Question about Malazan

[sailor]

Thanks guys for all the replies. This surely helps.

[Gormenghast]

so that should tell you that Malazan is very far away from the quality of Song of Ice and Fire.

So your real job is certifying quality of fantasy books? I always wanted to meet one of them.

[Myshkin]

Don't mind Gormenghast, he always lashes out at anyone who doesn't like malazan. Have you read beyond book 3 yet Gorm?

[Tarapas Amran]

Most authors have faults. Martin's and Eriksons faults are of different nature and of course you get some people who like one or the other. Erikson do have better villains than Martin though.

[Serious Callers Only]

Most authors have faults. Martin's and Eriksons faults are of different nature and of course you get some people who like one or the other. Erikson do have better villains than Martin though.

LOL

[The Evil Hat]

LOL

So...you're denying that Erikson and Martin have different strengths?

[Horza]

I suspect it's the 'better villains' bit he finds laughable.

I certainly know whose villains are more believable and less emo...

[werewolfv2]

I certainly know whose villains are more believable

Thats one thing, when I read Martin it almost feels more like an historical fiction in some ways (low magic + medieval). Erikson reads like full on fantasy (new world that has a slight medieval feel and has a ton of magic and fantastic elements)

Now I like both authors, though I have to admit to liking Erikson more than Martin, but I feel Martin is a better writer....

who me? conflicted?

[End of Disc One]

Now I like both authors, though I have to admit to liking Erikson more than Martin, but I feel Martin is a better writer....

I agree. Keep in mind TC that this board dislikes the Malazan series more than other boards do. It's kind of annoying really, how in every Malazan topic one person will praise the series and then 20 other people come in and bash it.

[Gormenghast]

The point is in the vaguely implied correspondence of low magic + medieval = better writing.

Which is part of a much bigger and more flawed premise: that there's a general canon to use to judge all kind of books and then put them on an univocal ladder from worst to best. And so there are books that "suck" simply because they don't follow the canon set by other books taken as staples of "quality".

ASoIaF is a series that represents quality. But this should never be brought to the extreme consequence of building a canon.

[werewolfv2]

The point is in the vaguely implied correspondence of low magic + medieval = better writing.

um.. is that what you got from what I said? Just wondering because that was not the intent at all. I was stating that Martin feels more like historical fiction due to those two reasons while Erikson feels more "fantasy'esque"

Yeah, Ive been around this board long enough to know that the hate is kinda overblown, its ok, but cant we just all get along and bash goodkind instead?

[Shryke]

I wouldn't call it hate. I think alot of people just got disillusioned with the series, which seems to be de-improving somewhat as it goes along.

[Relic]

I wouldn't call it hate. I think alot of people just got disillusioned with the series, which seems to be de-improving somewhat as it goes along.

Are you talking about aSoIaF? Cuz Martin lost me (a fan since 1997) about four years ago.

IMHO Erikson does fantasy in a completely different way than GRRM. Comparing the two is a bit silly.

If you want a uper-powered, super layered D&D campaign spanning 5000 pages (which ranges from awesome to terribly boring) than read Erikson.

[Shryke]

Are you talking about aSoIaF? Cuz Martin lost me (a fan since 1997) about four years ago.

IMHO Erikson does fantasy in a completely different way than GRRM. Comparing the two is a bit silly.

If you want a uper-powered, super layered D&D campaign spanning 5000 pages (which ranges from awesome to terribly boring) than read Erikson.

Malazan.

Nothing has happened with ASOIAF for like 5 years.

[Han Shot First]

So your real job is certifying quality of fantasy books? I always wanted to meet one of them.

You didn't know? :fencing:

[jurble]

Malazan is awesome, when the the heroes are fighting. I honestly read it for the same reasons I read a comic book.

When Quick Ben takes out those dragons, that shit is awesome. When Kalam murders all those Claw or whatever guys in the city, that's awesome. When Quick Ben sends all the Cedas into convulsions, that's awesome. When the Pannion Seer shoots a god damn glacier at Toc & Co. that's awesome. When Karsa fights that annoying Edur king dude, that shit is awesome. When Tool does anything it's awesome. But the series can be boring as shit when it's just exposition setting up the next fight. Honestly, I don't even care about the expositions anymore, they could just say "A wizard did it" and just throw guys into a battle. I'd love it.

