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4.26 AVERAGE
4.26 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Woof. What a mess. Often a really fun mess, but still a mess. I think most of the problems this book has come down to there simply being way too many POV characters. To be clear this isn’t a “there are too many POV characters, I can’t possibly keep them all straight” type of complaint. It’s more that even in a book as long as this one there’s only so much space to go around, and when you’ve got to share that space between a dozen different POVs (plus devote the entire first couple hundred pages of the book to providing back story to a character who arguably didn’t even need it) it leads to the entire book feeling unfocused and even unfinished.
Like it’s hard to keep the plot moving along at a good pace because Erikson has to keep checking in with sixteen other people before anyone can do much of anything while also making sure to carve out enough narrative real estate for us to be able to watch Karsa Orlong spend the back half of the book buying some hay for his magic horse or whatever. There’s just a lot of characters in this book who’s stories don’t seem to amount to very much (Pearl and Lostara, Cutter and Absilar), plus a few characters who’s stories are completely irrelevant to this book’s actual plot and who are clearly only there to set up stuff happening in a later book (Onrack and Trull, Cutter and Absilar again). Cutting these plot lines entirely, or at least treating them more like the minor characters they are and giving them far less page time, would have improved things.
This inability to focus on the parts of the book that matter most doesn’t just lead to pacing problems though. It also becomes a problem on both an emotional and thematic level when this book starts dealing with sexual violence. There’s a lot of rape happening in this book. Some on page, some not, but it’s very much a thing happening throughout the book. I think Erikson is well intentioned with this stuff, it’s not there to be exciting or arousing, it’s rightfully treated as horrifying. I’ve read enough of Erikson’s defense of this material in his work that I believe him when he says he’s trying to make a point about real world horrors when he includes this kind of violence in his stories. But Im not convinced that as an author he can write with the emotional bandwidth necessary to do justice to this topic.
An example of this is a character who is assaulted midway through the book. Plenty of men around her are outraged by this act, but crucially when we actually get a POV section from this character’s viewpoint Erikson barely dwells on her state of mind at all, and instead has the character gaming out the political ramifications for her faction if she tries to get any kind of justice or revenge. I think you can see what Erikson is aiming for here: this is the author making a point about how hard it is for real world victims of assault to go public with accusations, but the way it’s written it reads more like just one more character obsessing over one more plot beat. Certainly well intentioned, and respect for him trying to tackle a topic like this with compassion but he’s punching above his weight class here.
But also to connect this to my earlier point: maybe if Erikson didn’t have to cut away from assault victims to instead talk about elves and fantasy-Neanderthals on a magical roadtrip that leads nowhere he might have found the space he needed to treat heavier, real world topics with a little more care.
Anyway it’s not all bad. Erikson seems to be settling in to a pattern of spending one book dealing with characters on the continent of Genabackis, then shifting over to deal with characters in the region of Seven Cities. This is a Seven Cities book, and personally I’m a lot more interested in that crew than I am in the other so this book’s setting was a welcome change for me.
I also remain impressed with Erikson’s ability to go very big and very loud with his visuals. Malazan frequently gets described as the doorstop fantasy equivalent of a heavy metal album or a manga like Berserk. These are valid comparisons. Like say what you want about Erikson, and there’s a lot about his writing that I find pretty annoying, but if nothing else he’s a guy who understands the rule of cool and never fails to lean in to it as hard as he can.
Also as mentioned above this is a book where a bunch of elves and cavemen hang out with each other, and while I am deeply skeptical of this book needing anything like that and feeling like their presence in the book hurts more than it helps, it’s also a thing where if you have to have it then this is a pretty good version of it.
Like it’s hard to keep the plot moving along at a good pace because Erikson has to keep checking in with sixteen other people before anyone can do much of anything while also making sure to carve out enough narrative real estate for us to be able to watch Karsa Orlong spend the back half of the book buying some hay for his magic horse or whatever. There’s just a lot of characters in this book who’s stories don’t seem to amount to very much (Pearl and Lostara, Cutter and Absilar), plus a few characters who’s stories are completely irrelevant to this book’s actual plot and who are clearly only there to set up stuff happening in a later book (Onrack and Trull, Cutter and Absilar again). Cutting these plot lines entirely, or at least treating them more like the minor characters they are and giving them far less page time, would have improved things.
This inability to focus on the parts of the book that matter most doesn’t just lead to pacing problems though. It also becomes a problem on both an emotional and thematic level when this book starts dealing with sexual violence. There’s a lot of rape happening in this book. Some on page, some not, but it’s very much a thing happening throughout the book. I think Erikson is well intentioned with this stuff, it’s not there to be exciting or arousing, it’s rightfully treated as horrifying. I’ve read enough of Erikson’s defense of this material in his work that I believe him when he says he’s trying to make a point about real world horrors when he includes this kind of violence in his stories. But Im not convinced that as an author he can write with the emotional bandwidth necessary to do justice to this topic.
An example of this is a character who is assaulted midway through the book. Plenty of men around her are outraged by this act, but crucially when we actually get a POV section from this character’s viewpoint Erikson barely dwells on her state of mind at all, and instead has the character gaming out the political ramifications for her faction if she tries to get any kind of justice or revenge. I think you can see what Erikson is aiming for here: this is the author making a point about how hard it is for real world victims of assault to go public with accusations, but the way it’s written it reads more like just one more character obsessing over one more plot beat. Certainly well intentioned, and respect for him trying to tackle a topic like this with compassion but he’s punching above his weight class here.
But also to connect this to my earlier point: maybe if Erikson didn’t have to cut away from assault victims to instead talk about elves and fantasy-Neanderthals on a magical roadtrip that leads nowhere he might have found the space he needed to treat heavier, real world topics with a little more care.
Anyway it’s not all bad. Erikson seems to be settling in to a pattern of spending one book dealing with characters on the continent of Genabackis, then shifting over to deal with characters in the region of Seven Cities. This is a Seven Cities book, and personally I’m a lot more interested in that crew than I am in the other so this book’s setting was a welcome change for me.
I also remain impressed with Erikson’s ability to go very big and very loud with his visuals. Malazan frequently gets described as the doorstop fantasy equivalent of a heavy metal album or a manga like Berserk. These are valid comparisons. Like say what you want about Erikson, and there’s a lot about his writing that I find pretty annoying, but if nothing else he’s a guy who understands the rule of cool and never fails to lean in to it as hard as he can.
Also as mentioned above this is a book where a bunch of elves and cavemen hang out with each other, and while I am deeply skeptical of this book needing anything like that and feeling like their presence in the book hurts more than it helps, it’s also a thing where if you have to have it then this is a pretty good version of it.
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
dark
slow-paced
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual assault
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes