[Aptorian]

I liked this book. It was a better wrap up of the series than I feared. My main gripe would probably be that you can't build much tension in your book when the stories "Big Bad Boss" are Forkrul Assail that get smacked down every time they step onto the field of battle. Might as well have given them a red shirt as a uniform. I think this story would have worked better if, for what ever reason, the Assail had reassembled their God (Opals Gems Diamonds Shards) and he could have been the Panion Seer of the 10th book. Or maybe made the Crippled God an actual bad guy and had those Jade Giants land and be walking battle titans on the field of battle. But what ever.

Okay, things I'm wondering about.

1 - How can there be such a difference between Dassem and Dassembrae? When Ruin walks to the "Realm of the Fall of Coltaine" the spirits of various Ascendants are hanging out for what ever reason, and Dassembrae comes off as a huge asshole. What is that about I wonder. Is that Dassems soul? Just the aspect of his worshippers? I want to see Dassem fight his evil twin now.

2 - All the gods we meet there I seem to remember being ones that have "sided with the CG" in the Panthon War. But what ever happened to that War? Did Erikson forget there was a war? Was there ever a war in the first place? What were all those Gods doing there. Was that spirit realm just the message board of the Pantheon and everyone hangs out there being mad at each other?

3 - Korabas was made because... what? When you have a big magical scrap you get the Ottataral Island apparently. When a Hundred Dragons and dozens of Ascendants (or was that a hundred ascendants?) spill their blood and pool their power you get the Ottataral Dragon. This according to Quick anyway. Why?

Is this supposed to be connected with K'ruls fashioning of the House System? Because from all we have heard I have a hard time believing that a hundred dragons let alone dozens of Ascendants could agree to come together and usurp the power of the Holds. Making Gods work together in bigger numbers than two is like herding cats. I always imagined that this was something K'rul accomplished on the sly making a deal with a few ascendants back when SD was being sealed up.

(On a sidenote the amount of Pathos in the sections with Korabas was overwhelming, that is one tragic creature.)

4 - Towards the end of the book Hedge makes a remark about this being "real life" or something and not fantasy and that is why there was not a dozen Kenrylala demons protecting the heart of the CG or something similar. But I really found it weird.

Every one knows that Ascendants and Elder Beings are bastabbing power hungry bastards. So why on earth would you not place guardians, whole armies of undead soldiers, godlings, what have you around the heart of the CG and the cross that Korabas was crucified on? Gates and warrens have Guardians. Why the hell would you not put an alarm system on a Dragon that can destroy reality if some idiot tampers with her wards?

I am disappoint Anomander Rake.

4 - How the did anyone ever kill Tiam if she consists of the bodymass (and souls?) of hundreds or thousands of dragons? Screw the O-dragon. Tiam was apparently more bad ass than her and Korabas was a fucking beast of a dragon. Did they slip a mickey in her Dragon food and crawl through a nostril and stab her in the brain while she was sleeping? How the hell does she procreate if she is the size of a mountain range? I would like to see a Discovery channel programme on this narrated by Attenborough.

5 - What happens to the dragons now? There are at least a couple of hundred dragons loose on Wu or the surrounding warrens now. Probably even more left back in SD, Seems like a pretty big threat was just ignored at the end of the book.

I am assuming that Draconus is going to be a busy man...

6 - What was the deal with the sections of the book written in Italics? Normally when things appear like that it is either from a dream, memories or the thoughts of a character. I was waiting through out the book for the reason to this being revealed. I was suspecting that it might be the observations of the Crippled God or K'rul, but nothing like that was revealed. Especially Karsas sections were primarily shown in italics.

Is there a significance to this, like the sections of TTH narrated by Kruppe, or did the editors of the book fuck up some how?

7 - Why did Erikson not utilise Grub at all in this book? He is supposedly the spirit of the fall. A being created by all that pain and glory and what not. A godling in the making. You would think that he would at least had given the kid a scene to shine in.

