Erikson: The Bonehunters

[Rhaco]

Fiddler,

SPOILER: TBH

Is Skinner the Seguleh First?

Hm, that's possible, I guess. But if the Crimson Guard has command of the Seguleh, why haven't they used them? I read it as Hood sending his Soldier after a pesky human who refuses to die, though why Skinner in particular, I don't know. Maybe Esslemont will clarify in his CG book.

Calibandar,

SPOILER: TBH

Lords of War: A card showing two wolves, male & female, flanking an unoccupied bone throne -- Togg & Fanderay

Hunter: A card apparently showing a tiger, with the striped, handless corpse of an old man in the foreground -- Treach

Guardians of the Dead: A card showing ghostly soldiers on a burning bridge -- The Bridgeburners

Army / Soldier: ???

Life Slayer: A card showing a half-Jaghut with a horn bow and a single-edged sword -- Icarium

Death Slayer: A card showing a broken-limbed thing chained to the earth in a hut -- The Crippled God

Mercenary: ???

BoG,

SPOILER: TBH

I guess Erikson changed his mind about Phaed parentage.

No, I think it's just showing us that Baruk's tree is not completely accurate.

Another random thought that popped into my head since the last post:

SPOILER: TBH

Toblakai have been known to create individual warrens about themselves. Explains a little more Karsa's abilities -- I'm thinking particularly about when by force of will or whatever he freed the Jaghut in HOC.

[Arakasi]

Just finished reading it today. Great book. Fits somewhere into the middle of the series in which I enjoy most. Tons of memorable scenes, as well as filling in backstory and clues from the series. Definately can't wait to get the next book.

SPOILER: black

I am of the opinion that the 2 ghosts with Apsalar are Menondore and Sukuhl. We know they are dragons, and its pretty clear they're soletaken since well truebloods don't act like that. Add to that they're both females and I think its mostly plausible who they are. There just isn't that many soletaken around.

[Galactus]

Just finished reading it today. Great book. Fits somewhere into the middle of the series in which I enjoy most. Tons of memorable scenes, as well as filling in backstory and clues from the series. Definately can't wait to get the next book.

SPOILER: black

I am of the opinion that the 2 ghosts with Apsalar are Menondore and Sukuhl. We know they are dragons, and its pretty clear they're soletaken since well truebloods don't act like that. Add to that they're both females and I think its mostly plausible who they are. There just i

sn't that many soletaken around.

SPOILER: black

Nice theory, but I disagree with there being no Soletaken around. To me it feels like you can't chuck a rock and not hit a -ing Soletaken.

So.... Anyone other than me thinks Mael might be playing a deeper game? They mention that the reason he's losing control is because he's busy, but might he not actually be pulling his Jhistal's strings in order to get the Fourteenth to Lether?

[Werthead]

I wonder if RG will start after MT and fill in some of the gaps (showing how Trull went from being still at liberty at the end of MT to shackled to the wall in the Nascent in HoC) or if it will fill in all of that later and simply pick up immediately where TBH leaves off?

I'm also guessing, from the directions certain parties are sailing in, that we will get to see Lether's east coast on the map in RG.

Also the news that Erikson is now working on a new version of his world map hopefully means it might appear in that book.

(until then of course we have my own effort at)

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4/Werth...a-map-delta.jpg

[Arakasi]

SPOILER: Galactus

Okay yes there is a ton of soletakens. You run into them and D'ivers all the time. The question here is soletaken DRAGONs, which is a much more limited field. We've seen the dragon tree, we have a good idea who the truebloods are for the most part and we know the major Tiste. From what we've seen of soletaken dragons, they're either children to elder gods, elder gods themselves, or Tiste (which is really just saying children of people like Tiam and Mother Dark). There isn't that many soletaken dragons out there before, especially not many we know that are 2 females and come in a pair. Hence I put 2 and 2 together there. Sure its possible that it could be some random joe andi we've never heard of before, but much more likely it is someone we have heard, and those 2 fit the bill.

[Xanrn]

Why does Quick Ben think the Grey Helms are the Grey Swords?

