[Bauchelain the Evil]

dktorode;351570 said:

its an old entry that hasnt been updated...pre RG it was a standalone.

That's completely untrue. How can someone understand TBH ending whithout reading MT?

[Folken]

BH is "what in lords name is going on here" if you haven't read Midnight Tides and Night of Knives. MT may seem like a stand alone in the sense that you don't need info from previous books to understand what is going on in the novel it self however revelations in this book give us a "ohhhh tahts what this was" moments for books 1-4.

It is always beyond me why someone would skip a novel. If it is done my accident that is fine but if someone willingly skips a book in a series of books it baffles me. BH is seriously confusing if you have not read MT.

[caladanbrood]

I don't think you need to have read NoK before BH. There are overlapping characters certainly, but no vital information you get from NoK.

[Skywalker]

caladanbrood;353476 said:

I don't think you need to have read NoK before BH. There are overlapping characters certainly, but no vital information you get from NoK.

Hmm... yeah that's true. You don't NEED to read NoK before BH... but it is better if you do. Personally, I found things made a lot more sense when I had a bit of background on EDIT: very very minor spoilers (character names) for BH

Spoiler

Temper, Braven Tooth, Obo, Agayla and suchlike.

[anothevilbadguy]

I personally think it is better to read NoK after Bonehunters, as none of those characters are major. You can still follow the story easily, plus it adds an air of mystery, which in turn makes finding out about them in NoK more interesting.

[Lisheo]

Im gonna strangle the guy who said that on wiki... Midnight Tides is one of Erikson's very best works, even if it doesnt seem immediately related to the series, it obviously is. Im gonna use my wikipedia membership to immediately rectify that, me thinks.

Edit: mistake rectified.

[dktorode]

caladanbrood;353186 said:

DhG has a lot of new characters too. I mean, you've got Kalam, Fiddler, Apsalar and Crokus, but apart from that... and it's a new continent, different storyline... my point being that to say either of them is a stand-alone is a bit ridiculous.

Some certainly work better as standalones than others, certainly, but none can really be read on their own without reference to the main series.



@RLY - spammer

ofcourse..ofcourse

when i say stand alone i mean it didnt HAVE to be read in any specific order...AT THE TIME of release.
I personally believe it should be read in the order it was published/released.

But to say that MT at the time of relese HAD to be read in any order is just incorrect. Should it be read without ever reading the rest of the series...well no...ofcourse not.
We;re just arguing two different points i suppose.

come now people...this thread still going...bah

[dktorode]

Bauchelain the Evil;353406 said:

That's completely untrue. How can someone understand TBH ending whithout reading MT?

Serenity now!!!....serenity now!

ok...then its a pre TBH wikki entry...watever.

just supplying a possible explanation to the bad wiki entry...jeeez you guyz are all over my ass about this. Do i have sweets up there or something?

[Cougar]

Stop digging DKT.

[Sucka27]

I believe the reason wikis and bookstores keep claiming these are standalone novels is because Esslemont and Erikson have marketed them as such (ICE: "Each of the works, Steve's and mine, was envisioned as stand-alone."). I've always thought it was a mistake from an enjoyment perspective, but putting myself in their shoes, it probably sells more books. Either that or it was intended to be a series of standalone books and as time went on that kind of went out the door.

So you can't really blame wikipedia when they're just printing what comes from the horses mouth. I've been tempted myself to skip around to follow my favorite characters but good advice will tell you to just go in order in this case.

[Salt-Man Z]

Yeah, Erikson has said that he tries (or has tried) to make each book stand alone, more or less, with each book having a straightforward intro-action-climax plot, with a unique theme.

I think that holds, more or less, up until Midnight Tides. After that, it gets a bit iffy.

[Old Hunch Arbat]

For what it's worth, I'm about to start into the series a fourth time. I have used each of the first 3 (I think) books as starting points but thereafter have read the series exactly in the order it was published. I have found this enormous cast of characters and other interested parties hard enough to sort out with the multiple readings and concientious browsing of this forum, without chosing to read the books at random. And I'm no more dumberer than anyone else who reads these books (well - maybe a little dumberer) yet have trouble getting to the bottom of the various agendas even given this obsessive approach to the reading. So - don't make life harder than it needs to be if you're really interested in sorting out the plot lines.

My wife laughs at me as she sees me sit down in the living room with my current book open, the others stacked on the table in front of me, and my laptop open to this web site - and says "Ho ho ho...studying again are we?" My answer - yup.

These deserve to be read as literature IMO. Casual reading may be fun but will yield little understanding of what is being written about over the space of the entire series.

OHA