I was surprised that the kid did not stay with the Bonehunters since he seems to be linked with them. I was actually expecting that he would have been their shaved knuckle in the hole.

8 - In the end, who or what was Held? Fid sees Held and recoils, but still gives it water, later there is a passing mention by someone maybe the Adjunct and then we hear no more.

Was Held perhaps a baby long dead? Or never a baby at all, just an object? or maybe a concept? So confusing.

It was mentioned that when Held opened its eyes something bad (or good) would happen. I was half expecting that Held would become the focal point of the Adjuncts compassion.

9 - What exactly did ST and Cots get out of this? In the start of the book Edgewalker claims that even if you succeed beyond every expectation they will speak of you failure. That Cots cannot win.

Then at the end Cots murderizes the Crippled God... for what?

Afterwards the two Shadow Gods are talking and one of them wonders how many of the Gods now hate them, probably everyone.

So what actually happened there. Were the Shadow Gods working together with K'rul and Mael? Meaning that they were meant to stab-stab-stab the Crippled God at the right point, to what? Send the Crippled Gods soul up to the Jade Statues? Or to prevent him from doing just that?

Why would "they" think this was a failure? Why could Cotillion not win that? The impression I got was that what ever Cots did was his own scheme not connected directed with ST.

I was expecting at the end that the Shadow Gods had betrayed K'rul and Mael to take the power of the Crippled God or something. But that didn't appear to be the case, since the rest of the Malazans seemed okay with what Cots did.

It would have been interesting if Cots and ST had piggy backed on the Jadestatues to invade the Crippled Gods world instead. How would that be for ambition.

This post has been edited by Clockwork Apt: 27 February 2011 - 11:30 AM

[Lister of Smeg]

1 - I think that realm harbours the aspects of the gods that worshippers ... well, worship. Why they have their own realm is another matter. That section didn't make an awful lot of sense to me.

3 - Sag'Churok talks in DoD about the need for "an other", a being outside of your control. So for there to be T'iam, there had to be Korabas, a dragon she couldn't control.

4 - Someone else speculated in another thread that T'iam was finally put down by all the dragons being trapped in Starvald Demelain. I have no other theories.

6 - The italicised parts signified events that took place away from Kolanse and the surrounding environs. So Karsa and Spindle's sections had an effect on the story, but they were thousands of miles away on Genabackis.

8 - Held was a baby that was probably dead right from the start. Fid recoils when he sees that fact. He "gives" her water because it is what Rutt expected him to do. He did it out of compassion.

9 - The other gods will hate ST and Cots because they released the CG, thus ensuring no other gods could leech his power anymore. Mael, K'rul, Hood and Rake were all in on this as well. I wouldn't be surprised if Silchas Ruin supported them, either.

[Panador]

The way I understood 1) is that in this realm the... "godhood" "lives". Dassem never wanted to be a god, the cult and the godhood was created without his volition, he never embraced the role, the believers made Dessembrae into the god they believe in. Dassem is "merely" an Ascendant, he rejected the idea of becoming a god so much the two are actually seperate beings. Shadowthrone wanted to be a god, he embraces it thus it seems the person and the god are one and the same, the same probably goes for the most of the other guys there.

2. Not sure the war among the gods ever fully took off. There was always talk about how it's about to start, sides being taken etc. but I don't think it ever actually began. The Bonehunters and their freeing the CG pre-empted that. If there had been a war among the gods there surely would have been major consequences that would have been mentioned.

3. Imo Balanace is a major theme in the Malazan series and Khorabas was the counter-balance to the chaos personified in the other dragons. As to why she wasn't there from the beginning or who created her, no clue.

