[dreamscape]

It seems a lot of people are disgruntled or just not enjoying plot threads in the last couple of books that don't appear to add anything to the major storyline.
First thing I'd ask is: What storyline? Do we even know where this is all going? I think we may be in for a few more big surprises along the way, and anything could turn out to be important.
That aside, I feel that what we are reading is not just a story, but we are being given insight into a world, its cultures, its people and places. If we were just being told a simple story, it wouldn't take ten books. Part of Steve's gift is not only to weave a good tale, but to create characters that bring the places to life. Each character has a unique personality, some we love, some we love to hate. We are being given an exploration of the psyche of the peoples and the individuals, great psychological and philosophical musings.
And if that isn't enough, there is always something to take away from each subplot, or thread, in terms of the themes it reflects in that book.
At the end of the tenth book, we will probably look back and see a whole lot that doesn't contribute to the ending. But its those little things, the depth of the characters, and the vastness of the world that he has created that will make it worth reading over, and over again.

[caladanbrood]

The Redmask storyline is pretty much the only plot that went absolutely nowhere and got annoying. Of course, it's entirely possible, and even probably, that we'll see him back in some form or other in Dust of Dreams, but it was still very unsatisfying in the context of Reaper's Gale.

Didn't have any problems with the TtH storylines though.

[Illuyankas]

Get out of my head, Brood.

[caladanbrood]

You love it!

[Aptorian]

The Awl and Shake storylines in RG and the Tyrant storyline in TTH.

[tiam]

Yeh i assume they will be answered in DoD which i was told is set in Lether. But yeh the Tyrant plot went knowhere.

Until TTH i thought all these odd plot lines like Tavore going and staying in Letheras was to fight the new KCCM threat. That seemed to be th underlying current of a possible 'big surprise'. But TTH brought up randm plot and seemed disjointed from the series

[Greymane]

I wouldn't call the subplots meaningless. The set-up for the Tyrant will obviously be payed off somewhere down the line. I'd be very surprised and baffled if it isn't. My problems with it is that these sub-plots take up a significant chunk of the book, without any real resolution.

Take the Redmask storyline from Reaper's Gale for example. Like others, it was not exactly my favourite. *But* it is a complete storyline in itself. Redmask returns, he rallies his people, he leads them to war, he's defeated and is killed. The story of Redmask is resolved. That resolution also sets up possible plot developments for later on (the KCCM stuff mainly), but the story itself reaches a conclusion. Many of the stories in TTH did not. Torvald Nom, Rallick, Cutter, the Bridgeburners, Humble Measure, the conspiracy of Gorlas, Lim and Orr, Karsa Orlong, Kallor, all of these storylines are left up in the air.

I'm not opposed to a storyline with no resolution, not in a multi book series, but there are better ways to do it. Malazan is full of them, and it's never bothered me before. The adventures of Mappo, Gruntle and the Trygalle Trade Guild is a good example of a set-up storyline, IMO - well paced, interesting, and relatively brief, with an immediate promise of pay-off in the next book.

It certainly isn't a deal breaker, and it didn't ruin TTH for me. I'd still rate it above Reaper's Gale (my least liked Malazan book so far). It just seemed to unbalance the book somewhat. I've always admired that each Malazan novel is a work alone, as well as being part of a larger tapestry, but TTH felt more like half a book. It's similar to how I feel about A Feast for Crows by George RR Martin, actually (which, funnily enough, is actually half a book).

[Traveller]

@ Dreamscape... I totally agree. The subplots give depth, and allow SE to include more background detail to the main story. And, he gets to write about interesting characters without having to include them in the main story thread.
@ Greymane... TTH does feel a bit like half a book, more so than the previous MBotF. Probably due to the number of questions at the end... the biggest one being, the state of those released from Dragnipur. Alive again? Are the BB's back?
(Hopefully we won't have to wait as long as we have for the Feast for Crows follow-up)

[Cause]

How about baby Harllo? He is connected to stony menackis (does nothing the whole novel), his adopted parents (Die at temple of chains, yeah we know this relgieon is insane already), his stepbrother snell (Exists only to send him to the mine which he escapes from anyway), he finds an imass who wants to be a tyrant (Never made it past the front door of the azath), his plotline got murrilio killed (who did nothing the whole novel. Also anyone else find it strange that he should have one that duel but did not as vidikas pulled something off which the book describes ass odd an impossible but thatn cutter had no problem), which provided cutter a reason to kill vidickas and free chalice and realised he should leave darujhistan the week after he arrived (all 3 plot lines did nothing). Its a complete circle that created hundreds of pages of just pointless info.