I'm kind of sad about the Mazalan Empire not showing up anymore, its a right fucked up place and I want to see whats happens...

[Rhaco]

Where's v5 with Erikson's corrections, Werthead? Chop, chop.

Why does Quick Ben think the Grey Helms are the Grey Swords?

Where does he think that? It wouldn't surprise me if there are Grey Shields somewhere to complete the set.

Arak, Galactus,

SPOILER: TBH

Telorast and Curdle being Menandore and Ankhadu is as good a guess as any, I think, assuming they no longer remember who and maybe what they are. They didn't seem nearly as goofy in MT. Everything else seems to fit, though.

[Slick Mongoose]

SPOILER: TBH

What makes you guys think that Telorast and Curdle are female? It seemed pretty obvious that they were male to me.

[Xanrn]

SPOILER: TBH

What makes you guys think that Telorast and Curdle are female? It seemed pretty obvious that they were male to me.

O...K... I think you need to re-read....

As for Quick Ben, he says something along the lines of Wanting them on your side if your ever in a siege.

How come Togg and Fareday have Two Mortal Swords, Shield Anvils and Destraints...

Cause that Grey Swords are mostly women and Tok the Younger in his stolen body is the Mortal Sword...

[Lord Baelish]

I agree with Slick re: the sex of Telorast and Curdle. There are a fair few instances where they seem to forget that they're female and have to remind themselves, which makes me believe that they are pretending to be female for some reason.

[Slick Mongoose]

SPOILER: TBH

"..., Masters of the thousand Warrens-"
"Mistresses, Curdle. Mistresses of the Thousand Warrens."
"Yes, Telorast. Mistresses indeed. What was I thinking?..."

There's a lot more very similar stuff from them.

[Arakasi]

SPOILER: TBH

So if they are male and not female, does anyone have any ideas to who they are? If male it seems most likely they're new players. And thus most likely to stick around as comic relief and not threats. Thats fine with me, since I hope Osric's kids are still alive and kicking in dragon form.

[Werthead]

Where's v5 with Erikson's corrections, Werthead? Chop, chop.

Where does he think that? It wouldn't surprise me if there are Grey Shields somewhere to complete the set.

I'm currently finishing off The Bonehunters and wanted to read it fully to see if there's any further information to help the map before doing the next version. And there is. Some interesting stuff on Assail ("To Hood with Assail!") and some further geographic descriptions of Korelri.

SPOILER: TBH

I think Togg and Fanderay either have 2 sets of everything each because they're two gods, or because they seem to be associated with the new House of War which seems to have them as guardians but not actual leaders (with various unaligned groups hurled into the mix), or because each god as a Mortal Sword, Destriant etc. on each continent. So the Grey Swords and co. fulfil that job on Genabackis whilst the Perish do on the Seven Cities uber-continent.

By the way, there is a competition to win The Bonehunters at

http://www.sfx.co.uk/competitions/the_bonehunters

[Slick Mongoose]

Ok, I had a revelation. They're female. Assuming that they're extremely intelligent and wish to conceal their identity, they're making Apsalar assume that they're male by so stupidly pretending to be female. Having thought of this, I don't see any other explanation that fits.

[Lord Baelish]

I wonder if they're still hanging around with Apsalar at the end of the book. They kind of disappeared when she joined the 14th and we hardly saw them again. It would have been funny if they'd started taunting Pearl while he was dying. They might get bored hanging around with her at Coop's though.

[Werthead]

Cheeseburger over at Wotmania recently attended Steven Erikson and R. Scott Bakker's joint signing in Canada and posted the following report (including a brief reading from Reaper's Gale). And Erikson mentioned my map!

Hi all,

Yesterday I spent 45 minutes on a bus, 1.5 hours on a ferry, another hour on a bus followed by a 30 minute walk and a 1.5 hour wait in front of Bolen Books in order to meet Steve Erikson and R. Scott Bakker. It was worth it.

As mentioned, I arrived early and had a chance to peruse the large mazelike bookstore and chanced upon the Sci-fi fantasy section. Lo and behold, several copies of The Bonehunters rested on the shelf. I snatched one up (thus forcing me to return the one I ordered from Amazon.uk once it arrives) so I could get it signed. Not wanting to feel like a loiterer, I parked myself down on a bench within the mall in front of the store.

