[Aptorian]

Actually, a meeting between

Spoiler

Dassem and ST/Cots

in RCG suggests that shadow were the ones that sent Dassem to Darujistan.

[Abyss]

Jude, on Oct 29 2008, 09:29 PM, said:

it's been brought up before but why did Rake need to go into Drag at the precise time that he did. ...

Aptorian, on Oct 30 2008, 04:02 AM, said:

It is the weak link in Eriksons plot, and it is a really weak point.

Best explanation is that the sword couldn't be broken without letting a thousand bad things back into the world. So Rake and Hood planned for chaos to eat up the majority of the souls inside the sword before they broke it.

Ain't_It_Just_, on Oct 30 2008, 06:51 AM, said:

Perhaps Rake couldn't enter the sword without being killed by it?

cerveza_fiesta, on Oct 30 2008, 11:03 AM, said:

yeah, just makes you wonder why he didn't just fall on it samurai style or something.
...

I've mentioned this theory before, but heregoes...

1) First, the wagon had to stop for the Ritual to work. That meant Rake had to stop killing things until the souls weakened and slowed down. Once the wagon stops, Chaos would just catch it unless there was something to stop it from doing so. And the by then weakened souls were not enough to do that.

2) Just breaking the sword would have released all kinds of bad things, but also left the gate vulnerable. The gate couldn't be left where it was - it had to be moved somewhere where Chaos couldn't just catch it.

But... i hear you say.. in MoI Draconus told Paran the gate would move of its own accord. And he was probably right, but that only goes to the original error of binding the gate in Dragnipur in the first place. Now the gate is vulnerable, and if the sword were just broken, Chaos would catch up. The gate wouldn't have time to wander away.

3) Rake can't just kill himself. two thoughts on this - one is indeed ego: he wasn't going to just give himself a finger cut and die. But two is the nature of Dragnipur - i suspect it had a built in weilder survival reflex. We see this in Apsalara's flashback where Rake only kills her when she tries to backstab him and seems to regret it. That's iffy tho" - my preferred theory goes to the nature of ritualas and sacrifice. For a ritual to work, much like ascension and other fun things like the Faceless one ritual to free the shadow d'ivers in TB, it requires sacrifice. Rake, immortal, ascnedent and god and all that, manipulated the God of Tragedy into killing him with his own sword. THAT makes a statement, and powers up the effect of the ritual. Just dying is nothing. Dying spectacularly gives the ritual more significance.

4) Except for the flaws Paran and Apsalara discovered, there was no way in unless a suitably powerful god, ie: Hood, went in and THEN opened the way from the inside, and then only at the moment when the Sword was at its weakest.

So...

4) ...for the whole thing to work, the wagon had to stop, someone had to be in place to hold back chaos, and a suitable sacrifice was required.

This was saving the universe. It's not supposed to be easy.

Draconus/Ditch/Kakaranana/the Child God's pattern was a bonus which probably accounts for why Rake didn't die so much as merge with Darkness in some way.

And also, because if Rake just cut his finger, wandered in and fixed everything with a snap of his fingers it would have been pretty damn lame.

- Abyss, and now you're up to date.

[Mezla PigDog]

I have not read this whole thread /disclaimer.

I was just looking for a random "I finished it" thread, started by Abyss.

Now, taken on the subtext that I frickin love these books and see them as head and shoulders above all the stuff in the same and related genres and am stuck in until the end of the series.... I have a problem.

Usually, I am a prolific reader but I am really finding these books to be difficult to get through. It took me 9 months to read TTH after buying it at a signing last June!!! I am suitably ashamed. However, a criticism is that the layout makes it hard to read. The constant shifts between character perspectives makes the casual reader (which my professional and personal lifestyle has forced me to become since I started the series) to find it very difficult to get hooked and therefore read for hours. This may be a commentary on my lifestyle rather than the books, but early in the series, I would stay awake until 3am or 4am on a school night because I was so hooked. This book (and the previous 2 to a lesser extent), I just couldn't get into it. It's not the material, I still find that exciting. But the constant shift from character and geographical groups made it really hard to get stuck in. When your eyelids are drooping and you are just getting into the Nimander stuff and then it shifts to Harllo (both characters that you aren't quite as invested in as say Fiddler or Karsa), it is so easy to put the book down and not come back for a week. I dunno, it may say more about my current attention span but in 29 years, I haven't taken half as long to finish a book...................... Anyone have a similar problem to make me feel better?

