Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.85 AVERAGE
3.85 AVERAGE
I loved every second of this book even when I had no idea what I was reading.
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
challenging
dark
mysterious
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:
Complicated
Empress Laseen of the Malazan Empire wishes to conquer the world, or so it seems from the outside looking in. She's led campaign upon campaign against Malazan's neighbors, expanding the Empire year after year. But these years of warfare has made her paranoid. Few are those who feel safe in the Empress' employ and those who do tend to be fools. As the imperial armies move forward to attack yet another foreign city, many people need to ask themselves if they're willing to follow orders meant to lead them to their death for no good reason. To complicate things further, the gods have involved themselves in the Empire's dealings, taking control of unsuspecting mortals to act as pawns in a cosmic game for power and influence. Dangerous times are head.
This book was a struggle for me to get through. I almost gave up on it more than once. But I muddled through. Why did I finish a book I wasn't enjoying? Because a friend recommended it to me and wants to discuss the story with me. That will be an interesting discussion I'm sure (honestly! I like talking about books I've read with people who experienced them differently than I did!).
My summary of this book is: the author went so hard for the don't-tell part of "show, don't tell" that he forgot the showing.
What do I mean by that? Well, take for example the cavalcade of non-human species presented in this book. Barghast, Forkrul Assail, Jaghut, K'chain Che'Malle, Moranth, T'lan Imass, Tiste Andiim and Trell! While most of them are mentioned more than once, we rarely get an idea of what they are, other than "not human". It's not until page 400+ that we get any visual description of what a Jaghut looks like, and what we get is spares at best, along with a brief outline of what they are/were as a species. Even when we do get a more thorough explanation of what a species is like, said species has been mentioned off and on for 200+ pages already, with the people talking about them clearly knowing what they are, while keeping the reader in the dark (Tiste Andiim pun intended).
The same goes for the plot. It's not that the motives of the huge cast of characters is secret and mysterious - it's that half the time there doesn't seem to be a point to things and new elements of the plot get revealed with little to no build-up. The plot isn't hard to follow, but it switches constantly.First it's a book about people dealing with an empress who wants them dead. Then it's a story about invading a city. Then it's a story about a thief who gets chosen by a god. Then it goes back to being about that evil empress' influence over people's lives and a guy becomes frenemies with evil murder hounds. Then we get a look at some other army in some other place, preparing for war. Then we're back with first-scenes-crew and now we have a zombie!dictator to worry about all of a sudden!
I get the impression Erikson has this whole world figured out, with a mental or written wiki of all the different made-up species, gods and magic rules. The problem is that the reader doesn't have access to that wiki.
There are clearly readers out there who like this sort of vague world setting, and who enjoy figuring out how it all fits together. Maybe I'd have enjoyed this book more if I'd gone in with that mindset. I usually love reading stories where the first chapters have a lot of words and concepts that make no sense at first but that make more and more sense as you continue reading. And yet I never passed that "hurdle" with this story. There's no moment where I went "Oh, so that's what that meant!", just a long series of "Sure, fine, I guess these things are happening now for some reason". Having read this book, I know little more about its world than when I started reading, simply because there's not really any deeper information to be found.
I would have been okay with the setting making little sense if I cared about the characters and/or if the world felt unique, but the people in this story felt more like ideas of characters and the setting feels like a lot of other fantasy worlds I've come across before. Whiskeyjack and his super loyal crew should have me rooting for them, and I did, but in a very abstract way. All the characters feel like pieces on a game board, whose motivations remained hidden beyond the personal drive to not die. That's where the author goes for telling rather than showing. We're told that Whiskeyjack's crew is loyal to a fault, but they just are. We never get to know them well enough to know why or how they all came to know each other than "being in the army together". We know the Empresses' right-hand woman is dedicated to the Empress to the point of considering her original self dead, but she keeps switching back to not "being dead" whenever the plot feels like it and we never have a real idea of who she was before being The Right Hand Woman. We have the whole side-plot about Coll's friends trying to reinstate him, which should have me invested, but Coll is barely a character and mostly passed out drunk, so yeah...
It's hard to get invested in a story where the stakes and consequences are muddled due to unclear laws of nature, magic and society, the characters are as vague as the setting, and new side-plots get added on and on with no build-up. It leads to a lot of deus ex machinas popping up plus leaves a lot of motivations unexplained. Examples under spoiler tag:
The whole final battle was just one thing pulled out of thin air after the other. The Empress' right hand woman is about to awaken an ancient zombie!dictator with the aid of another ancient zombie? I guess! The zombie!dictator gets attacked by dragons who've been hiding off-screen for 400 pages. Sure why not! A new, previously not explained (or if explained, only briefly and vaguely) creature shows up with no foreshadowing and just eats the zombie!dictator. Oh boy, that sure came out of nowhere! BUT WAIT! The Empress' right hand woman has a POCKET DEMON THAT CAN DESTROY EVERYTHING! (Yes, demon summoning is shown before this scene, but it's never clearly established who's carrying around a demon and who isn't, so we don't know anyone has a demon until they use it). The demon's the new final boss of the story! Only not, because he's killed a few pages later. And then the book just kind of ends, with talk about some Seer who's supposedly super dangerous somehow.
