[Gothos]

Hello Vetekorn, and welcome to the forums!
Personally I've found LotR to be extremely easy to read and grasp, I think your post is the first thing hinting that it could be complicated at all - straightforward story, simple dialogue and characters... All in all pretty generic. He doesn't even try to "rationalize" magic within his world, which actually makes it pretty flat for me, while the "functional magic" of Wu and the Warrens attempts to make a *cough* comprehensive *cough* structure, aspecting, use and character to it. (Note: I have the utmost respect for Tolkien for creating a detailed world, especially from Silmarillion, especially since there's little more in LotR than the setting to get fussed about. However I wouldn't say it's all that complex.)
As the series goes on things get more and more complicated. You get to know a "little" more. Tonnes more. In GotM, they get about as much as a passing mention only, like someone muttering something under their breath. Stay tuned I'd say.

[Ulrik]

I had same problem - not with myself, but my wife.
I loved Gemmel and recommended him - she was absolutely drawn into story, she even cried.
I offered her LOTR - and she enjoyed it, despite of some issues I criticize JRRT also.

But Im afraid to give her Erikson. She is no fantasy reader and IMO, MBoF is for "newbies" too overwhelming. I believe she can enjoy DG, but IMO its necessary to go thru GotM first...and that is hard nut for newcomer. Damn...I want her to enjoy best series ever written (Im serious, really)...but Im also afraid that she will be repulsed by GotM and difficulty of "entrée".

[Salt-Man Z]

I would argue that there's nothing in the MBotF that should scare away fantasy "newbs". I actually see this stated a lot: that MBotF can only be enjoyed by readers already familiar with all the fantasy tropes. And that's simply not true. I was very much a fantasy newb when I picked up the MBotF. Under my belt was LotR, Donaldson's Covenant books, and Xanth. Not a lot. But still, I was fine.

Really, it's the sheer complexity and open-endedness of the series that seems to drive a lot of folks away. And the darkness. (The latter is the reason I'll never recommend this series to my wife.)

[amphibian]

Ulrik, on 24 March 2010 - 12:08 PM, said:

I had same problem - not with myself, but my wife.
I loved Gemmel and recommended him - she was absolutely drawn into story, she even cried.
I offered her LOTR - and she enjoyed it, despite of some issues I criticize JRRT also.

But Im afraid to give her Erikson. She is no fantasy reader and IMO, MBoF is for "newbies" too overwhelming. I believe she can enjoy DG, but IMO its necessary to go thru GotM first...and that is hard nut for newcomer. Damn...I want her to enjoy best series ever written (Im serious, really)...but Im also afraid that she will be repulsed by GotM and difficulty of "entrée".

Salt-Man Z, on 24 March 2010 - 03:39 PM, said:

Really, it's the sheer complexity and open-endedness of the series that seems to drive a lot of folks away. And the darkness. (The latter is the reason I'll never recommend this series to my wife.)

So the both of you are "protecting" your wives from something that you really enjoy? I would think that if you give your wife a book and say "I really enjoy these books, they're kind of dark, but they're very, very good. If you want to talk about it, I'm here and there's this great forum where deeper questions can be asked and answered." that they'd get through the books just fine and enjoy them like we do.

Women are people too. Shorter, smaller and more talkative, but people nonetheless.

[Salt-Man Z]

Don't be ridiculous. I know my wife's tastes and I know mine, and I know where they overlap. Awesome as it is, the MBotF will never fall into that overlap. Likewise, I will never enjoy "A Little Princess". She does not like darkness in her fiction (a baby being killed in OSC's "Wyrms" almost soured her on the entire book, for example) and so I respect that when making recommendations.