[Wry]

I've had exactly the same problem with the last couple of books. I'm hoping it starts to come good again with DOD. Not that they're bad, i just miss the Malaz crack effect

[Mezla PigDog]

Wry, on Apr 5 2009, 01:48 AM, said:

I've had exactly the same problem with the last couple of books. I'm hoping it starts to come good again with DOD. Not that they're bad, i just miss the Malaz crack effect

Agreed! That is a good terminology. Is the Malaz Crack Effect lessening or are we building up a resistance to it?

[Wry]

Honestly i think it's lessening. This most recent novels have been less engaging. I blame the books a year deal, he just doesn't have the time required to build characters and situations we care about, where once we had the chain of dogs, now we get Karsa's pointless trek. Plus i think at ths point in the show he should start revealing some answers instead of creating more mysteries. That said, i'm far from sick of the books, juat feel that the past few are not the best.

[Abyss]

Is it possible that the sheer novelty of the first books have just worn off for you?

I mean, however you got to them, GotM, DG and MoI are, imnsho, radically different from anything one is likely to have read prior to those, hence the Malaz crack effect, that sends one plunging onwards into more SE books, but at some point the work becomes, if not familiar, less 'new'... you're building up a tolerance and the high is less, so to speak?

I still love the books on a deep karmic level (i don't know what that means) but nothing will ever match the first time i read DG, or MoI immediately after.

- Abyss, ...also allows for the possibility you're all just cold and dead inside.

[Wry]

Well, no not really. I never thought of SE as doing anything radically different, just better than most. I read alot outside of the genre, specificaly quirky different novels so mahybe thats it. I just honesstly think the recent novels are not as good. They work alot less as books in their own right. The others were all just constructed alot better, had less stories woven together and each one was stronger for it. The recent books, especially Toll, are meandering and almost pointless n some places - to the extent that i struggle to care about any of the characters or plot points. for instance in TtH few of the new characters really gripped me, it was mostly people from past books that i had any interest in. Whereas in DhG i nearly cried for Coltaine who never even had a POV and duiker i really cared for.

The difference i think is simply that around the point of Bonehunters we reached the bit where it was not all plotted out before (either in his head or on paper) now he has to develop the ideas and write a novel at the same time, and it has reduced the quality of the books

I would be happier with him taking two years per book, one to write and one to tighten up what he's written.

Again though, i'm far from unhappy with the series, i just miss the feeling of spending my whole time in work waiting till i can go home and read.

[Epiph]

I've had a similar problem, although I find it's much worse doing rereads than reading the new books. My chronic sleep deprivation wins every time.

[gorkeyah]

I just finished the book and I didn't have trouble getting through it. However, I did find I was mostly confused by the plot and I did not have nearly the same building anticipation as the book moved towards then end as I had with the previous books.

As in the previous books, there were often times when the characters knew something we didn't, but it seemed like too much of that in this book. The convergence seemed arbitrary. In other books, there was an invasion or something else on the surface, along with other mysterious undercurrents. This books seemed to have just mysterious undercurrents. heh

For whatever reasons, the mysteries didn't work for me as well this time. The smaller stories ended up having more impact (e.g. harlo).

[Use Of Weapons]

Just had a minor revelation about why Rake couldn't simply have committed suicide to get into Dragnipur. We know that MD has withdrawn from her children, right. Rake's intention in entering Dragnipur is to reach out to MD, to bring her back in contact with her children. The rest of the Tiste Andii are listless, pathetic souls who sometimes just decide to stop living. What is suicide, if not the ultimate expression of withdrawal from the world? What kind of message would that have sent to MD, that her favourite son took that action -- and what effect would that have had on the rest of the Tiste Andii? He might as well have cut all their throats himself.

This post has been edited by jitsukerr: 09 April 2009 - 09:43 AM

[blackzoid]

jitsukerr, on Apr 9 2009, 10:43 AM, said:

Just had a minor revelation about why Rake couldn't simply have committed suicide to get into Dragnipur. We know that MD has withdrawn from her children, right. Rake's intention in entering Dragnipur is to reach out to MD, to bring her back in contact with her children. The rest of the Tiste Andii are listless, pathetic souls who sometimes just decide to stop living. What is suicide, if not the ultimate expression of withdrawal from the world? What kind of message would that have sent to MD, that her favourite son took that action -- and what effect would that have had on the rest of the Tiste Andii? He might as well have cut all their throats himself.

