Tell me about Erikson's Malazan series

Cafe Society
1

I am a fan of Martin’s series but like many fans I have been disillusioned by the slow pace of the last two books; both in terms of release date and story. I haven’t completely given up but I am much less interested than before and anyway it’s not like the series will be over quickly.

I have been trying to find a completed fantasy series of similar quality and one name that keeps popping up is the Malazan series which was finished just this year. I gather it’s similarly “gritty” though with much more magic than Ice and Fire.

So anyone who has read it could you tell me a little bit about it, obviously without spoilers. Is it likely to appeal to someone who really enjoyed the first three books of Ice and Fire? I don’t mind stronger fantasy elements but I want complex characters in a richly detailed universe with a reasonably fast moving plot.

2

I also would like to know more about Malazan.

In other news, I’d recommend Shadowmarch and sequels by Tad Williams. It’s a fantasy series that’s complete (4 long volumes), has some elements* in common with Martin’s, and I really enjoyed the whole thing.

  • not the main characters dying left and right thing, though, if you really loved that feature
3

1.) Massively more magic than Martin. Gods and godlike beings regularly interact with mortals, sorcerors great and small are everywhere and thermonuclear-level magic is tossed around with abandon.

2.) Good characters, but IMHO often uneven character development. Just as an example some of Erikson’s romances sorta work, some are head-scratchers that kinda come out of nowhere.

3.) Gritty in a Martinesque way, but mediated by above massive magic and boatloads of divine and quasi-divine intervention. Likeable characters die. And comeback. And die again in horrible agony. And comeback. And die while families are slaughtered and raped. And comeback again. And die while their dear friends watch in horror. And comeback again. And die.

The above is an exaggeration, but only just. Some characters just flat-out die, a few live. Regardless Erikson I think kills his characters with even more abandon than Martin, but is less final about it a larger percentage of the time.

4.) Huge character lists and bouncing stories, with individual books bouncing in perspective from one group on one continent to another group on another continent. They all tie together again eventually, but it takes ten books so just be prepared for it.

5.) No hand-holding. One of the best things about the series IMO. You are thrown right into a complex world and have to figure things out on the fly with little exposition or explanation to help you. It takes awhile, but is rewarding.

6.) Started as a role-playing scenario and as with China Mieville’s Bas-Lag milieu it really shows. This is not a criticism per se, just that it often reads like a very cool RPG campaign which might work for some better than others.

Having read them all, IMO…Martin’s are better. However many, or at least some on this forum, disagree. It really comes down to a matter of taste and Martin is more to mine. I do find Erikson’s books entertaining and can recommend them. And you can’t argue with the fact that they are “finished” :).

Though I suppose I should add that I was underwhelmed by said ending.

4

I’d second that. Furthermore, the magic/theology system is either incredibly complex or just poorly explained, because after reading the first book, I still couldn’t make heads or tails of it - and I’ve been reading fantasy and playing D&D and other RPGs for almost 30 years.

5

I’d say it quite literally takes several books to get a handle on it and it gets more complex rather than less for reasons related to the main plot thread :D. You get tidbits of explanation, but never very much in one spot. Oh and some of it self-contradictory as the first book was almost a kinda first draft of the world and its system - the later nine depart from some of the canon it set forth. Fun!

6

Sounds interesting and I will probably give the first book a go sometime.

Though I have to say I hate dead characters who come back to life. I also hate near-deaths especially when they keep happening to major characters. Of course Martin himself has been slipping on these counts but at least in the early books he had the guts to kill major characters and keep them dead. Still, if Erikson’s series is strong in other respects I can probably live with it.

7

The first book is sort of uneven; he wrote it first, and it shows. But if you make it through that one, the second, Deadhouse Gates, is unadulterated awesome, especially one supremely badass character. I kind of lost interest when he abandoned the main Malazan continent and spent a couple of books with a completely different set of characters. Now that the series is over, maybe I should pick it back up.