Oh, but my favorite is when Bauchelain is praising Quick Ben for being so awesome, when he uses like 6 warrens to shoot Korbal Broach, but then he says something like "But you shouldn't have used all your powers at once, now you're at my mercy, half would have sufficed" and Quick Ben is like "I did only use half" and shoots Bauchelain out a window, that's awesome too.

[aschwiig]

Fairly new member here, who has nevertheless read some of the old Malazan threads. I'm amazed at the number of posters who insists on comparing their much loved apples to oranges, and then hurls abuse at the oranges for not being apples.

It reminds me of the old joke, which (badly) translated into english would go something like, "I'm so glad I don't like oranges, because of that awful taste" :)

[Gormenghast]

There's a certain truth: Martin bridges the gap between "mainstream" literature and "fantasy". It means that some of Martin readers may as well be readers that never read fantasy or aren't used to read fantasy.

This brings along the prejudice. Martin, with the more historical and realistic setting, is more "mainstream", and being more mainstream makes him naturally closer to "good writing".

Erikson instead targets at a public that isn't young, but that at the very least is accustomed to fantasy. From the very first page of Gardens of the Moon this is obvious. A "mainstream" reader would have a rather hard time to get used to Erikson series and it would lead to a lot of frustration and confusion. Erikson deliberately plays with the genre in a way that requires a certain experience with it.

It would be like reading cyberpunk for someone who never used a computer.

But the truth is there: Erikson by being fully within a genre, inherits the prejudices that come with the genre (while Martin, by only tapping a toe into the genre, is more shielded from prejudice). Fantasy spontaneously and obligatorily leads (in the minds) to naive and juvenile. So with things people associate with being juvenile. Like comics, cartoons, mangas (all used as comparisons with Erikson), and obviously poorer writing compared to mainstream.

Martin is saved from the prejudice of being fantasy by not being really fantasy. Which makes him amusingly not so unlike Goodkind's own conviction and intent of "not tainted by fantasy". Both ESCAPE the genre by thinking of being superior to it.

(then there's also another certain truth: Martin is a seasoned writer who started the fantasy series when his writing style was already at its top and well established. Erikson started the series at the beginning of his career and his style matured and developed with it.)

And Erikson himself explained all this rather well in a interview:

- After the massive commercial success of the Lord of the Rings films, do you look at the growing mainstream success of authors like George R. R. Martin and Neil Gaiman, following in the impressive footsteps of Terry Pratchett, and take comfort that genre fiction is starting to become more accepted as a whole by society? Do you think the perceived social stigma attached to it can ever be overturned so that authors such as yourself are compared on a level playing-field to those who write in other more widely "respected" genres? And, I suppose, do you actually care?

No, no, and sometimes. With each writer you have named, the critics invariably practise exceptionalism: these writers are not fine representatives of their genre; by virtue of their fineness, they have left the genre. By this alchemy the stigma remains.

[Werthead]

Except that Martin, Gaiman and Pratchett have never claimed to not be writing in the genre (unlike Goodkind), are proud to have been writing in it and have been proud to receive the genre awards they have won for it. It is difficult to practice exceptionalism for authors who don't want to be excepted.

It would be like reading cyberpunk for someone who never used a computer.

By virtue of when it was published, a lot of readers had never used a computer when they first read Neuromancer in 1984. A hell of a lot more had never used a computer when Christopher Priest's proto-cyberpunk A Dream of Wessex was published seven years earlier, or John Brunner's The Shockwave Rider two years before that.

Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing series plays with themes and philosophy in some of the same ways that Erikson aspires to, but does so in a manner that is fully compatible with a reader not used to the genre. Erikson deliberately chose to make his work somewhat unapproachable to the non-genre reader, it was not an inevitable consequence of his writing style.

[Gormenghast]

Except that Martin, Gaiman and Pratchett have never claimed to not be writing in the genre (unlike Goodkind), are proud to have been writing in it and have been proud to receive the genre awards they have won for it. It is difficult to practice exceptionalism for authors who don't want to be excepted.

Oh, you're right.

The prejudice is entirely established in the readers not the writers (Goodkind is the exception).