gardens of the Moon, depending on my mood, as Erikson finally decided to show off his prose writing skills (which really come to the fore in the Kharkanas prequel trilogy), which is why I love it. The other books has good enough prose, but in Toll he goes all out and it's a delight to read. (I think I still prefer GotM because it's a tigher, action-packed high fantasy romp with dragons, assassins, and...uh, acorns.)

[ljkeane]

I dropped out of the series about 100 pages into Toll the Hounds too.

Is Toll the Hounds rubbish or really good? That feels like an old school discussion for the Board.

Edited September 30, 2023 by ljkeane

[Werthead]

Toll the Hounds is the God-Emperor of Dune of the series (if you're less charitable, the Feast for Crows, or if you're downright mean, the Crossroad of Twilight): depending on your POV, it's either an introspective, poetic book with lots of thematic exploration building to one of the biggest moments in the series, or it's 1200 pages of tedious preamble with a single important event that happens right at the very end and that's it. I do think it's inarguable that it's the longest book in the entire Malazan series (which is not made up of short books) and has the least forward major plot movement, so it's certainly the slowest-paced.

It's also the book where Erikson took a torch to the timeline and made it clear he didn't give a single shit about consistency and continuity, which did annoy a lot of people. And he spends a lot of the book setting up a massive threat which never materialises, and is instead dealt with Esslemont in the far snappier Orb Sceptre Throne.

[Luzifer's right hand]

I gave up on the series after reading a bit of Toll the Hounds too. 

 

[polishgenius]

What we're learning here is that Toll the Hounds is where we sort the wheat (Malazan superfans) from the chaff (normal people). 

[Ran]

3 hours ago, polishgenius said:

What we're learning here is that Toll the Hounds Karsa Fucking Orlong is where we sort the wheat (Malazan superfans) from the chaff (normal people). 

FTFY.

[IlyaP]

11 hours ago, polishgenius said:

What we're learning here is that Toll the Hounds is where we sort the wheat (Malazan superfans) from the chaff (normal people). 

Just wait'll they get a load of the Kharkhanas Trilogy! Mwaha.

[Rhom]

17 hours ago, Ran said:

FTFY.

Witness!

[hauberk]

On 9/30/2023 at 12:13 PM, Ran said:

FTFY.

There's some truth there - I very much did not care for Karsa when he was introduced.

My big test was Lether.  Midnight Tides was a slog for me.  I get that Tehol and Bugg were much beloved by many, but was largely an annoyance to me.

[Ran]

1 hour ago, hauberk said:

Midnight Tides was a slog for me.

Yeah, that's where I quit. HoC and Karsa Fucking Orlog tried my patience but had a lot of good... but Midnight Tides was just too much of what I didn't like and too little of what I did. To each their own.

[Argonath Diver]

This series is certainly the most polarizing content for me personally of anything I've read. At its best, it has my favorite characters ever, my favorite incredible scenes ever, and a delightful amount of world-building and mystery that I love.

At its worst, it's absurdly confusing and vague, with entire cultures and plotlines I have actual difficulty reading (Midnight Tides, blech, I just loathe everything about the Edur and Letherii), and some of the singular most disturbing scenes of anything I've ever read. Namely, *the* rape chapter (unfortunate that Hetan's horrors needs to be specified over the many other ones. Fuck Karsa Orlong). I can't imagine trying to read through that ever again, nor can I imagine how it would affect the many, many readers who've been subject to real-life abuse. I've also never finished the series, as it's Dust of Dreams and Badalle and the rotting kids that finally made me give up.

Erikson's prose has a singular ability to instill empathy for a soon-to-be-killed character throughout the series, and get me cheering when beloved characters triumph or force me to find a tissue to pat down a tear-soaked beard. Then I'll hit giant swaths of content that I want to completely skip over. I honestly don't think I'll ever get through The Crippled God, nor do I enjoy Esselmont's different style enough to invest in his portion of the world.

[JGP]

Midnight Tides was an odd entry, yet I enjoyed [enjoyed? morbidly fascinated?] the permutations of debt slavery in Edur society and, iirc, it was also the first book where we saw the unveiling of devastating battle magic unleashed by Edur and/or mage cadres?

There was a recent back and forth going on in TWoT show thread about the use of the One Power against other wielders and conventional battleground troops; Jordan having the occasional woman in command but not as warriors/soldiers really [excepting the Aiel] and it did bring to mind that Erikson did all these things, and more, seamlessly.

Edited October 2, 2023 by JGP

[polishgenius]

30 minutes ago, Argonath Diver said:

Namely, *the* rape chapter (unfortunate that Hetan's horrors needs to be specified over the many other ones. Fuck Karsa Orlong). I can't imagine trying to read through that ever again, nor can I imagine how it would affect the many, many readers who've been subject to real-life abuse. 

 

 

Yeah, the hobbling is horrendous, and not just in the way SE obviously meant it to be. It's completely unnecessary for anything about the actual overall plot, and its stated purpose (SE apparently once said he wrote it to avoid making the Barghast give an overly romantiscised view of primitive cultures) makes no sense because nothing about it has any connection to the way the Barghast have previously been depicted. It's just nastiness, out of nowhere, for no reason. Even within Hetan's own personal narrative- Hetan had already had her happy ending, her arc was done. Then all that cruelty happened but at the end (spoiler alert) SE just waves a magic wand and reconsitutes the happy ending, so it was literally fucking pointless in every sense.

 

And yeah, SE handles rape badly in general. Like, it's a pretty difficult subject to handle 'well', but if you can't do it then just don't touch the subject. Malazan has Stonny's rape being used as the driving force behind Gruntle's story, Karsa shrugging off being a rapist even though he's 'learned better' because he still doesn't regret it because his daughters are cool... it's by a long distance his worst characteristic as a writer. 

[Argonath Diver]

Indeed. The series is full of some truly horrific scenes, to be sure. I'm rather claustrophobic, and Erikson's tribute to Moria (the escape from Y'Ghatan) was incredibly hard for me to read - but also one of my favorite moments in the entire series when they literally see the light. There's tons and tons of body horror - as I said, the kids exploding with gut-worms was the nail in the coffin for me. But boy howdy, that 40 page or whatever chapter was thoroughly unnecessary. Not to mention Ran's favorite character the Bro of all Bros just shrugging off his culture of rape with a non-apology. 

Terry Goodkind's obsession with Kahlan (is that her name? Man it's been a decade or more) being near-raped in every single book was quite troublesome, but I find Erikson's unabashed and repeated descriptions of terrible violence to women on par or worse. Perhaps because, as I mentioned, he also writes my absolute favorite scenes of any author. I still have the superb Tor Re-read bookmarked, and my last attempt at a full revisit had me going back and forth between the novels and the chapter descriptions. I think it's the only way I'll ever be able to navigate past the ~2000 pages of stuff I simply never want to re-read, to enjoy the ~4000 pages of content I love.

Edited October 2, 2023 by Argonath Diver

[hauberk]

I have completed Fall of Light.  Overall, I think I enjoyed it but it was a dense read and his loose continuity was challenging.  

My high point in it was encountering a pair of characters and making the internal comparison with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to then look online and see multiple discussions comparing them.

I do think that the device he used to break down the final battle sequence was a bit of a cheat and that there were other things that could have been cut if needed.