An excellent point! He needed to go down fighting.

[Abyss]

That IS a good point to. His death had to inspire his otherwise listless Andii, on top of everything else.


- Abyss, can only hope to similarly inspire zzzzzzzzzzz....

[wolverine]

Mezla PigDog, on Apr 4 2009, 07:12 PM, said:

I have not read this whole thread /disclaimer.

I was just looking for a random "I finished it" thread, started by Abyss.

Now, taken on the subtext that I frickin love these books and see them as head and shoulders above all the stuff in the same and related genres and am stuck in until the end of the series.... I have a problem.

Usually, I am a prolific reader but I am really finding these books to be difficult to get through. It took me 9 months to read TTH after buying it at a signing last June!!! I am suitably ashamed. However, a criticism is that the layout makes it hard to read. The constant shifts between character perspectives makes the casual reader (which my professional and personal lifestyle has forced me to become since I started the series) to find it very difficult to get hooked and therefore read for hours. This may be a commentary on my lifestyle rather than the books, but early in the series, I would stay awake until 3am or 4am on a school night because I was so hooked. This book (and the previous 2 to a lesser extent), I just couldn't get into it. It's not the material, I still find that exciting. But the constant shift from character and geographical groups made it really hard to get stuck in. When your eyelids are drooping and you are just getting into the Nimander stuff and then it shifts to Harllo (both characters that you aren't quite as invested in as say Fiddler or Karsa), it is so easy to put the book down and not come back for a week. I dunno, it may say more about my current attention span but in 29 years, I haven't taken half as long to finish a book...................... Anyone have a similar problem to make me feel better?

I struggled mightily to complete this book. It easily took the most time of any of the Malazan books for me to read (which included a vacation laying on the beach). There were a lot of nearly incomprehensible seemingly endless philosophizing that I really did not digest well. I just did not have a lot of desire to pick the book up most of the time. I read plenty of authors who use multiple viewpoints and have multiple storylines all going on at once and have not had the difficulty I had with this book. Toll the Hounds was 600 pages of boring set up for 150 pages of climax. I was constantly thinking about how much more I had to read in the book, to be blunt, it was boring.

[blackzoid]

wolverine, on Apr 14 2009, 08:40 PM, said:

Mezla PigDog, on Apr 4 2009, 07:12 PM, said:

I have not read this whole thread /disclaimer.

I was just looking for a random "I finished it" thread, started by Abyss.

Now, taken on the subtext that I frickin love these books and see them as head and shoulders above all the stuff in the same and related genres and am stuck in until the end of the series.... I have a problem.

Usually, I am a prolific reader but I am really finding these books to be difficult to get through. It took me 9 months to read TTH after buying it at a signing last June!!! I am suitably ashamed. However, a criticism is that the layout makes it hard to read. The constant shifts between character perspectives makes the casual reader (which my professional and personal lifestyle has forced me to become since I started the series) to find it very difficult to get hooked and therefore read for hours. This may be a commentary on my lifestyle rather than the books, but early in the series, I would stay awake until 3am or 4am on a school night because I was so hooked. This book (and the previous 2 to a lesser extent), I just couldn't get into it. It's not the material, I still find that exciting. But the constant shift from character and geographical groups made it really hard to get stuck in. When your eyelids are drooping and you are just getting into the Nimander stuff and then it shifts to Harllo (both characters that you aren't quite as invested in as say Fiddler or Karsa), it is so easy to put the book down and not come back for a week. I dunno, it may say more about my current attention span but in 29 years, I haven't taken half as long to finish a book...................... Anyone have a similar problem to make me feel better?

I struggled mightily to complete this book. It easily took the most time of any of the Malazan books for me to read (which included a vacation laying on the beach). There were a lot of nearly incomprehensible seemingly endless philosophizing that I really did not digest well. I just did not have a lot of desire to pick the book up most of the time. I read plenty of authors who use multiple viewpoints and have multiple storylines all going on at once and have not had the difficulty I had with this book. Toll the Hounds was 600 pages of boring set up for 150 pages of climax. I was constantly thinking about how much more I had to read in the book, to be blunt, it was boring.