I think part of the problem was coming back to darujhistan were we have all these old characters, stonny harlo murrillio etc and leaving them out of the narrative would have been as odd as putting them in with their pointles stories.

Also old plot threads such as vorcan and Rallick left asleep in the azath house. Suddenly they just wake up. Its not how I expected this one to end up

[Slum]

Cutter didn't exactly duel with Vidikas... he waited for his pompous ass to say let's dispense with tradition or whatever and then stabbed him in the chest before he could blink.

[Cause]

Still i figured from the way the book goes into details to describe that vidikas survives and that evryone watching is amazed. I actually thought magic or some other trick must have been at work.

[Slum]

Magic? I don't think so. Murrilio was old and had boots that were tight and had blistered his feet, making dueling near impossible. He remarks that any other time he would have been able to defeat Vidikas. Vidikas is just schmuck.

Cutter is a trained assassin, not a duelist. In a duel, with a rapier, I doubt he would be nearly as effective.

[Theyis]

I didn't mind the Redmask storyline so much, as it was part of the Letherii empire going to hell, I liked the overseer and the preda characters and the battles were good. To me RG was way betterthan TtH, which had the Harllo storyline that was rather pointless. I got so annoyed when Murillio died, simply because it meant that this storyline was going to take even longer and become more pointless...
Everybody that arrived with Spite and her boat seemed to just be extra fluff, but not actually all that important. Cutter was only in the book to apparently hand off a lance, rename himself back to Crokus and then leave again, way to save yoru city. The Tyrant storyline I hope gets more attention later otherwise it was also totally pointless...
I like side characters and side plots, but this book just seemed to have too many of them. Also, I wasn't too fond of Kruppe's endless expositions every time a new chapter started. Very nice prose yes, but I felt it really slowed down the story. Might be better on a reread when I'm not rushed to know what happens at the end though...

That being said the ending of the book was awesome and as a whole it was still better than many other fantasy books out there...

[Skywalker]

Full points to Cause's post re: Murillio, Cutter, Stonny, Harllo and co.

Another of Cause's posts (specifically his Silanah and the Crimson Guard thread) set off the following question:

Silanah sat atop Black Coral throughout the book and thought ominous thoughts like 'sometimes mortals need... reminding'. And then did precisely nothing. She just flew away. Where to, I wonder?

[Greymane]

She flew to the pilgrim camp and killed Gradithan and his thugs. She was the only one able to do it because she was unaffected by the rain of kelyk.

[Aptorian]

Actually, which amused me some, she probably killed a couple of hundred if not thousand innoccent people when she wiped out that camp

Kelyk or not that was mean.

[HoosierDaddy]

Aptorian;350035 said:

Actually, which amused me some, she probably killed a couple of hundred if not thousand innoccent people when she wiped out that camp

Kelyk or not that was mean.

Eh. What can we do about fucking dragon![s]?

Okay for unfinished storylines:

Hey, Azath builder dude. WTF? Build yourself a damn bridge! It's like putting Chaur in charge of understanding what happened with Icarium. Speaking of, I'm happy that Azath!Chaur will be smarter, and yet, I think that'll ruin him. Now I'm sad.

[blewin]

Cause;349580 said:

How about baby Harllo? He is connected to stony menackis (does nothing the whole novel), his adopted parents (Die at temple of chains, yeah we know this relgieon is insane already), his stepbrother snell (Exists only to send him to the mine which he escapes from anyway), he finds an imass who wants to be a tyrant (Never made it past the front door of the azath), his plotline got murrilio killed (who did nothing the whole novel. Also anyone else find it strange that he should have one that duel but did not as vidikas pulled something off which the book describes ass odd an impossible but thatn cutter had no problem), which provided cutter a reason to kill vidickas and free chalice and realised he should leave darujhistan the week after he arrived (all 3 plot lines did nothing). Its a complete circle that created hundreds of pages of just pointless info.