4. How many guardians of Gates and Warrens are there actually? The Gate of the Realm of the Dead obviously but other than that? Not even Starvald Demelain had a guardian, it was just sown shut more or less. The Forkrul Assail pretty much did their own thing there, they had the most powerful among them guard the heart and that was that. They were surpremely over-confident, hell, they "judged" their own god and wanted to "judge" the whole world. Especially with their army I can see that they were just too arrogant to even consider it possible that any lowly creature ( = Not FA) would come close, and of course if they did, well, their most powerful Pure would make short work of them. Until this book the Forkrul Assail had always been portrayed as massively powerful. The Jaghut are mostly dead and gone, the T'lan Imass had no quarrel with them, they fought their Nah'ruk allies had obliterated the last surviving K'chain Che Malle... they thought there was no one left in this world to threaten them.

4. No clue. Anomander "There's nothing he can do" Rake? Wasn't he mentioned as having defeated T'iam somewhere?

5. *shrug* As you say, Draconus has a lot of work ahead of him, I guess.

6. The portions in italics took place simultanously in Darujistan etc. As to why he chose to write them this way, no clue, guess he wanted to seperated the two strings of storyline somehow. Those are things that did not happen in the Dust of Dreams, could not happen/be written in advance, they had to happen *now*. Maybe he wanted the readers no to get overly attached to this part of the story, as we'd only go back there very few times, he didn't want us to think that the Daru-guys are now part of this main storyline and when's gonna be their next chapter? Worked for me actually.

7. I'm fine with Grub not being actively used. His role was that just by *being* (there) he kept Sinn in check. Stonny and Gesler could have survived her conflagration (for a while). Neither the Che Malle nor the Bonehunters could have. So the Adjunct put Sinn and by necessity Grub near Gesler and Stonny, the only people who could keep her in check and possible stop her when she went full bat-shit.

8. I always considered Held to be dead, no baby could have survived the snake. Rutt never got Held back, supposedly she was buried. Or she was just a stone he imagined to be a baby. Or whatever. Guess pretty much everything is possible except Held having been an actual baby, or a living one rather.

Just a really crazy idea about the whole Held opening his/her/its eyes and something happening. Doesn't Badalla say something about Rutt now becoming Held again because someone's holding him while he's crying, or fainting or whatever? And Rutt was blind for a while. So Rutt, while being Held, opening his eyes... whatever... the whole Snake thing was weird from the start. During my first reading the series I actually skipped large portions of it because it was too jarring to read. Only read it all while reading through the series the second time.

9. I'm 99% certain Cotillion "kills" the Crippled God only to free him. Just after he stabs him there's talk about a green light rising into the heavens very fast (green, jade, the color of the Jade Giants, containing the souls of the CG's followers), and shortly after someone imagines the Jade Scars to already be a bit less visible, but doubts it'd go this fast. Sounds a lot like the CG had to be freed from his - mangled - corporal body so his essence could return home. As to why he was shocked when stabbed and not e.g. smiling, understanding it had to be this way... *shrug*

What did Cotillion and Shadowthrone get out of this... phew.. this is Shadowthrone we're talking about, he's as insane and brilliant as they come, I got no clue as to his true motivations. What's in it for him now? The CG is gone, his corrupting influence is gone, other gods who possibly sucked power from him now weakened.
Hell, maybe he just did it to save Burn, might as well be. Maybe - he DID start a "righteous" empire after all, hard but fair, there are multiple times in the series when enemies of the Malazan Empire actually admit that the conquered areas may now be better off - maybe he just wanted to help the Cripple God. Or, with Hood, Rake and the CG gone three powerful adverseries are out of the way he now has more room to maneuver.
Shadowthrone's character never got to be fully known, is he evil, good, sane, insane... all of it and none of it. Above all he's ambitious and brilliant. Maybe all of this was somehow part of a plan to heal Kurald Emurlahn, making him the ruler of a fully healed Elder realm.

