[powermad]

i agree with zorland i think tths was freaking awesome. i believe myself that S.E has surpassed all other fantasy writers in this day and age, so not everyone will appreciate his style of writing. the way he moves from complete comedy to overwelming tragedy is brilliant. one minute you are laughing say at tehol and buggs finishing each other sentances to seeing a woman kill herself rather than be rapped.
im in college and ive got a few other people into reading the books and they have completly changed there minds on what fantasy should be.

[zwitterion]

Reading these forums has made me realise there are roughly two types of SE readers; the zorland, powermad, epiph camp who read for SE's manipulation of the fantasy genre into works of profoundly immediate literature, and the group that read for the more traditional pulp/escapist elements and the multi-millennia MMA round robin. no prizes for guessing who i'm with. the second group probably watches naruto. or bleach. they need to stop that, find themselves some ritalin and read again because fantasy writing doesn't get much better than this.

(ps I agree with prq, Donaldson is probably the best comparison - but the scope of his books, both in theme and narrative, was far more modest)

[Epiph]

To be perfectly fair, I read Naruto and Bleach, but got over watching it awhile ago. Of course, I read them as purely escapist crap.

[Abyss]

HoosierDaddy;374644 said:

All this talking makes me want to tug my braid, chastize a male for no reason, get all emo with myself, and marry the most annoying character ever.

could you describe in excruciating detail what you'll be wearing at the time first? Otherwise the effect is lost.

- Abyss, *huffs*

[eekwibble]

HoosierDaddy;374644 said:

All this talking makes me want to tug my braid, chastize a male for no reason, get all emo with myself, and marry the most annoying character ever.

I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!




I really don't see the problem with SE writing about, or from, an ox's or child's POV when the reason for it is so brilliantly mysterious in its translation to the reader. Kruppe's view of stuff is utterly different to anything SE's done before on purpose! The effort he is asking his readers to make with this book... it just, takes BALLS to ask it, and the writing is shit-hot.
I've not had a reread yet but I will. I'm going to do tBH, RG and TtH in the next few weeks. I've done 56 pages of tBH and already things in TtH look that little bit clearer.
I love that.
It kicks your head into gear, forces you to think, evaluate, re-evaluate, over and over.

powermad;374788 said:

one minute you are laughing say at tehol and buggs finishing each other sentances to seeing a woman kill herself rather than be rapped.

Fucking rappers!


Oh, and Hobb is shit!

[Sinisdar Toste]

eekwibble;375234 said:

really don't see the problem with SE writing about, or from, an ox's or child's POV when the reason for it is so brilliantly mysterious in its translation to the reader. Kruppe's view of stuff is utterly different to anything SE's done before on purpose! The effort he is asking his readers to make with this book... it just, takes BALLS to ask it, and the writing is shit-hot.

im feeling the need to de-rail this thing for a minute
i was pondering all these off the wall POV's from people like an ox and chaur and how the warrens seem to be used via a mental dialogue with a mystic entity. im thinking that magic only works because k'rul is giving power to the belief in something that is physically impossible and SE is building to this. i was just trying to think of an overall purpose for all this brain mumbo jumbo and i know that doesnt explain a lot (gods, holds, etc) but Cotillion comments on this while talking to ST about the Hounds, and they are clearly elder beasts

ST: they sweat, they breathe, they rip people to shreds.
Cot: but maybe its only because we expect them to.

not sure what are the implications are, perhaps it just takes one person with a strong enough will to deny that all these forces should be affecting the natural world (karsa?) to stop the madness.

anyway, leave me to my crazy theories and get back to arguing

[Bear]

Quote

I think a few fantasy writers are "above" the others for their originality.