I won't be continuing this series, but I might read a summary of what happens next. There are a lot of neat details to this setting (I really like the Warren magic! And Kruppe!), they're just outweighed by all the vagueness of both plot and the more Standard Fantasy parts of the setting. I do not have the stamina for reading nine more books of this.
This book was a struggle for me to get through. I almost gave up on it more than once. But I muddled through. Why did I finish a book I wasn't enjoying? Because a friend recommended it to me and wants to discuss the story with me. That will be an interesting discussion I'm sure (honestly! I like talking about books I've read with people who experienced them differently than I did!).
My summary of this book is: the author went so hard for the don't-tell part of "show, don't tell" that he forgot the showing.
What do I mean by that? Well, take for example the cavalcade of non-human species presented in this book. Barghast, Forkrul Assail, Jaghut, K'chain Che'Malle, Moranth, T'lan Imass, Tiste Andiim and Trell! While most of them are mentioned more than once, we rarely get an idea of what they are, other than "not human". It's not until page 400+ that we get any visual description of what a Jaghut looks like, and what we get is spares at best, along with a brief outline of what they are/were as a species. Even when we do get a more thorough explanation of what a species is like, said species has been mentioned off and on for 200+ pages already, with the people talking about them clearly knowing what they are, while keeping the reader in the dark (Tiste Andiim pun intended).
The same goes for the plot. It's not that the motives of the huge cast of characters is secret and mysterious - it's that half the time there doesn't seem to be a point to things and new elements of the plot get revealed with little to no build-up. The plot isn't hard to follow, but it switches constantly.
I get the impression Erikson has this whole world figured out, with a mental or written wiki of all the different made-up species, gods and magic rules. The problem is that the reader doesn't have access to that wiki.
There are clearly readers out there who like this sort of vague world setting, and who enjoy figuring out how it all fits together. Maybe I'd have enjoyed this book more if I'd gone in with that mindset. I usually love reading stories where the first chapters have a lot of words and concepts that make no sense at first but that make more and more sense as you continue reading. And yet I never passed that "hurdle" with this story. There's no moment where I went "Oh, so that's what that meant!", just a long series of "Sure, fine, I guess these things are happening now for some reason". Having read this book, I know little more about its world than when I started reading, simply because there's not really any deeper information to be found.
I would have been okay with the setting making little sense if I cared about the characters and/or if the world felt unique, but the people in this story felt more like ideas of characters and the setting feels like a lot of other fantasy worlds I've come across before. Whiskeyjack and his super loyal crew should have me rooting for them, and I did, but in a very abstract way. All the characters feel like pieces on a game board, whose motivations remained hidden beyond the personal drive to not die. That's where the author goes for telling rather than showing. We're told that Whiskeyjack's crew is loyal to a fault, but they just are. We never get to know them well enough to know why or how they all came to know each other than "being in the army together". We know the Empresses' right-hand woman is dedicated to the Empress to the point of considering her original self dead, but she keeps switching back to not "being dead" whenever the plot feels like it and we never have a real idea of who she was before being The Right Hand Woman. We have the whole side-plot about Coll's friends trying to reinstate him, which should have me invested, but Coll is barely a character and mostly passed out drunk, so yeah...
It's hard to get invested in a story where the stakes and consequences are muddled due to unclear laws of nature, magic and society, the characters are as vague as the setting, and new side-plots get added on and on with no build-up. It leads to a lot of deus ex machinas popping up plus leaves a lot of motivations unexplained. Examples under spoiler tag:
I won't be continuing this series, but I might read a summary of what happens next. There are a lot of neat details to this setting (I really like the Warren magic! And Kruppe!), they're just outweighed by all the vagueness of both plot and the more Standard Fantasy parts of the setting. I do not have the stamina for reading nine more books of this.
پیچیدگیش اذیتم نکرد ولی شخصیت پردازی ضعیفش چرا. ولی خب ضعیف ترین جلد مجموعه همینه ظاهرا و جلد بعد باید جبران کنه :)
Grand fantasy at its finest. Lots of proper nouns and explanations that don’t make sense but really good and I’m looking forward to the series as a whole.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Why did I finish this book? It was recommend to me, but I found the structure irritating and the characters flat. And there were too many. I kept hoping they would die so I didn’t have to keep track of them all.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
tense
slow-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
adventurous
challenging
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes