[Abalieno]

amphibian, on 12 February 2010 - 05:21 AM, said:

sticking to "Erikson's books are so awesome that you will forgive him the flaws".

I think the whole approach to flaws is different.

Whereas Martin would write 100 pages and then toss away everything that isn't 100% working as expected, Erikson makes the process of writing part of the intent the novel is about. Erikson writes like a freeclimber. He knows exactly where he wants to go but the process of getting there is part of what you see on the page and your journey as a reader. Move after move. Sometimes you can't go straight up as you wish and have to move sideways, a few times maybe you have to move backwards, but every move you make is essential and part of what you're creating there and the final destination. Erikson is insanely ambitious in what he does and even when the task is quite hard to reach he doesn't back off, he just gets more motivated. So the books are indeed "flawed". There are parts that work better than others, some amazingly successful and some not quite reaching, yet this is what makes the books much more interesting to read for me. They are filled with experimentation on all levels and that's what keeps my interest and lightens up the brain and the fun feedback.

Reading Martin I think makes easier to forget about the book itself and just engage with the story and characters. Erikson instead requires a certain detachment and look at things from multiple perspectives (what he calls "layering" the writing sometimes to insane levels). With Martin you get a final product that is perfectly crafted and ready to be enjoyed. With Erikson instead you have the process of crafting itself as part of what you are experiencing. So while what Erikson writes feels rougher, for me it also feels like he's telling me something that is "true". And where Martin may respect all good rules that make a classic narrative without any slip of control or mastery, Erikson may as well go and break them all just because of his rebellious soul. You decide what you like better

This post has been edited by Abalieno: 13 February 2010 - 09:44 AM

[globish rip]

jordan's big strengths are his scope and his intricate, byzantine plotting. takes a kind of scientific/rationalist approach to world-building which is p rich and fits the scope and ambitions of his storytelling. his characters are p charming but overdrawn and flat and there are a lot of them. the central conceit of a doomed messiah figure is really compelling too but it is in some ways v. standard.

martin's big strengths are his characters and his televisual approach to plotting - he revels in "big moments" that serve as act breaks in the story and move it fwd. generally think hes p shallow and his world-building is just retcon/historical fantasy stuff and is generally p vague and incidental. hes a better writer in a lot of ways though - knows his limitations and works to them, with a brisk engaging pace. also i mean realistically this series is never going to finish

erikson's stengths are his scale and his sense of history. also probably the best action writer of the three. he has a heavily gramscian take on his world-building that imo clashes p poorly with his d&d bent. def the most confused and ambitious and difficult of the three writers. higher highs and much, much lower lows. lots of ugly (as opposed to merely cliche or unncessary) sentences. v. v. v. v. (understating here) limited ability w/character and dialouge. still proably has the coolest concepts of anyone writing even if it veers into like magic: the gathering fanfic at times.

bakker is str8 garbage and doesnt have erikson's talents to make engaging with his misogyny worthwhile.

[Arielas]

"bakker is str8 garbage and doesnt have erikson's talents to make engaging with his misogyny worthwhile. "


That seems a little harsh considering his books are very similiar to SE's MBoTF. Same themes running thoughout a equally or even more brutal world. Bakker has a solid philosphical system in place that fills out his world much better than SE's and his action scenes are damn epic. I agree his misogyny can be a little hard to stomach but is that Bakker revealing a personal flaw or a product of the world's view that he is writing? I think the latter given the enviorment his women live in. To each his own I guess but I find Bakker to be on par with SE as a writer at this point.

[Aptorian]

What makes Bakkers writing misogynist?

I can only remember three noteworthy female characters in the books. The Whore, the Concubine and the emperors mother, The Matriarch. Two of those the whore and the Matriarch are strong characters, Kelhus wife on the other hand is weak and that is why Kelhus keeps her around.

What is it about their portrail that you find misogynistic? This world is like a slightly skewed portrait of life in the Mediterranean, the way these women are characterised seems perfectly fitting. Women were not warriors in this time, they did not lead armies, some may have been queens, but the average female did not hold tittles of authority except in the households.

[HoosierDaddy]

I've read every book that has so far been published in MBotF, ASoIaF, and WoT. I stopped reading the third Bakker book.

[Aptorian]

H.D., on 13 February 2010 - 08:25 PM, said:

I've read every book that has so far been published in MBotF, ASoIaF, and WoT. I stopped reading the third Bakker book.

Mind elaborating?

While I too found the road to the ending of the third book long, I can certainly vouch for the ending being worth it. Achaman, or what ever he's called, finally grew some balls and had the coolest scene in the ending, Kelhus turned Super Sayian and tons of mages died, montains of soldiers clashed, the aliens had a setback. I liked it.

I still haven't read the Judging Eye, but I certainly want to know more of this worlds ancient history.