[Verjigorm]

I think that much of the complexity comes from SE's personal history. He's an anthropologist and archaeologist. So, for him, cultures, races and events from the past shape and define the current narrative reality.
Reading his books kind of puts me in the role of an archaeologist too. Everywhere I find bits and pieces under the sand, dusting them free with my mind brush and trying to get a view of a bigger picture. And, I guess, that task is not really enjoyable for everyone. Non-fantasy readers normally have to deal with the fact that they read about a new world with new rules. For SE you have to tripple or quadruple this effort, cause you don't have to get to know one new world, but also 3 or 4 ages that have passed. So, I think the assumed difficulty especially for non-fantasy readers might come from this. If you already saw Tolkien's different ages you might have it easier to wrap your mind around all those intermingled histories.

Most people aren't able to get this kind of insight into our own world. For example, a few months ago I saw a documetary about the myths of the book of revelations from the bible. Today the number of 666 is associated with the devil, the 4 riders with the Apocalypse. The documentary showed that in the arabic language numbers are related to letters in their alphabet. If you unravel the number, it actually gives the name of a brutal king that terrorized the region at the time the book was written. Som the number directly relates to an actual figure of the time and was just a symbol for this king, who was seen as an aggressor capable of destroying their society. He also had cavalarym which was uncommen at that time in the region, so his danger came from riders, thus the picture of the four horsemen. If you look at that, the whole book of revelation makes perfect sense and everybody knew this at the time it was written.
But now, only the symbols remain and are interpreted and pictured wrongly by churches, cults and media. Prior to the documentary, I also had no clue of this.

SE seems to build his stories in the same manner. The current reality in Wu is built from layers and layers of history, which is forgotten or misinterpreted. The reader has to try to wrap his head not only around the narrative reality, but also around it's many histories and their interpretations. Alas, so I and most of you here on the forums love this kind of wrapping your head around a few 100.000 years of fictioned history, I can see, why not everybody likes this kind of entertainment.

[Ulrik]

Salt-Man Z, on 24 March 2010 - 04:57 PM, said:

Don't be ridiculous. I know my wife's tastes and I know mine, and I know where they overlap. Awesome as it is, the MBotF will never fall into that overlap. Likewise, I will never enjoy "A Little Princess". She does not like darkness in her fiction (a baby being killed in OSC's "Wyrms" almost soured her on the entire book, for example) and so I respect that when making recommendations.

Amen...Jesus Christ, I love when someone begins to analyze my partnership from one post.


btw - Amphibian, my wife isnt more talkative, we are both silent folks... Believe me, I know my wife better than you...despite what you know from internet...

[amphibian]

Salt-Man Z, on 24 March 2010 - 04:57 PM, said:

Don't be ridiculous. I know my wife's tastes and I know mine, and I know where they overlap. Awesome as it is, the MBotF will never fall into that overlap. Likewise, I will never enjoy "A Little Princess". She does not like darkness in her fiction (a baby being killed in OSC's "Wyrms" almost soured her on the entire book, for example) and so I respect that when making recommendations.

A Little Princess is awesome. It has one of the most respectful and well done re-tellings of the Ramayana (one of the Big Hindu Myths) within it. Really a good movie, despite the appealing-to-women trappings it has.

[Jusentantaka]

Ulrik, on 24 March 2010 - 12:08 PM, said:

But Im afraid to give her Erikson. She is no fantasy reader and IMO, MBoF is for "newbies" too overwhelming. I believe she can enjoy DG, but IMO its necessary to go thru GotM first...and that is hard nut for newcomer. Damn...I want her to enjoy best series ever written (Im serious, really)...but Im also afraid that she will be repulsed by GotM and difficulty of "entrée".

Why does the first book have to be read first? Personally, I started with DG and read through bonehunters before reading the first one in its entirety (I think I read the first hundred pages a while prior), and I never felt a great need to know things that happened in the first book to understand what was happening in the second. Either way, a reader has to spend a good bit of the first book they pick up figuring out how things work in the bookiverse, and I think the superior writing in DG makes that easier.


