Malazan Empire: Book Club: Claire North's "84K": WEEK 5 (Final week) - Malazan Empire

Tomorrow starts the fifth and last week of our five week read-through of 84K.

We're reading the last roughly 80-100 pages or the last 20%.

Feel free to discuss the past weeks without spoilers.

What did you think of last weeks section?

What do you think of the ending? I'd it satisfying? Was the ending predictable?

What do you think of the characters?

What do you think about North's world building?

What do you think of the prose?

Discuss.

Starting September 30th we'll be reading Ursula K LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness.

The world building is excellent, I think mainly due to how it's a bit too familiar. The whole story is meant to make you uncomfortable.

My thoughts previously:
My link

I haven't even finished last weeks portion which might say something about my enthusiasm for the book. Hoping to finish the last 200 pages off towards the end of the week.

It is almost unremittingly bleak. I won't pretty it up for you in that regard, but the story and timeline disconnect really starts to accelerate and come together respectively in the final segment, hence my pushing straight through

Finished last night. Spoilers ahoy:

I guess I'm fine with the ending? Philip dead, Simon discredited, the Company...not exactly ruined, but de-powered for the time being, at least? Theo gets Lucy and they go on the run, yay, I guess. About as happy an ending as could be expected, though the book seems to want to paint the outlook for the future brighter than it seems to me.

I'm honestly not sure what the purpose of the Neila stuff was, other than to maybe show how bad things were (due to the Company? or due to the fall of the Company?) and really it just seemed to make things confusing. Like, it seemed Markse was hunting Theo, but really he was just looking for him to tell him when to make his move on Simon and get Lucy? I'm honestly very unclear on the actual sequence of events, which was obviously 100% intentional, but why?

Anyway, it was good overall! Hard to put down; I only took as long as I did because I wanted to more or less keep pace with the threads here.