[HoosierDaddy]

I got sick of Kellhus. I wanted him to die horrifically and knew he wasn't going to. That's it. How can I read a book where I find the main character so annoying I can't read the book anymore?

[Aptorian]

Strange, I thought it was in the third book that he finally began to get really interesting as

Spoiler

his ordeals made him get visions and he started to wonder if there was a god and whether such a man as himself could be no more than a pawn? Or was he a god and if he was, did he have responsibility to these people that he was becoming the leader of?

And of course, when he finally learned the magic words he became infinitely more awesome, I didn't mind his overpoweredness, I was just disappointed that there was nothing else as powerful in the story that could oppose him.

To me the annoying parts in these books where the emo passages of ackaman (sp?) and the whore. Fucking pawns.

EDIT: added some tags for the sake of the uninitiated.

This post has been edited by Aptorian: 13 February 2010 - 09:01 PM

[globish rip]

lol @ garbled ancient greek somehow constituting a "solid philosophical system". bakker probably has a much better handle on heidegger than i do but i dont think his novels have much 2 say abt the self and society or w/e. tbf i think hes less engaged w/"big ideas" about ~how we live now~ than jordan is. dont really think he has much in common w/erikson either thematically erikson's much more concerned with social constructs than personhood? erikson a lot closer to mielville, abercrombie &c

re: bakker's misogyny i mean a) we currently and have historically lived in a deeply misogynistic world and plenty of ppl have managed to write books w/fully-realized female characters dude has a p pernicious view of female sexuality and its ~corrupting influence~ c) kinda portrays rape as this weird inevitablity iirc/fetishizes rape in a really gross way. (erikson super guilty of this too). this is over and above the rest of the books concerns w/control and free will and indentity &c imo.

some of the stuff w/r/t to esme's daughter and the wizard in the latest one just seemed deeply unnecessary. or... idk why even concieve of this character, in this way? called into qn a lot of his aims and goals re: relation of woman to power/their sexuality. why such a victim to it? not sure it really achieved v much narratively - she ended up being p superfluous too iirc? - but really hammered home some dubious shit about sex/power in his world.

wld have ro reread in order to make a really substantiated argument and have no interest in doing so

[Tsundoku]

Not to simultaneously indulge in necrophilia, bestiality and sadism, but ...

Martin's approach to writing reminds me of the girl who rejects all suitors while waiting for "the one" to come along, only to die an unsatisfied old maid.

Beware the perfectionist author, for you will get "nothing but perfect" from them. Usually this just ends up as "nothing".

I wonder how many partial manuscripts he has lying around? I sincerely hope he keeps it all and doesn't delete it when he decides it's not up to scratch. Would make for some interesting reading in a few years, in an "annotated Tolkien" kind of way.

[Ribald]

This is a really interesting discussion and I will risk adding my two cents. (all points below are imho and are by no means an attempt at fact.)

Of the three topic authors, I see them as writing on a genre spectrum, each fitting a certain niche within genre fantasy writing. With Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire being heavily influenced by medieval romance and his attempt to recreate a medieval romance in modern genre fantasy. His world seems to be veering toward the Historical fiction spectrum of fantasy writing (similar in some respects to Guy Gavriel Kay, Conn Igulden and Simon Scarrow). His world is a political quagmire reflecting the shifting allegiances of medieval Europe and the tropes and ideals of the chivalric romance. The lack of overt magic magic so far in the series (or at least the minimalist approach to magic) seems to reflect his desire to create a world that borders on our own, with the mimetic elements heavily outweighing those elements of the fantastic. Certainly of the interwoven plots, that of the political manoeuvring seems to be the most developed and the one he is most engaged with. I have no doubt the more fantastic elements will begin to figure more heavily in the narrative but to this point it seems the 'realistic' elements are the driving force.

On the other end of the spectrum is Jordan with his Wheel of Time and it sits far closer to the genre norm of traditional quest fantasy. But unlike so many others Jordan seemed to realise the potential of his series to develop a much more interesting world. After the first couple of books Jordan seemed to become engaged with his world and started to really develop its complexity and depth. But he seemed to get overly obsessed with the complexity and at times it appeared that he had lost sight of where the series was going. The initially stock-in-trade characters developed significantly over the series (and not always in the direction that the reader wanted, which is certainly to his credit) but there are much heavier elements of the adventure in Jordan's series than in Martin's. But he seems to be aiming at a grand heroic story coming from the kernels of traditional heroic quest.

