[Tatterdemalion]

Malazan Book of the Fallen Article

Show your support for both a cool entertainment news site and the Malazan series by giving the aforenoted article a read. Think I properly explain the glory of the Malazan series to the masses? I try! Lots of you know more than me, so if you see a technical mistake, if you tell me here I can fix it myself.

Enjoy!

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Bravo, I like it a lot. Very well written, though I noticed a few grammatical mistakes in terms of incorrect possessives, but most people, as dumb as they are, wouldn't notice.

This post has been edited by Whisper: 13 July 2010 - 05:52 PM

[Tatterdemalion]

I gave it a mild copy-edit and found a few kinks. Glad you liked it!

[Werthead]

A good overview, but several errors:

The MALAZAN series was nominated for one World Fantasy Award, IIRC, but has never won a major fantasy award that I am aware of. As well as 2003, there were also no new MALAZAN books published in 2005 and 2010 (although we are getting a new ICE book in 2010, so I guess that counts, but NIGHT OF KNIVES was published in 2004, not 2005 as some sites incorrectly claim). Three of the novels are shorter than 1,000 pages (five counting ICE's two), in GotM's case a fair bit shorter.

Not entirely sure if the knock on Robert Jordan is fair. The series spun out of control, but he also kept up a solid rate of releases, publishing nine large books in the series' first ten years, which actually outstrips Erikson in book releases (who managed eight).

Ian Cameron Esslemont is not mentioned once in the entire article, which I think is slightly unfair in an overview of the series, especially how it got started. It's also worth mentioning as you seem to include ICE's two side-novels in the book count, which gives the misleading impression Erikson has written everything in the MALAZAN universe.

[Stalker]

I liked the article, and I did see mention of ICE (whether this was a edit at this point or whatnot) which was good. The article gives a good overview of what a new reader could expect, some frustration but a great payoff at some point of each novel.

On a side note, ask your friend if he knows about the movie Gettysburg. Gods and Generals is considered the prequel to Gettysburg, made 10 years earlier. Gettysburg is also a monster of a film at nearly 5 hours iirc. It is done by the same director and has most of the same actors who reprise theirs roles in Gods and Generals. The movie was also a bit slow, but very well done, especially in the scenes involving Pickett's charge and Little Round top. Both were based off of books, Gettysburg on the Killer Angels by Michael Shaara and Gods and Generals on Jeffery Shaara's book of the same name. Jeffery Shaara wrote another book The Last Full Measure, which was to be the basis of the 3rd movie but hasn't been done yet, though maybe in 2013, or never hehe.
All the novels are good reads for anyone interested in historical fiction.

[Tatterdemalion]

Thanks, Werthead. I was hoping someone would call me on some things. I know I'm not as much of an authority as some people and when you're writing for free... well, it's easy to get sloppy. Especially when you assume you know everything. Anyway, your notes are much appreciated.

As Stalker notes, I did mention ICE right off the bat. Blink and you'd miss him in the second-last paragraph.

I think my knock on Jordan is fair only insofar as my point for the whole article is how wonderful it is to see such a thought-out series, head to toe. That this level of faith on the part of both publisher and author is required to make the best art. While Jordan produced books at an equal rate to Erikson (Books 1-9 in a ten year span for both of them... am I missing something?) most everyone can agree that somewhere between book 7 and 8 the series suffered a fatal wound from which it would never recover (well, we'll see. Or we won't.) I may have implied too much by that sentence's proximity to the amount of writing Erikson did.

Just as an aside, I also expect Jordan had written part of The Great Hunt before Eye of the World was released. I doubt anyone could 'write' both of those books in one calendar year, though I could be wrong.

Everything else I took and used to strengthen the article. Much appreciated!