@Amphie: I will loom over you with my wafer-thin, freakishly tallness and headbutt you with my waxed up skull. Right after I finish doing my nails. And OH MY GAWD I got sealant on the crease between my toes, that is like so annoying to get out and stuff when it itches. I just want to scream. Someone should go invent a tool that lets you clean in between your toes without having to bend around like some crazy ballerina. Did you know that my aunt's sister's granddaughter is a ballerina? She's really good at it too I hear.

[Ulrik]

Jusentantaka, on 25 March 2010 - 03:24 AM, said:

Ulrik, on 24 March 2010 - 12:08 PM, said:

But Im afraid to give her Erikson. She is no fantasy reader and IMO, MBoF is for "newbies" too overwhelming. I believe she can enjoy DG, but IMO its necessary to go thru GotM first...and that is hard nut for newcomer. Damn...I want her to enjoy best series ever written (Im serious, really)...but Im also afraid that she will be repulsed by GotM and difficulty of "entrée".

Why does the first book have to be read first? Personally, I started with DG and read through bonehunters before reading the first one in its entirety (I think I read the first hundred pages a while prior), and I never felt a great need to know things that happened in the first book to understand what was happening in the second. Either way, a reader has to spend a good bit of the first book they pick up figuring out how things work in the bookiverse, and I think the superior writing in DG makes that easier.

Well...my problem is, that Im OBSESSED with chronogical reading of books...and I fear that she wouldnt enjoy her DG ride not knowing bout Kalam, Fiddler, Crokus...
Ill try...probbably, when work wouldnt be No.1 in our lives

[Kanubis]

 

Ulrik, on 25 March 2010 - 12:23 PM, said:

Well...my problem is, that Im OBSESSED with chronogical reading of books...

Oh lord, me too! I read TTH before RotCG and almost had a fit when I found out Erikson recommended reading them the other way round.


On a related note, when I come to power it will be illegal for a bookshop to ever stock later books in any series without stocking the first book in series as well. Illegal and harshly punished.

[Jusentantaka]

Ulrik, on 25 March 2010 - 12:23 PM, said:

Well...my problem is, that Im OBSESSED with chronogical reading of books...and I fear that she wouldnt enjoy her DG ride not knowing bout Kalam, Fiddler, Crokus...
Ill try...probbably, when work wouldnt be No.1 in our lives

Well, then, shouldn't you offer midnight tides first? (If there's a better way to turn someone off to the series, I can't imagine it) Still, I remember a decent amount of exposition about the returning cast - well, more than with the rest of the series at least - at the beginning of the novel. Maybe not though, its been almost a year now since I read it.

[Salt-Man Z]

amphibian, on 24 March 2010 - 11:47 PM, said:

A Little Princess is awesome. It has one of the most respectful and well done re-tellings of the Ramayana (one of the Big Hindu Myths) within it. Really a good movie, despite the appealing-to-women trappings it has.

I was actually reading that to my daughter last summer. We made it about a third of the way through before we both lost interest.

This post has been edited by Salt-Man Z: 25 March 2010 - 03:48 PM

[Lousy]

Aptorian, on 16 March 2010 - 11:37 AM, said:

The real world is a complicated mess, why should a fantasy world be any different?

Erikson doesn't hold your hand and gave you 5 page expositions on the nature of magic or the history of the empire. Instead he choses to put some characters in some crazy situations and through dialogue and discoveries small pieces of information are leaked to the reader.

Keep reading, you learn more as you go, but trust me, we have one book to go in the series and there is still a mountain of questions unanswered.

This is exactly my take on it as well. Unlike other series, the reader of the Malazan books really has to work at it,, ie. just keep reading on faith if necessary to get more out of it the further along you go.

After reading a number of series over the years, I just think I was in a place where I really needed something like this series. I can well see myself at an earlier period where it likely wouldn't have clicked with me and I would have dropped it. Not now..