I think part of the problem was coming back to darujhistan were we have all these old characters, stonny harlo murrillio etc and leaving them out of the narrative would have been as odd as putting them in with their pointles stories.

Also old plot threads such as vorcan and Rallick left asleep in the azath house. Suddenly they just wake up. Its not how I expected this one to end up

I disagree. Many of Malazan plots pick up old characters from previous books, like Mappo and Pust in Darujhisten. Harllo's plotline is simply one about Stony and how she is changed at the end to accept her son. Strangely though, I enjoyed Harllo's plotline much more than the BB's. Cutter's plotline is also significant, in particular with his changing back to his old name. There's plenty of character development and substance here, tying up the loose ends of these characters.

[Reborn]

Cause;349580 said:

How about baby Harllo? He is connected to stony menackis (does nothing the whole novel), his adopted parents (Die at temple of chains, yeah we know this relgieon is insane already), his stepbrother snell (Exists only to send him to the mine which he escapes from anyway), he finds an imass who wants to be a tyrant (Never made it past the front door of the azath), his plotline got murrilio killed (who did nothing the whole novel. Also anyone else find it strange that he should have one that duel but did not as vidikas pulled something off which the book describes ass odd an impossible but thatn cutter had no problem), which provided cutter a reason to kill vidickas and free chalice and realised he should leave darujhistan the week after he arrived (all 3 plot lines did nothing). Its a complete circle that created hundreds of pages of just pointless info.

I think part of the problem was coming back to darujhistan were we have all these old characters, stonny harlo murrillio etc and leaving them out of the narrative would have been as odd as putting them in with their pointles stories.

Also old plot threads such as vorcan and Rallick left asleep in the azath house. Suddenly they just wake up. Its not how I expected this one to end up

Well, I disagree. I really enjoyed how these disparate threads -- Challice, Crokus, Gorlas, Murillou (spelling?), and Harllo -- interweaned. I had some problem with the Crokus/Challice one ... but when it became clear that Crokus would kill her lover's husband in order to avenge Murrilou I saw the reason for it and liked it. Murrilou's death, Crokus avenging him, Harllo's flight through the mines and Bailisk's death -- these are some of the best scenes in the book (the first one perhaps being the one with the most emotional impact on me) and I enjoyed reading it. Does it contribute alot to the main-story arc? Probably not. Is that entirely necessary? I would say no. Honestly, how much did the whole Panion-domin-thing contribute to the main-story arc? How much did the seven cities uproar contribute to the main-story arc? How much did The Tiste Edur Empire, in the end, contribute? It's hardly as if Toll the Hounds is alone in having plotlines seemingly inconseqential to the main-story arc. And I think that's the whole point with the series. This is a world's history he's recounting; it's a damn complex mess (that's always the way history is, after all). There is a red line through all the books (The Crippled God) but it is sometimes hard to see and at other times impossible. I like it that way. That's what makes the whole series so ... epic.

The Harllo/Cutter/Stonny (et cetera, et cetera ...) plotline was not as grand, as epic, as we are accustomed to reading Erikson. Harllo is just a normal boy suddenly in a tough situation. Does that make his plotline any less interesting? I don't think so. I loved the way Erikson mixed the epic plotlines (Rake, Dassem) with just ordinary boys/guys. It makes for a varied read.

I think Toll the Hounds is one of the best books in the series so far, up there with Midnight Tides, Deadhouse Gates and The Bonehunters. Awesome.

[Sinisdar Toste]

i love all the subplots, even the ones that dont seem to have a grand purpose in the larger story. the harllo and bainisk, etc, storyline was just some human interest story plopped down in the book involving some characters that we have met before and some we havent. i try to take SE's writing at face value and wait for the complexities to reveal themselves through re-reads and more books.