This post has been edited by Panador: 27 February 2011 - 05:40 PM

[Illuyankas]

3) Remember when Fear mentioned the dragons spawned a 'child of indescribable terror' back in MT? Remember when I said that was probably the otataral dragon? Remember when everyone poopooed the idea? WELL WHO'S LAUGHING NOW, PUNKS!?

4 the second) The way I (roughly) saw it, Tiam was the first and temporarily only dragon in existence, letting people become Elient Soletaken from her, then Rake broke her apart permanently into all the other dragons and spawned the entire race, earning T'iam that broken ' in her name and allowing her to revive by veering back together in the best idea for a D'ivers I've seen, foreshadowed by the FA's god. All the references after that to Tiam/T'iam was just about either one of the dragons that made up her body mass or the race as a whole. I thought it was cool, personally.

6) Just POVs from outside Lether and Kolanse.

[tiam]

Just finished

1. ST notes that Dessembrae long ago gave up his pride and now St knows where it went. It seems they were aspects of gods of some sort but i admit that passage was a bit odd

[Morgoth]

I didn't mind Grub being less utilized than he could've been. We followed him from a rather peculiar child to a young but very competent commander. As we already know he is to take the mantle of first sword at some later point it was interesting to see how he became capable of such a thing.

[frank]

1. Dassem is an aspect of Dessembrae, not the god itself (only the best part)

3. Korabas actually seems a lot like chaos to me. Deth to everything, including magic. So why is it an opposite to the chaosbred Elient. And like you said, why the f... did they make it. Balance, schmalance...balance is a consequence/law of nature. Not something you go for when the imbalance tips your way!

4. As for alarms on Korabas they would probably have to be magic so ... sorry. And a guardian would have to bee reeeeeally patient.

5. I imagine that most of the dragons would go other places when there was no reason for them to hang around Wu. And here I got a question of my own. I seem to remember that in one of the books some characters in an Azath were passed by thre dragons going from one world to another. So while this supports the theory that they hav more important things to do than hanging around Wu and quarrel with the other Elient and fight Draconus and others, werent these three merry "wanderers" supposed ti be locked inside their warren?

6. Italics are probably cause its a better option than to put it where it "belongs" in an epilogue because this works better, especially sinc a lot of it has inpact on the story as it unfolds.

8. Unclear about Held, but I think he must be seen in contence with the snake being the manifestation of the worm of autumn.

9. I belive that it was nessesary to free tCG before killing him would generate the desired effect and they also had to wait for him to cage Korabas. Maybe they had to kill him because his followers would have broken the world. SE really should have been clearer there unless he wants us to be unsure.
So maybe the reason the gods helping thought the reason chaining him was wron was because it presented a threat rather than a morally abomination. But I don't get that impression.
Also ST and Cot might just not have told the other gods about the killing part of the plan. ST might think that getting rid of somthing powerfull and uncontrollable was a god idea. But I actually belives he has a concience about the bigger things.

[ShadowRaven]

 frank, on 27 February 2011 - 09:28 PM, said:

8. Unclear about Held, but I think he must be seen in contence with the snake being the manifestation of the worm of autumn.

It's not stated directly but I saw him being the body of a child, and probably pretty maggot infested considering the Worm of Autumn part and people's reactions to seeing him.

As for some questions of my own, here goes:


A) Did we ever see QB use the items he retrieves from the Spar of the Andii (and what was that place again, I can't recall where we last saw it)?

Was it confirmed that it was Sinn that killed Keneb back in DoD? The passage said something about her riding the lightning from the skykeep straight to him, but not summoning or directing it, although maybe that was just her inner psychobabble.

C) What happened to Iccy's crazy powerful new warrens after DoD, we apparently see Sinn use one there at the end (being able to burn Stormy/Gesler), but nobody seems to utilize them otherwise, were they perhaps inaccessible because Icarium was chained? Also, why had Icarium forgotten Mappo again, I thought his memory was repaired at the end of DoD? Did the creation of the new warrens return his amnesia (ok, apparently he remembers at least something at the end when he sees the potsherds)?