[Hood's Legacy]

Rutt, on 22 March 2010 - 02:36 AM, said:

I decided to read GotM after I read a few things about it on another forum. It seems a lot of people have trouble getting into it. I thought it wouldn't have been that hard and went to try it myself. I came to the conclusion that GotM wasn't as difficult as most people likened it to be - there were parts where I had to read over again, and little snippets of information that had me guessing throughout, but overall, it played out like a movie in my head. That said, I went straight into DG and that's where all the problems began. Whilst I enjoyed it, it threw me off that it whilst it was a continuation of GotM, it didn't actually have a majority of the characters I loved from the first novel. That was enough to put me off it, though as I continued reading it got a lot better. HoC did it to me again with the whole Karsa Orlong plot at the beginning. I had to remind myself that each novel built up a bigger picture, and that in itself made it much more enjoyable for me to read. I had to keep reading to discover all the answers to all the unanswered questions.

GoTM: First half - 3weeks

[Hood's Legacy]

Hood, on 31 March 2010 - 09:31 AM, said:

Rutt, on 22 March 2010 - 02:36 AM, said:

I decided to read GotM after I read a few things about it on another forum. It seems a lot of people have trouble getting into it. I thought it wouldn't have been that hard and went to try it myself. I came to the conclusion that GotM wasn't as difficult as most people likened it to be - there were parts where I had to read over again, and little snippets of information that had me guessing throughout, but overall, it played out like a movie in my head. That said, I went straight into DG and that's where all the problems began. Whilst I enjoyed it, it threw me off that it whilst it was a continuation of GotM, it didn't actually have a majority of the characters I loved from the first novel. That was enough to put me off it, though as I continued reading it got a lot better. HoC did it to me again with the whole Karsa Orlong plot at the beginning. I had to remind myself that each novel built up a bigger picture, and that in itself made it much more enjoyable for me to read. I had to keep reading to discover all the answers to all the unanswered questions.

GoTM: First half - 3weeks, Second half: 3 days.. After that, there was no turning back. I realised by the end of DG that the lesser questions you asked during the firsy reading, the better off you are. The plot and the character's actions become clearer during the second or sometimes even third reading. Not to mention the books aren't in a chronological order. The funny thing is you don't get bored during the secon reading..!!! scratch.. scratch... Is S.E.'s writing that good??

[Hood's Legacy]

Verjigorm, on 24 March 2010 - 06:25 PM, said:

I think that much of the complexity comes from SE's personal history. He's an anthropologist and archaeologist. So, for him, cultures, races and events from the past shape and define the current narrative reality.
Reading his books kind of puts me in the role of an archaeologist too. Everywhere I find bits and pieces under the sand, dusting them free with my mind brush and trying to get a view of a bigger picture. And, I guess, that task is not really enjoyable for everyone. Non-fantasy readers normally have to deal with the fact that they read about a new world with new rules. For SE you have to tripple or quadruple this effort, cause you don't have to get to know one new world, but also 3 or 4 ages that have passed. So, I think the assumed difficulty especially for non-fantasy readers might come from this. If you already saw Tolkien's different ages you might have it easier to wrap your mind around all those intermingled histories.

Most people aren't able to get this kind of insight into our own world. For example, a few months ago I saw a documetary about the myths of the book of revelations from the bible. Today the number of 666 is associated with the devil, the 4 riders with the Apocalypse. The documentary showed that in the arabic language numbers are related to letters in their alphabet. If you unravel the number, it actually gives the name of a brutal king that terrorized the region at the time the book was written. Som the number directly relates to an actual figure of the time and was just a symbol for this king, who was seen as an aggressor capable of destroying their society. He also had cavalarym which was uncommen at that time in the region, so his danger came from riders, thus the picture of the four horsemen. If you look at that, the whole book of revelation makes perfect sense and everybody knew this at the time it was written.
But now, only the symbols remain and are interpreted and pictured wrongly by churches, cults and media. Prior to the documentary, I also had no clue of this.