Erikson though seems to be situated between these poles. There is clear evidence of an historical and realistic mode to his writing. Yet he weaves this fairly seamlessly with the mythic and with fantasy. High powered mages and gods work in Erikson's realistic world, whereas they would seem out of place in Martin. The depth and breadth of his world makes it seem more real than that of Jordan. With Erikson we become witnesses to tumultuous events, but rather than take a core cast of players playing with the fate of the world, Erikson constantly and consistently shows us a breadth of vision of the world ranging from the high ranking players all the way down to innocent and not so innocent pawns. The fate of the common soldier figures as predominantly as the fates of kings. This is something that seems to set Erikson apart from the other two. While Martin seems happy to kill off 'important' characters, after a while it seems as if he became bored writing them and wanted to move on. When Erikson kills a character not only is there generally a very good reason for it, a huge emotional impact with it, but also it fits the narrative. Martin has executed more than a few off page simply to clear the way for a plethora of new characters to take their place. Of course it can easily be argued that Martin is simply being true to his world of treachery, back stabbing and shifting allegiances, but at times it is irritating to spend such a long time following a plot line to only have it end in a seemingly arbitrary and pointless fashion. Jordan though suffers from the problem that few main characters ever seem to be in genuine peril. I find that Erikson strikes a fine balance between the peril imposed by a proven track record of killing 'main' characters, and a sense that there is a reason and motive for why these things are necessary.

The magic system employed by Erikson is one of the most imaginative and interesting systems in modern fantasy, whereas Jordan's always struck me as good, if a little basic and not thought all the way through. Where Erikson's world suffers the repercussions of high levels of magic through all social strata and military planning, Jordan has had the tendency to use magic as a gimmick or deus ex machina. Magic is as much a part of the fabric or even a character in the Malazan series and world as the landscape, the actors and the victims. You cannot have the Malazan world without magic, but once can see Martin's world and story functioning perfectly well (albeit with less colour) if all aspects of magic were removed. If you removed magic from Jordan's world it would affect the plot certainly, but I don't think it would unduly upset the fabric of the reality.

In terms of subverting norms I think that all three writers have done so to varying degrees, but Jordan stays closer to the ethos of an answer to Tolkien (much like Donaldson's Thomas Covenant), Martin has tried to bring the historical medieval romance back into vogue and thus tried to do away with as much of epic/heroic/mythic fantasy as he can and Erikson has obviously been influenced by Cook and has tried to create a living breathing epic history and populate it with everyday witnesses caught up in grand affairs. So each has tried to do something new with fantasy and each has created a different flavour.

Apologies for rambling on.

[Yellow]

H.D., on 13 February 2010 - 08:47 PM, said:

I got sick of Kellhus. I wanted him to die horrifically and knew he wasn't going to. That's it. How can I read a book where I find the main character so annoying I can't read the book anymore?

What makes you think that Kellhus is the series' main character? For my money, that would certainly be Akka. He's definitely the main protagonist. By TJE, Kellhus is the (second) main antagonist, but I wouldn't say he's the main character. He's got only a few POV chapters in the third book, and none in TJE.

I've not read Martin (I fear he won't live to finish it), but Bakker trumps SE and Jordan in my book.

PS - got to add, it's dangerous to judge an author on an incomplete series. While MBotF and WoT are virtually finished, you mustn't forget that Bakker's Second Apocalypse is only (approx.) 50% done. It could come in great, or turn sour. Imagine judging the MBotF after book 5. Well, just to be contrary, I would say it was much better than judging it after book 9 But then I'm one of those who think it peaked with MoI and went downhill fast after HoC.

This post has been edited by Yellow: 14 February 2010 - 12:57 AM

[HoosierDaddy]

Through two and a third books I viewed him as the main character because the books seemed to be based around his character. Perhaps I'll give the third book another try, as I read them in order and very close together, so:

"Kelhus meets person. Kelhus impresses person. Person wants to have Kelhus' babies even if a man."

Got a little old. It has its bright spots, but I got completely sick and tired of that scenario.

[Yellow]

Fair enough. You should try viewing it from the bigger picture, though. The world is in serious jeopardy, and the only person who can save it is probably not only crazy, but likely in it for other reasons. For me, that's much more interesting than the other authors mentioned so far have to offer.

I think that the first three books were designed to make us see how Kellhus does it whereas the rest will be about how the world will be saved despite him. I still believe that Kellhus will become the No-God, and I will do until the last series comes out The dynamic between Akka's hate for Kellhus and his deep-down belief that he is needed to fend off the second apocalypse is fascinating.

Personally, I loved every minute of Bakker's books. I loved reading about the domination, because it was another window into not Kellhus, but the soul of the person he was dominating. Bakker's books feel real, much more so than SE's or Jordan's. Plus, Bakker's magic system is far more poetic than any other I've read.

This post has been edited by Yellow: 14 February 2010 - 01:19 AM

[blackzoid]

Bakker's books are upsetting to say the least. But probably somewhat realistic in terms of the actual First Chrusade.
I didn't get a feeling of misogny from the books, just from some of his characters.

However, my problem with Bakker's first trilogy was that I basically wanted Kellhus dead, very dead. Being able to mindwipe every single character he met, got old very fast.