D) Why did Draconus have to pwn that Jade Statue that burst out of the ground? Was it to prevent them from summoning other gods from their home realm, or making the gods of Wu into Shield Anvils as well?

E) I get that Sandalath went insane in Kharkanas (although I didn't find that part very interesting/believable) and thus did nothing, but since MD has returned, why couldn't she use KG against the Liosan? Considering about 2/3 of the remaining Andii are mages at least to an extent and she was the queen of Kharkanas, I find it hard to believe she couldn't have tapped into MD's powers.

F) How is it possible (unless he was lying) that Ruthan is a human/mortal who has stayed ageless thanks to magic for who knows how long and even the Imass refer to him as Elder (remembers Draconus pre-imprisonment for example)? I thought humans haven't even been around that long, so wouldn't he more likely be an Eres? Unless there is a race of "first humans" or something along those lines we haven't seen yet I just can't see how it is possible.

[MTS]

 Illuyankas, on 27 February 2011 - 06:06 PM, said:

3) Remember when Fear mentioned the dragons spawned a 'child of indescribable terror' back in MT? Remember when I said that was probably the otataral dragon? Remember when everyone poopooed the idea? WELL WHO'S LAUGHING NOW, PUNKS!?

I think the main contention was the fact of Korabas actually hunting Scabandari down, when she clearly didn't, and whether the legend was a product of garbled Edur history. Rake, the architect of her imprisonment, says that Kilmandaros and Mael were enough, after all.

This post has been edited by MTS: 28 February 2011 - 05:56 AM

[Illuyankas]

Why they did it is irrelevant - witness Paran and freeing the Deragoth, after all. What matters is what they did. AND I WAS RIGHT

SUCK IT DOWN

(just ignore all the wrong guesses I made)

This post has been edited by Illuyankas: 28 February 2011 - 06:06 AM

[Hetan]

Ruthan Gud has to be an ascendant of some sort, mortal or not - we just don't know who and probably never will - move on.

Like others, I have always considered Held to be dead - a baby would never have lasted that long - so Fiddler's horror was probably because she was virtually mummified - she was a symbol to all those kids a reason to keep going - hope if you like. The toy bit was very sad.

I liked Grub's parts - He was sent away from the Bonehunters with Sinn so that Gesler and Stormy could keep watch over them. I was a little concerned for Grub at one point but I thought it was cool that he extracted himself from Sinn and ended up with Brys - I'm not sure that the Adjunct would have been happy to have him at her side.

I don't think that Sandalath can use the power of KG - she only returned to Kharkanas because the Shake had opened the road. Then she went bat-shit crazy and became lost inside her memories, traumatised all over again by what appears to have been either rape, and/or a huge betrayal of trust and the consequences of that event appear to have had a huge impact on the wars between the Tiste races. I doubt that she could summon anything that would have been of any use, she denies being Queen and with the return of the other Andii (and presumably someone's going to try and get that sceptre back from Quick Ben) she is finished.

[Silk]

well i think Ruthan is the son of two elder powerfull beings... he mentions something about parents in the book.... he may even be body riding like QB....

The question now should be..... whoose the daddy and wheres the Mommy......

This post has been edited by Silk: 28 February 2011 - 10:26 AM

[Seli]

3) I think you can see Khorabas as a drain/earth. Looking at the magic as a flow like electricity or water you need potential differences to make it work. Without a final drain the level would keep rising all the time until either all differences would be removed -making magic useless- or the universe/world/whatever is destroyed by the gathered energy. Introducing Khorabas meant that magic stayed at a level it could actually be used, at the cost of its existence.