Shall I stalk you in this thread too Wolverine? With the same refrain that I loved this book. Yes, I think I will.
I'll leave you alone now.

This post has been edited by blackzoid: 14 April 2009 - 11:39 PM

[Dravon]

TtH is a slow burn (no fights every chapter) and much less action pact then most of the books in the series. But in no way does that make the Pro's worse or the story weak, infact its because we are used to more action that it hard to read it we keep waiting for the sword to slash and the magic to fly.

And because of that TtH improves greatly on the second read like all of SE's books but more because your not waiting for action. Your enjoying the word play and scene shifts and technique.

[Wry]

Why is the the choice only between fights and boredom? I don't need every chapter to end wth a battle royale, i do need engaging story line and characters who have a reason to be in the book. Lets see in this book we had karsa walking for no reason, Kallor walking for no reason, nimandor and co walking for no reason, Dassem walking for no reason. Three quarters of the book was just everyone wandering to an epic convergence... pointlessly. In a good book (like SE's first ones) the getting from A to B is the story.

[Chris]

Dravon, on Apr 15 2009, 05:01 PM, said:

And because of that TtH improves greatly on the second read like all of SE's books but more because your not waiting for action. Your enjoying the word play and scene shifts and technique.

I'll second that, I just finished TtH for the second time and enjoyed it much more than I did during the first read. As with most of the Malazan books, I found clues about subsequent events that I had missed during the first read and a result felt more involved in the story. Also, the Nimander and Co. storyline is a lot more interesting when you know that at the end of it he takes Rake's place as the leader of the Tiste Andii.

[Dravon]

Wry, on Apr 15 2009, 10:25 PM, said:

Why is the the choice only between fights and boredom? I don't need every chapter to end wth a battle royale, i do need engaging story line and characters who have a reason to be in the book. Lets see in this book we had karsa walking for no reason, Kallor walking for no reason, nimandor and co walking for no reason, Dassem walking for no reason. Three quarters of the book was just everyone wandering to an epic convergence... pointlessly. In a good book (like SE's first ones) the getting from A to B is the story.

The narative was shadowbox, what is really going on isnt revealed until after the fact, it all becomes clear in hindsight alot like life in that way. He didnt give the reader as many advanatges this time around but take into consideration that he had already taken 7 books to establish these charaters and the world they live in so he really didnt need to hold our hands through the book.

And all the charaters are going some place and we didnt know where for 3/4 of the book, but that was the point in this book.

[Wry]

Quote

name='Dravon' date='Apr 16 2009, 06:39 PM' post='574367']

Wry, on Apr 15 2009, 10:25 PM, said:

Why is the the choice only between fights and boredom? I don't need every chapter to end wth a battle royale, i do need engaging story line and characters who have a reason to be in the book. Lets see in this book we had karsa walking for no reason, Kallor walking for no reason, nimandor and co walking for no reason, Dassem walking for no reason. Three quarters of the book was just everyone wandering to an epic convergence... pointlessly. In a good book (like SE's first ones) the getting from A to B is the story.

The narative was shadowbox, what is really going on isnt revealed until after the fact, it all becomes clear in hindsight alot like life in that way. He didnt give the reader as many advanatges this time around but take into consideration that he had already taken 7 books to establish these charaters and the world they live in so he really didnt need to hold our hands through the book.

And all the characters are going some place and we didnt know where for 3/4 of the book, but that was the point in this book.

Rubbish. That argument would make sense if i hadn't read the final quarter. But i did and all it showed was that SE had this really great scene in his head and wanted to write about it. Fine write the scene, publish it as a novella and be proud of your work. DON'T fill up 600 pages of pointless padding just to facilitate the final, good bit. Why did Dassem even go to Darujhistan? Because SE wanted Dassem and Rake to fight in Darujhistan. no other reason.

He has alot of characters walking round doing nothing. that only works if you've a few characters and you spend alot of time building those characters and their relationship to the reader. turning them into real people whom the reader cares about. Instead SE did his usual jumping around so you don't feel any real attachment to any individual. This worked before because the plot was strong. This one wasn't and that just emphasised a recognised flaw in his writing - his poor characters.

This book felt like porn, i was fast forwarding untill people started taking their clothes off. So to speak.