SE seems to build his stories in the same manner. The current reality in Wu is built from layers and layers of history, which is forgotten or misinterpreted. The reader has to try to wrap his head not only around the narrative reality, but also around it's many histories and their interpretations. Alas, so I and most of you here on the forums love this kind of wrapping your head around a few 100.000 years of fictioned history, I can see, why not everybody likes this kind of entertainment.

And this is made clearer in the fact that Karsa resembles Genghis Khan, Coltaine - Spartacus,. Heck, I am very sure that the undead T'lan Imass resemble the native Red Indians of Canada.. (I am guessing that there were..).If you look closely, all the cities and characters have some aspects attributed to the "known" (hmmm...) human history.

[Rolland]

I actually didn't have too much trouble with GotM...it wasn't exactly an "easy" read, but rather challenging...but in a good rewarding way as you continued to move forward. About 1/2 way I looked online and found the various wiki's that discribed the Races and Geography of Melaz world. This helped me considerably (especially the "races" section) as I initially had trouble visualizing some of their aspects and traits.

On book 5 now (650+pages in thus far) and I'm in literary heaven...I never expected to find a series that so fully resonated with me, nor one so vast and complex and amazing in it's depth of story(epic) and characters. I've been reading (mostly fantasy) for the last 35 years and was comfortable with my favorites and what I considered to be the "best". Then Erikson comes along and blow all that out of the water lol

As for the chronology, my personal take and preference would be to read them in order if one is able. Just my feeling on the matter

I've given GotM to 3 friends as gifts over the years and I do my best to prepare them that these books do take a level of cognitive effort that's simply not needed in most/all? other books. But one of the most rewarding (if not THE most) if one sticks with it, and as mentioned in previous posts, allows the story to move forward and continue without bogging down on too many questions...as these for the most part become more clear as the story/books progress.

That said, Erikson's epic is not for everyone. Taste and personal reading ability come into play, some just will never have the patience to read something that they deem too challenging or complex. I count myself luck in that I can (and do) read easier fiction/fantasy (Koontz/Jordan comes to mind) but none hold the emotional impact and satisfaction and joy that I receive when reading Erikson.

With only 5 books in I can assuredly say that if I had to pick one literary work to be my sole source of reading for the rest of my days it would be this one. Beyond a doubt...there's no greater praise I can think to bestow. It simply is the best work of fantasy I've ever read. That it connects with me on such a personal level I find amazing. Very happy I chanced upon this series and gave it a try!

So in answer to the original question...No, I do not feel that MBoTF is 'too" big or complicated, it's what separates it from the masses imo

What's that old adage? "Nothing of worth ever came easy" seems to fit perfectly here

So keep at it and I hope you'll find it as rewarding and amazing a trip as I have thus far!

Regards

[worry]

I think my biggest impediment was understanding what a warren was. Once that was sussed out it was fairly smooth sailing. Also, given that it's the first book, the Azath house kind of came out of nowhere and initially felt too RPG-ish, but of course that's RAFO stuff that settles nicely too.

[Hood's Legacy]

Gothos, on 23 March 2010 - 10:19 AM, said:

Hello Vetekorn, and welcome to the forums!
Personally I've found LotR to be extremely easy to read and grasp, I think your post is the first thing hinting that it could be complicated at all - straightforward story, simple dialogue and characters... All in all pretty generic. He doesn't even try to "rationalize" magic within his world, which actually makes it pretty flat for me, while the "functional magic" of Wu and the Warrens attempts to make a *cough* comprehensive *cough* structure, aspecting, use and character to it. (Note: I have the utmost respect for Tolkien for creating a detailed world, especially from Silmarillion, especially since there's little more in LotR than the setting to get fussed about. However I wouldn't say it's all that complex.)
As the series goes on things get more and more complicated. You get to know a "little" more. Tonnes more. In GotM, they get about as much as a passing mention only, like someone muttering something under their breath. Stay tuned I'd say.

Gothos,

I haven't come across 'WU'/must have overlooked it in the Tonnes of info..
Could you please let me know what the 'Wu' is in MBotF?