[mayhem]

 Hetan, on 28 February 2011 - 08:27 AM, said:

I don't think that Sandalath can use the power of KG - she only returned to Kharkanas because the Shake had opened the road. Then she went bat-shit crazy and became lost inside her memories, traumatised all over again by what appears to have been either rape, and/or a huge betrayal of trust and the consequences of that event appear to have had a huge impact on the wars between the Tiste races. I doubt that she could summon anything that would have been of any use, she denies being Queen and with the return of the other Andii (and presumably someone's going to try and get that sceptre back from Quick Ben) she is finished.

Remember Sandalath hasn't been alive for ages either - she was slain at some point in history, then made into one of the Edur wraith slaves for a very long time until being freed by Udinaas along with Wither and a bunch of others.
She was then resurrected by the CG to provide 'company' for Withal while he made the sword. I suspect any kind of bat-shit crazy result was almost overdue - she's been getting more and more tightly wound with looking after Nimander, Phaed et al on top of the shock of being alive once again.

[amphibian]

 Clockwork Apt, on 27 February 2011 - 11:12 AM, said:

1 - How can there be such a difference between Dassem and Dassembrae? When Ruin walks to the "Realm of the Fall of Coltaine" the spirits of various Ascendants are hanging out for what ever reason, and Dassembrae comes off as a huge asshole. What is that about I wonder. Is that Dassems soul? Just the aspect of his worshippers? I want to see Dassem fight his evil twin now.

When Treach was killed by undead K'ell Hunters, he became a god. When Kellanved and Dancer fell out of the tower and died upon the rocks below, they became gods. When Cotillon stabbed Kaminsod's heart, the body died and the essence returned to his universe.

We have a pattern: the physical body and the god are distinct from one another.

The cult of Dessembrae worships certain aspects of Dassem's legend. That worship created a shadow of Dassem, that somehow seems able to merge with Dassem at times (killing Anomander) and to exist upon its own (the Ghostly Stomping Grounds). The shadow has as its own essence that which the Dessembrae cultists worship - which is probably a fantastic blend to produce an asshole of a god.

Quote

4 - How the did anyone ever kill Tiam if she consists of the bodymass (and souls?) of hundreds or thousands of dragons? Screw the O-dragon. Tiam was apparently more bad ass than her and Korabas was a fucking beast of a dragon. Did they slip a mickey in her Dragon food and crawl through a nostril and stab her in the brain while she was sleeping? How the hell does she procreate if she is the size of a mountain range? I would like to see a Discovery channel programme on this narrated by Attenborough.

Anomander killed Tiam by breaking her into T'iam. He put into place a plan over centuries to remove whatever caused Tiam to form (perhaps Korabas, perhaps another or simply breaking the hydra into chunks) and triggered it when the time was right (the turning away of Mother Dark). I suspect we will see what happened in the Kharkanas trilogy.

[ansible]

 amphibian, on 01 March 2011 - 03:30 AM, said:

When Kellanved and Dancer fell out of the tower and died upon the rocks below, they became gods.

Just as an aside, I disagree with this completely. I don't think they ascended at all or became gods until they entered Shadowkeep. They became gods of Shadow, so unless they usurped Shadow before returning to face Laseen (which seems highly unlikely) they cannot have become gods upon death. Their actions at the Deadhouse also don't make much sense if they are already gods.

[amphibian]

 ansible, on 01 March 2011 - 04:04 AM, said:

 amphibian, on 01 March 2011 - 03:30 AM, said:

When Kellanved and Dancer fell out of the tower and died upon the rocks below, they became gods.

Just as an aside, I disagree with this completely. I don't think they ascended at all or became gods until they entered Shadowkeep. They became gods of Shadow, so unless they usurped Shadow before returning to face Laseen (which seems highly unlikely) they cannot have become gods upon death. Their actions at the Deadhouse also don't make much sense if they are already gods.

You are right. They didn't ascend until they entered the Deadhouse and somehow got control of Shadow. Damnit, this slightly weakens my theme, but maybe explains why Kellanved/Shadowthrone and Dancer/Cotillon are the most emotive of gods. They still have their bodies.