Staff set up a small stage and seating for about 50 people (only about 25ish or so showed up) and I plopped down in the first row. Several minutes later an extremely tall man showed up and began talking with the event coordinator (who also did the recent review of TTT and got the timeline wrong for Aspect emperor 40 instead of the actual 20 years post TTT). As Dylanfanatic warned me, this must be Bakker, even though it was hard to tell with his new hippy-haircut.

Following another early bird, I brought up my 3 trade versions of the series to get signed. Scott is a very personable guy and was a pleasure to chat with. He holds Dylanfanatic in high regard as I found out when I told him I thought it was cool of him to include our beloved Admin in his acknowledgements. In adition to signing the books, Scott also opens the book to a random chapter heading and jots down some of the quote found there on the title page. An extra touch that shows he's very appreciative of his fans. In the middle of his signing my books, Erikson shows up and I think I witnessed the first real life meeting between the two authors. Erikson gave Bakker the new hardcover releases of The Healthy Dead and Blood Follows and brought another set to be given out in a draw.

Then came the reading. Erikson was first and instead of reading from the Bonehunters, he brought along a few pages from book 7: Reaper's Gale. The passage he read concerned Nimander Golit (male) and his sister Phaed (female) who are the offspring of Anomander Rake and Lady Envy according to the Draconean Family tree that's been up online for a while. It was a descriptive passage of Phaed from Nimander's PoV. They are on a ship after the events of HoC and are now under the protection of another Tiste Andii whose first name I can't recall, but last name is DuKorlat, so it might be the Korlat we've seen before. Anyways, the gist of it is the siblings don't really know what to do and Nimander is quiet and introspective while his sister seems to be very spiteful and angry about theire present situation and wants to murder the Korlat person.

Erikson then fielded a few questions. I asked several and here are some of the responses. There will be no Hounds of Light. He has many maps made up for the source book. He mentioned Adam's map and gave him some kudos. He writes 4 hours a day, 5-6 days a week. He didn't want to comment much on how the magic works and would prefer to keep it a bit of a mystery, though he said a lot more is explained in BH.

Before Bakker's reading he took the opportunity to publically thank Erikson for his help in the writing process and promotion and got everyone to give SE a hand.

Bakker then read a passage from TTT involving Achamian's return to the holy war and his first site of Esmenet. As a speaker he gave the characters different voices which was pretty cool. He has a psycho triller called Neuropath coming out soon but he didn't really feel satisfied or as involved with it as with PoN and he said he can't wait to get back to Earwa. The comment was made that their seemed to be many parallels with present day politics, which actually influenced some early publishers to turn the series down.

After that came the signing where I got all 6 main Malazan books signed as well as Blood Follows and the introduction to Night of Knives. Erikson said that ICE was working hard on his next novel. Also I passed Adam's thanks on to him for the kind words he made about Adam's world map, to which he replied "that's cool"

And it was cool. Definately worth the trip.

[Slick Mongoose]

Cooooool.

It seems like the Tiste are going to feature very heavily in the next book, what with these lot, Fear's search for Bloodeye, Silchas Ruin and the Edur. As well has some hints about Rake I heard recently.

[Lord Baelish]

Well, everyone wants Rake to go to Bluerose, so maybe his children will do instead? I wonder how they would react to Nimander Golit. BTW, it's said here again that Phaed is his sister, not his daughter. I wish people would make up their minds.

And it seems I was right about where the 14th are going. Nimander et al are with them, and they're in RG then they must be heading to Lether. Unless they only appear in the prologue, but I find that unlikely.

[Bastard of Godsgrace]

Well, everyone wants Rake to go to Bluerose, so maybe his children will do instead? I wonder how they would react to Nimander Golit. BTW, it's said here again that Phaed is his sister, not his daughter. I wish people would make up their minds.

His sister AND his daughter?

[Lupigis]

His sister AND his daughter?

Rake goes Chinatown?!