8

I would imagine there are plenty of websites with detailed explanations in one place. And actually I kind of like the idea puzzling out a complex magic system. I haven’t read much fantasy apart from Martin and LOTR and it would be a new reading experience.

9

It should be said, what with all the dying and resurrecting and so on – dead characters who later reappear are very rarely the same, thereafter. Many essentially disappear as characters. Most lose what drew you to them in the first place. It’s not always an easy series to read, for that and many other reasons. It’s good, though.

10

It’s one of my favorite series, and my favorite fantasy series. There is no hand holding or coddling at all, and Erikson has said that he started in the middle of the story deliberately. Characters are generally fairly good, some are unbalanced, and yeah, some of the romance is off. The series is fairly gritty. The first book is by far the simplest, but also the worst. You will not really understand how things work until after the second book, most likely, and you may have to go over events again to see what’s happened, and more importantly, why it happened. The books are very long, some reaching 1200 pages. Characters do come back occasionally, but not as much as I think others have said, and they don’t usually come back to life, exactly. The writing style itself is excellent. The books can start slow, but the ending is always spectacular. I’ve never really heard of anything similar to the magic or the god’s and ascendants in the series, and it is huge, and confusing.

The thing I love about the series is that it has it’s own internal logic. Once you read for a while, you figure out how things work, and things make sense based off of those guidelines.

I’m not sure how much you should trust me though because, quite frankly, I hated the RR Martin crap. I thought it was the worst kind of dreck, that none of the characters were well developed, that none of it made much internal sense, even for a fantasy world, that it was poorly written and that it was really, really boring. So, take that as you will, I guess.

11

  1. It’s complicated but it’s not as easy as last minute miracles where Lassie looks like she’s dying and then suddenly jumps up and suddenly she’s fine and it was just a tear-jerker. It has to do with how magic and power work in Erikson’s world. Death is mostly just another form of being. Some people come back, some don’t, some … take the opportunity to change jobs, so to speak. Some people never die. Some people were dead all along. It’s complicated.

  2. What I would say to people struggling at the start - just keep going. It will all make sense by the end of the book and when you get to book 10, it will all come together in an absolute work of art. It really is an amazing achievement.

  3. Erikson also has a series of novellas about a pair of necromancers, Korbal Broach and Bauchelain. They’re canon, but really just a side dish. Basically they just run around causing trouble. No biggie if you want to ignore them The duo do make a fleeting appearance in the main series at one point.

  4. Erikson created the Malazan world with his writing partner, Ian Cameron Esslemont. They were archaeology students who made up this RPG world while on a dig. Esslemont is also writing a series of books about the world. Originally, he was going to write about events preceding Erikson’s works but now he’s focussing on events happening with a different group of people in a different part of the world.

Esslemont is not the writer Erikson is, and Erikson is actually helping him finish this series. They’re more straight forward fantasy books, with a more typical novel structure than Erikson’s stuff. They’re not bad but Erikson is clearly the Main Event. Still if you like Erikson, you’ll want to read Esslemont’s work too.

12

I’m a big fan of the series, but before you start reading them keep in mind that the books are pretty difficult reading. I can be confusing because of the lack of handholding, and Erikson’s got a complex world with a large vocabulary.

My favorite thing, among many, is that this world has some big, terrifying beings running around, and it has for hundreds of thousands of years. And it SHOWS.

Think about something like, say, Alessan’s D&D comment. One thing that makes D&D-like cosmology so simplistic is that nothing ever changes (and no, don’t nitpick me three gods across a couple thousand years). Somehow, you have these titanic forces battling for millenia and nothing changes? Then why are they fighting? What, exactly, are they striving for? And seriously, at no point has there been a genocide that wipes out either the Elves or Orcs? Across many thousands of years? Right…

The Malazan books have gods, demigods, ascended beings, and things that don’t quite fit any of those (Kallor, anyone?). And they all have an affect on the world. That being said, the fact that there’s oodles of powerful beings running around means that the powerful beings need to be careful. After all, you might be a badass, but your rival for the last hundred thousand years would just love for you to leave yourself exposed so that he can finally get rid of you once and for all.