His ride with Cnaiur across the steppe in The Darkness that Comes Before, was the best part of the first 3 books.
Being with a character that knows what he is trying to do was an excellent idea. Seeing him take over everybody else.....not so much.

I think the Aspect Emperor series will be much better, as we should only have limited sections from Kelhus POV, and more from his underlings. And the fact that they are slowly starting to question their "saviour" is all to the good. The Judging Eye was good, albiet short. And I like Kellhus's crazy kids.

[Werthead]

Bakker's world is inherently misogynistic. He admitted as such in a detailed discussion on the Westeros message board after TJE came out.

Essentially, the events of the First Apocalypse, particularly the No-God rendering all women barren and infertile for a dozen years, had a profound sociological and religious impact on the view of women in Earwa, pushing them into the extremes of either being sex objects to be used or closeted away and protected in case the same thing happens again. Because women and their ability to reproduce and bear their husbands heirs was used by the Consult in their war on humanity, that has led to a very screwed-up image of women being had by by the male characters. It is notable that with the possible exception of the Emperor's mother, every female character to appear in the books (which is not a lot) has been subjected to sexual abuse of some kind or another (although, to be fair, so have a number of male characters).

I think Bakker has realised this viewpoint is slightly odd and unsustainable, so in his traditional style he is now challenging his own viewpoint with the introduction of more female characters, including a lawful assembly of female sorcerers (banned under the pre-Kellhus regime), in TJE. Interesting to see how that works out in the next book in the series.

KeithF, on 12 February 2010 - 10:34 PM, said:

Yes, this is one of the more original parts of the series (though it's not *that* original or clever, and it doesn't so much subvert the cliche as just lampshade it repeatedly). However, the execution of the plot and characters and the lack of depth to the world (especially compared to, say, Erikson) are the real problem with the series, to me, which isn't to say I never enjoy it.

The notion that Jordan's worldbuilding is not as deep as Erikson's seems odd. Erikson's may be more original, more interesting (varying by the reader) and definitely far broader, but Jordan's world has a lot more going on beneath the surface, particularly with regard to history, that has been let out to the reader so far. I get the impression that Erikson has a ton of stuff on the deep backhistory of the Malazan world, but very little of it has seeped out in the books. Trying to write a detailed history of Erikson's world based on the information from the eleven books (including ICE's) to date would be an exercise in extreme frustration, whilst with Jordan it's pretty straightforward to do so. Martin falls between the two stalls, though his recent history (of say the Targaryen reign of Westeros) is probably even more detailed than Jordan's recent backstory by this point, but you have to raid a lot more sources outside the books (the RPGs, short stories and so forth) to get the full picture.

[ansible]

I'm almost finished with Dust of Dreams, and as I was sitting here looking at Night of Knives on my desk (my next read), I wonder if part of the reason that Erikson's history is so "shallow" in terms of detail and events from the past is that SE and ICE agreed to split the world and its contents. MBotF is not a literary work, first and foremost. I wonder if MBotF would simply be a better story if it was capable of drawing on the entire world in which it is set, but instead SE intentionally limits it. For the work as a whole, I find this unfortunate. Still, the books are extremely compelling.

I have a soft spot for Jordan (childhood), but on Martin I go back and forth. On the one hand, I enjoy the story and his writing, but his insane delays and presumptuous "rewrites" leave me irritated. Also, I met him once at a signing for AFoC and he was completely rude and dismissive when I asked him my one question.

[Tsundoku]

ansible, on 17 February 2010 - 10:12 PM, said:

I have a soft spot for Jordan (childhood), but on Martin I go back and forth. On the one hand, I enjoy the story and his writing, but his insane delays and presumptuous "rewrites" leave me irritated. Also, I met him once at a signing for AFoC and he was completely rude and dismissive when I asked him my one question.

May I ask what the questions was? Or should I be able to guess from what we know of GRRM?

[Yellow]

I listened to a lengthy interview with Martin on the Agony Column a while back, and he came across as a genuinely likeable guy - he had a sense of humour about what he did.

Listened to a couple of Jordan interviews in my time. That's all I'm saying

[Terez]

I made a database of all the RJ interviews in the history of the net fandom, reviewing and transcribing several videos and audios in the process. I doubt there's another author in the English language who comes close to matching RJ's skill at world-building from the interview table. I'm not saying that everything he ever said in an interview was pulled out of his ass - a lot of it is obviously from the notes, and from memory - but a good deal of it was definitely pulled out of his ass, more than he was ever willing to admit. He was very good at it. There are only a few, mostly minor inconsistencies that arose from the interviews and signing reports, and he didn't say RAFO all that often. I find his personality to be generally very polite and even sociable most of the time, and though there are a few places where he comes off a bit condescending, it's not anything approaching the sweet side of Tairy.

This post has been edited by Terez: 18 February 2010 - 08:47 AM