I’ve started to write an Epic Fantasy Series™, and thought it prudent to check out Steven Erikson’s highly-regarded Malazan Books of the Fallen series. I’m a big fan of fantasy genre fiction, but I’m 100 pages in to Gardens of the Moon, and to my surprise I’m not liking it much at all.
My chief problems with it are:
The characters are indistinguishable, unlikeable and uninteresting. So far I can describe the two main characters (Ganoes and Tattersail) as “humorless and cynical,” but little else comes to mind. Most of the secondary characters could be similarly described.
The sentence-crafting, while not bad, is dense, repetitive and sort of boring.
The author’s attempts at world building have felt like a stewpot of Proper Names With No Context. I can get past that, and even enjoy that kind of setting-immersion, if the story and characters are engaging. (Heck, Neal Stephenson’s Anathem is one of my very favorite books). But so far with Erikson, it just feels muddied, and like he’s trying too hard to be EPIC. And the story seems to be revolving around a huge military conflict in which all the sides are unsavory and I don’t care who wins.
I usually like just about any halfway decent fantasy book. I’ve enjoyed Game of Thrones, LotR, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Robin Hobb, Guy Gavriel Kay, Lev Grossman, Gene Wolf, China Mieville… I don’t mind grim and gritty, and I don’t mind long epics. But given the time commitment I’d be signing up for with Malazan, I want to have more confidence that it won’t be the drag-my-eyes-across-the-page slog that it’s been for me so far.
Does it get better? Or are the first 100 pages indicative of the rest, and it’s just a case of reader/author mismatch?
I slogged my way through, I think, three books before deciding there were too many other things I wanted to read. Part of my problem was that you need to be really intensely engaged in the story to fully appreciate it. He drops lots of hints and backstory nuggets and things sort of in the background, and I just didn’t (and don’t) have the spare brainpower to store all those puzzle pieces and put them together.
My other big issue was how unrelentingly GRIM the whole thing was. It was nothing but war and death and death and war and finding new ways of escalating the whole thing to be even grimmer. Life’s too short.
I’ll take the pro side. Book of the Fallen is easily the best epic fantasy ever published. Period. It’s dark, grim, philosophical, violent, funny, mysterious, deep as hell, and multi-layered. Gardens of the Moon really isn’t totally representative of the series, since it was written long before the rest of them, originally as a script treatment that was then narrativized. The world is huge, the ages unbelievably long, the characters will tear your heart out and make you laugh at the same time. Erikson is a genius.
I’m on my second re-read of the whole series. I’m sure there will be many more.
The first book is the hardest to read IMO, for the reasons you stated: a lot of the references aren’t known to the reader yet, and it can be frustrating. The later books do fill in the details. I read the whole ten book series, then picked up the books by Ian Esselmont that take place in the same world and uses some of the same characters. Then I went back and read the first book and understood everything that was going on.
I think the reason Erikson wrote it the way he did is because the gods are constantly scheming and changing plans. The reader’s confusion echoes that of the characters. You can check out the Malazan Wiki if you feel lost. It has a map of the entire world with all the continents so you can get a better grasp of where the action takes place. There are some events that take place entirely out of the blue with no segue, but trust me, they will eventually be covered.
Ganoes and Tattersail are the chief protagonists of the first book, but they aren’t as prevalent in the others. Just bear in mind every principle character in the books is going to go through a profound change at some point, and it’s all part of the process of Ascending. The gods went through similar ordeals before they became gods, and they take their pecadillos with them.
I’m a fan as well. Personally I think the second book, Deadhouse Gates, is much better than Gardens of the Moon. Try jumping to that instead, and if you still don’t like it then cut your losses.
I believe even the author has said that mos folks “love or hate” the series. I have not read it, but considering I like Brandon Sanderson and lean away from authors like Gene Wolfe, I have a feeling this series is not for me.
Seen the thread title, knew the OP was going to be 100 pages in.
Its almost a cliche at this stage, again and again I’ve heard people complaining that they don’t know whats going on after 100 pages. Then the vast majority who persevere with it come to find that its quite simply one of the greatest fantasy epics ever written.
The books are certainly not easy going, and GotM is the roughest of them all. But Deadhouse Gates is one of my favorite fantasy novels ever. The whole Chain of Dogs storyline is everything that high fantasy should be.
From what I remember, I can totally understand why people would give up after GotM or part way through it. It’s basically a whole novel worth of world building such that you get overwhelmed by all the names, places, races, gods, alliances…etc. that you barely notice any narrative going on.
BUT, as many others have said if you move on in the series you aren’t so focused on the world building aspects and the story gets much better and becomes much more enjoyable reading. Totally agree with those singing the praises of Deadhouse Gates. So good.
Also, the best and worst thing about this series: there is no such thing as a throw-away line. the payoff might come 2 or 3 books later… but it’ll come eventually.
This is why The Re-Read is so valued among Malazan fans. You may have forgotten that “throwaway” line the first time you come across the payoff line, but you do catch it on a re-read. I’ve re-read the series twice now, and I ALWAYS have a head-smacking moment where I realize how much I missed the last time through.
Book of the Fallen is DENSE, in a good way. It is most definitely not a skim-through read.
Okay… so if I like the Saga of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones books), and I like the “Black Company” books by Glen Cook (esp. the first 4), would i like these Erickson Malazan books?
I dunno, if you didn’t like Malazan you probably wouldn’t like BOTNS either. All the criticisms you have apply to it equally, I gave up on the first one.
Wolfe is, IMHO, the best pure writer in SF today - his prose is lyrical, atmospheric, layered and symbolic. In genre terms, think Jack Vance mixed with Ursula K. LeGuin. Just don’t expect a clear, straightforward narrative. The New Sun books are among his most accessible work, but even they have a strong dreamlike quality to them, with characters wandering in and out, bizarre events occurring with little or no explanation, opaque character motivations, and story threads dropped abruptly and picked up just as suddenly two volumes later. Once you accept that you have no idea what’s going on, you can sit back and enjoy the ride.
You gave up on both of them I reckon as the two books are nothing like one another. Like saying you didn’t want to read The Shining because you’d tried As I lay dying and didn’t like it. Stuggling to think of two more dissimilar fantasy authors than Gene Wolfe and Steve Erikson, they basically define two diametrically opposed styles of writing.
I liked Malazan a lot, enough to read the whole thing straight through when I picked them up about 3 years back. Loads to criticise, where things go wrong etc but he does a couple of very important things really well. His sustained style builds an EPIC tale with a capital E P I C. Not read or even heard about any fantasy series that even approaches Malazan for amps-up-to-eleven, unleash hell upon the page storytelling. Obv this style is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you’re open to it the books have a lot of panache.
Related to this, he puts in a valiant attempt at delivering an absolutely massive story arc across ten books. Fair to say it falls on its arse, but it’s a very noble failure that few authors have matched in the genre (IME). Even when the big storyline starts to creak, he’s generally good with the micro-storytelling that moves each book along (only one weak book out of ten IMHO).
One of my fondest memories is walking into an indie bookstore in New York about 15 years ago and asking for Deadhouse Gates, as I had bought Gardens of the Moon in London and had finished it during the trip.
The answer: “What a great series, but it has not been published over here, as it’s too complex for the average American reader!”.