Other than that my other favorite thing is that sorcery is powerful. Like, when two heavy hitters go at it, the soldiers around them die by the thousand. Of course, all it takes is one lucky shot, and that sorcerer dies. Everyone can die - whether you’re talking mortal humans or gods.

Finally, something that epic stories like this are always seeming to lack, is humor. Every Malazan book has a couple characters whose dialogue and relationship is absolute gold. Iskarl Pust with his wife and Tehol Beddict and Bugg being my two favorites.

What a rambling post. Ah well.

-Joe

13

I’ve been considering trying these, and I just got a notice today that the Amazon Kindle book Gardens of the Moon is on sale for $2.99.

14

Well, Eleanor, that’s just fantastic! Like the others, I’ve been thinking about starting this series, but haven’t yet. (I think I tried once before, but gave it up as a bad job. But at this price…)

Thanks for the tip!

15

Thanks, Eleanor! I have the hard copies but they weigh more than my dog does. I was thinking of getting them on Kindle too.

16

I’ve got about 600 pages to go to finish The Crippled God, so I can’t comment on the overall ending. The ‘main series’ (the ten books by Erikson) is a bit uneven, but certainly worth the ride. Some of the highlights for me - the strange tale of Karsa Orlong; Tehol Bedict and Bug; the Chain of Dogs; and Anomander Rake. I tend to get lost amongst the mass of marines to some extent though, and end up trudging through some of their parts. I also find some of the interior monologues a bit tedious at times, but these are minor points about a series I’ve thoroughly enjoyed.

Oh and I like the Esslemont books even more - they seem a bit more focussed and ‘nippier’ than the main series.

17

Good to hear about the first one. I made it through the first one eventually, but was overall unenthusiastic about reading any later ones: there were some great bits in it, but it just didn’t feel to me like it had a real narrative arc or something (I forget exactly what it was missing). If the others are a bit tighter–not simpler, mind you, just tighter–I might give them a go.

18

I just finished book 1 of this series, very impressed. Sort of feel like you’ve got Lv10 magic user written on your forehead when you’re reading the book, but what the hell. My copy also featured a pretty unappealing introduction from Erikson where he sounds like he’s got a very high opinion of his own work. I can see now that this is justified, but still, it’s not like he’s written A la recherche du temps perdu.

I guess the SoIF is a natural reference point but the writing and particularly world-building is very different. I suspect GRRM is the better writer, but I was put in mind of some post I read on westeros saying he can’t world build for shit. Outside of common reference points like medieval Europe he’s lost, and you can see this in his very weak efforts at expanding the SoIF canvas in the recent books. I sort of agree with this, certainly as far as SoIF is concerned and Erikson seems the perfect counterpoint with some truly impressive efforts in Gardens of the Moon. It did seem creaky in parts so good to hear that the next ones are tighter.

Actually delaying the next one as I have a big proposal I’m writing at work and staying up late reading was not helping. Sign of an addictive book I guess when you need to measure it out.

19

(Emphasis added)

Nope he’s written twice as much as Proust (about 3 million words for Erikson versus about 1.5 million for Proust).

And I think Proust’s narrator wouldn’t last five minutes in Erikson’s world.

20

I read the first three Song of Ice and Fire books, have the 4th but have not gotten around to it. I’ve been avidly buying the Malazan Books of the Fallen as they come out. So I’m clearly in the “prefer Eriksen to Martin” camp.

I think the thing that did it for me was in Gardens of the Moon, when I realized that we were dealing with a world that is very old, and there is some serious spooky shit going on. Like the T’lan Imass (yeah, points off for gratuitous overuse of apostrophy, bear with me), who are basically an entire race that committed mass suicide so they could live forever as undead and hunt their mortal enemies, the Jaghut, three hundred thousand years ago. They’re still around, and utterly bad-ass - but not nearly the most powerful thing in the world.