I think there is "originality" and then there is "talent" and then there is "training". You only get greatness when the 3 intersect. Dont' forget that SE is a graudate of Iowa Writer's Workshop, the finest english writing school in the world. I agree Donaldson has all 3 of the ingredients, as does a few others (Guy Gavriel Kay comes to mind --- "blood eagle" anybody? :eek:)

I think the problem with Jordan is he fell in love with his own prose (or he was paid by the word). I think George RR Martin just ran out of steam and the story got away from him. the true measure of a writer isn't book one, but book 5 (or 8 in this case). I can't think of any other series that has managed to keep the quality up for this long. what an amazing achievement!

[Viandaran]

Zorland;374524 said:

If you're having trouble appreciating the first 700 pages of the book, which is the best part of the book, then I suspect that your literary maturity is just too low for this series. Do not feel chagrined, though. No one can pick up a book on Quantum Field Theory and appreciate it immediately, but anyone could work their way up to it. I would suggest you read some more and come back to it, and then consider how you feel.

Cheers,

... simply, staggeringly condescending and pompous.

very nice of you in your magnanimity to offer absolution from chagrin.

[Shanks]

Haha, is this starting to be one of those 'I appreciate Dostoyevski and Tolstoi, so I can appreciate Erikson better than you' threads? Wicked

Erikson is fantasy at it's best, but not literature. Pretty fantasy with a cherry on top, the best of it's kind, supremely well written with an intricate plot line, yes. But not literature. When you put a MBotF down you just read about how a god got to defeat some other gods, you don't see an 'expression of ideas of permanent or universal interest' to quote Merriam Webster. No facet of everyday life that's being thought over besides the very standard ones, no ideas about or insights into the human condition.

I also don't really agree with the whole 'non-standard fantasy characters' thing. Everyone but maybe Mael you can find in other fantasy books, including the shrewd barbarian, the giggly god, the emo assassin and the gentle warrior with a crazy-switch. Kallor got a decent upgrade from archetypical bad guy in TtH though.

ed: http://www.xkcd.com/451/ comic added for mootpointedness

[prq]

Shanks;375789 said:

ed: http://www.xkcd.com/451/ comic added for mootpointedness

Haha have rep for bringing XKCD into a Malazan thread!

[Battalion]

Zorland;374524 said:

If you're having trouble appreciating the first 700 pages of the book, which is the best part of the book, then I suspect that your literary maturity is just too low for this series. Do not feel chagrined, though. No one can pick up a book on Quantum Field Theory and appreciate it immediately, but anyone could work their way up to it. I would suggest you read some more and come back to it, and then consider how you feel.

Cheers,

How patronising do you want to be?
The guy says he don't like the start of the book and you INSTRUCT him that it's the BEST part, because you said so. I like red more than blue, is this because I can't understand that blue is the deeper colour and that its wavelength is 440nm is much more compact than red's massive 650nm wavelengths? No, it's becuase I find it a more appealing colour.

If someone can read and understand GotM as Luke has said he has, then he can piss through TtH without his 'literary immaturity' handicapping him.

[Abyss]

Shanks;375789 said:

...Erikson is fantasy at it's best, but not literature. Pretty fantasy with a cherry on top, the best of it's kind, supremely well written with an intricate plot line, yes. But not literature. When you put a MBotF down you just read about how a god got to defeat some other gods, you don't see an 'expression of ideas of permanent or universal interest' to quote Merriam Webster. No facet of everyday life that's being thought over besides the very standard ones, no ideas about or insights into the human condition. ...

I must needs disagree with you there. SE says a LOT about the human condition through these books, and by example Whiskeyjack's relationship with his squad in GotM, the sheer human drama of the Chain of Dogs, mortality, rape and loyalty in MoI, vengeance, family and betrayal in HoC (to say nothing of female genital mutilation), civilization in MT.... i could go on. My point being, SE probes all sorts of areas of the human condition, society and civilization thru these books, and fairly ruthlessly at that.


- Abyss, dislikes cities.

[Shanks]

Fair point Abyss, but what sets it apart from pulp fantasy in that respect? Eddings also showed group interaction, there's rape and mental rape and its consequences in Jordan (iirc), and all fantasy books are about loyalty and vengeance at some point.