[blackzoid]

 amphibian, on 01 March 2011 - 03:30 AM, said:

 Clockwork Apt, on 27 February 2011 - 11:12 AM, said:

1 - How can there be such a difference between Dassem and Dassembrae? When Ruin walks to the "Realm of the Fall of Coltaine" the spirits of various Ascendants are hanging out for what ever reason, and Dassembrae comes off as a huge asshole. What is that about I wonder. Is that Dassems soul? Just the aspect of his worshippers? I want to see Dassem fight his evil twin now.

When Treach was killed by undead K'ell Hunters, he became a god. When Kellanved and Dancer fell out of the tower and died upon the rocks below, they became gods. When Cotillon stabbed Kaminsod's heart, the body died and the essence returned to his universe.

We have a pattern: the physical body and the god are distinct from one another.

The cult of Dessembrae worships certain aspects of Dassem's legend. That worship created a shadow of Dassem, that somehow seems able to merge with Dassem at times (killing Anomander) and to exist upon its own (the Ghostly Stomping Grounds). The shadow has as its own essence that which the Dessembrae cultists worship - which is probably a fantastic blend to produce an asshole of a god.

Quote

4 - How the did anyone ever kill Tiam if she consists of the bodymass (and souls?) of hundreds or thousands of dragons? Screw the O-dragon. Tiam was apparently more bad ass than her and Korabas was a fucking beast of a dragon. Did they slip a mickey in her Dragon food and crawl through a nostril and stab her in the brain while she was sleeping? How the hell does she procreate if she is the size of a mountain range? I would like to see a Discovery channel programme on this narrated by Attenborough.

Anomander killed Tiam by breaking her into T'iam. He put into place a plan over centuries to remove whatever caused Tiam to form (perhaps Korabas, perhaps another or simply breaking the hydra into chunks) and triggered it when the time was right (the turning away of Mother Dark). I suspect we will see what happened in the Kharkanas trilogy.

T'iam...Tiam. Thanks for that! Now I understand. A bit more anyway.

[Tattersail_]

 Clockwork Apt, on 27 February 2011 - 11:12 AM, said:

I liked this book. It was a better wrap up of the series than I feared. My main gripe would probably be that you can't build much tension in your book when the stories "Big Bad Boss" are Forkrul Assail that get smacked down every time they step onto the field of battle. Might as well have given them a red shirt as a uniform. I think this story would have worked better if, for what ever reason, the Assail had reassembled their God (Opals Gems Diamonds Shards) and he could have been the Panion Seer of the 10th book. Or maybe made the Crippled God an actual bad guy and had those Jade Giants land and be walking battle titans on the field of battle. But what ever.

Okay, things I'm wondering about.

1 - How can there be such a difference between Dassem and Dassembrae? When Ruin walks to the "Realm of the Fall of Coltaine" the spirits of various Ascendants are hanging out for what ever reason, and Dassembrae comes off as a huge asshole. What is that about I wonder. Is that Dassems soul? Just the aspect of his worshippers? I want to see Dassem fight his evil twin now.

This is the worst parts of his soul/character that is left behind, it isn't them it is the parts of them that are not wanted and so have manifested in this place like a prison. That's how I saw it. If you read again it does mention this somewhere.

2 - All the gods we meet there I seem to remember being ones that have "sided with the CG" in the Panthon War. But what ever happened to that War? Did Erikson forget there was a war? Was there ever a war in the first place? What were all those Gods doing there. Was that spirit realm just the message board of the Pantheon and everyone hangs out there being mad at each other?

Again see above, all of the worst parts of these God's are gathered here, I know it doesn't explain how ST and SZilchas arrived here, but maybe it was ST manipulating where Silchas thought he "needed" to go to gain the weapon he was searching for?

3 - Korabas was made because... what? When you have a big magical scrap you get the Ottataral Island apparently. When a Hundred Dragons and dozens of Ascendants (or was that a hundred ascendants?) spill their blood and pool their power you get the Ottataral Dragon. This according to Quick anyway. Why?