I normally can't identify with any fantasy characters (to the point that i'd say 'yeah, that could be me, i would do the same if presented with those choices in life'), and i can't really identify with any of Erikson's chars. Sympathise with and like, sure. I guess it's personal taste, but I need some believable characters to consider something literature. Being surrounded by gods and dragons kind of limits to what degree you can measure a character's realism too. Now some of the squads might be behaving very true to a real squad's nature, but I've never been in a war nor read any war memoir-type books, so I can't tell if the Black Company-like grittiness we sometimes see is an accurate reflection of real soldiers. And while he tries to get rid of fantasy clichés, almost all characters are still good or evil, few are grey (it's what I dislike the most about Reaper's Gale, the caricature bad guys). There's of course Karsa and his personal philosophy, a nice showcase indeed, but we can't keep shoving all the lack of clichés onto one smart rapist barbarian.

I usually agree with Toc though, just to disagree with myself .

[luke]

i am surprised at how many people speaking about the improvement of SE writing style....how many here read fantasy for writing style? this supposed improvement in is going to be bad for the MBOTF series.
...what sets SE apart from other fantasy writers is not his writing style but his unique imagination-which verge on scary tbh- . instead of having more malazan marching or assassins plotting or confrontations of the great and unique characters he created ..etc...now we have 2 pages of an ox or a 5 years old child contemplating some complicated philisophical i deas at the start of each chapter.

SE's work is not literature and this takes nothing away from him cause he never meant them to be literature...and i hope he keeps it that way

[BeLeG]

My english are bad but where I come from SE's work is considered literature....

A character is realistic if his actions and thoughts match his nature.Otherwise,if you search about every-day human characters you shouldnt read fantasy.
So when an Elder God thinks and acts like an Immortal being he is a realistic "Elder God" not a realistic "human"(realistic as "convincing" if you know what I mean).

[Abyss]

I'm not certain we're all applying the same definition of 'literature' here. My point is that SE's writing, and even fantasy lit in general (with exceptions) is a valid medium for commentary on the human condition, life, the universe and everything.


- Abyss, ...and thanks for all the fish

[zwitterion]

Abyss;376105 said:

I'm not certain we're all applying the same definition of 'literature' here. My point is that SE's writing, and even fantasy lit in general (with exceptions) is a valid medium for commentary on the human condition, life, the universe and everything.

Some (not all) of the work in the MBotF counts as literature by anyone's definition. In fact "fantasy isn't literature" is an absurdly indefensible assertion. I'm surprised that, 60 years after pop art, people could still entertain notions like that. In doorstop fantasy the pulpyness is an inherent challenge to resonant writing but that doesn't mean the genre's tropes can't be used to powerful literary effect, as SE has shown.

Kallor for instance is an immortal "high king" that rolls around a giant fantasy world enslaving continents and killing dragons but somehow SE uses that figure in all its mythical hyperbole as a symbol of the human condition of being trapped in and by our past failures, of being doomed to play the bad guy or make choices of "bad" and "worse" through circumstance or personal flaws. Of baring our teeth in response - feeling like maybe life doesn't have shit to offer us or we it but living it hard anyway.

Now maybe that character doesn't resonate with you but maybe neither does Humbert Humbert or Dr Alexandre Manette or the entire cast of War and Peace. That doesn't make those books not literature - they, and large parts of MBotF, deliberately explore depths and ranges of human experience and are called literature because of that.

[buddhacat]

So, Odysseus is not literature, because it's fantasy. Same with Dante's Divine Comedy. And so on and on and on.

Riiight.

[Epiph]

zwitterion;376173 said:

Humbold Humbold

Humbert Humbert. Or, if you want to be French about it (which he is), 'umber' 'umber'.

[zwitterion]

Epiph;376311 said:

Humbert Humbert. Or, if you want to be French about it (which he is), 'umber' 'umber'.

Editored! I read it years ago, sue me.