When too much energy/magic is used it burns out and makes Otataral, like if you burn sands to a certain level of heat you get glass, this idea/theme anyway, too much poured into a certain place creates this, it mentioned that there was a lot of elder gods, ascendents etc using magic at the same time in the same place, and it was done on purpose as of K'rul's idea..

Is this supposed to be connected with K'ruls fashioning of the House System? Because from all we have heard I have a hard time believing that a hundred dragons let alone dozens of Ascendants could agree to come together and usurp the power of the Holds. Making Gods work together in bigger numbers than two is like herding cats. I always imagined that this was something K'rul accomplished on the sly making a deal with a few ascendants back when SD was being sealed up.

(On a sidenote the amount of Pathos in the sections with Korabas was overwhelming, that is one tragic creature.)

Yes, it was due to K'rul fashioning the warrens and needing an opposing entity as per the balancing theory

4 - Towards the end of the book Hedge makes a remark about this being "real life" or something and not fantasy and that is why there was not a dozen Kenrylala demons protecting the heart of the CG or something similar. But I really found it weird.

Every one knows that Ascendants and Elder Beings are bastabbing power hungry bastards. So why on earth would you not place guardians, whole armies of undead soldiers, godlings, what have you around the heart of the CG and the cross that Korabas was crucified on? Gates and warrens have Guardians. Why the hell would you not put an alarm system on a Dragon that can destroy reality if some idiot tampers with her wards?

Because it was the FA hording the Crippled God's power, it was theirs and theirs alone in their opinion, they would not trust other races to be guarding their power, their source of power. They were also so arrogant as to think that nothing could oppose them, that no matter what came against them they had the power to destroy it, and the malazans were relying on this arrogance..

I am disappoint Anomander Rake.

4 - How the did anyone ever kill Tiam if she consists of the bodymass (and souls?) of hundreds or thousands of dragons? Screw the O-dragon. Tiam was apparently more bad ass than her and Korabas was a fucking beast of a dragon. Did they slip a mickey in her Dragon food and crawl through a nostril and stab her in the brain while she was sleeping? How the hell does she procreate if she is the size of a mountain range? I would like to see a Discovery channel programme on this narrated by Attenborough.

5 - What happens to the dragons now? There are at least a couple of hundred dragons loose on Wu or the surrounding warrens now. Probably even more left back in SD, Seems like a pretty big threat was just ignored at the end of the book.

I am assuming that Draconus is going to be a busy man...

6 - What was the deal with the sections of the book written in Italics? Normally when things appear like that it is either from a dream, memories or the thoughts of a character. I was waiting through out the book for the reason to this being revealed. I was suspecting that it might be the observations of the Crippled God or K'rul, but nothing like that was revealed. Especially Karsas sections were primarily shown in italics.

Is there a significance to this, like the sections of TTH narrated by Kruppe, or did the editors of the book fuck up some how?

7 - Why did Erikson not utilise Grub at all in this book? He is supposedly the spirit of the fall. A being created by all that pain and glory and what not. A godling in the making. You would think that he would at least had given the kid a scene to shine in.

I was surprised that the kid did not stay with the Bonehunters since he seems to be linked with them. I was actually expecting that he would have been their shaved knuckle in the hole.

8 - In the end, who or what was Held? Fid sees Held and recoils, but still gives it water, later there is a passing mention by someone maybe the Adjunct and then we hear no more.

Was Held perhaps a baby long dead? Or never a baby at all, just an object? or maybe a concept? So confusing.

It was mentioned that when Held opened its eyes something bad (or good) would happen. I was half expecting that Held would become the focal point of the Adjuncts compassion.

9 - What exactly did ST and Cots get out of this? In the start of the book Edgewalker claims that even if you succeed beyond every expectation they will speak of you failure. That Cots cannot win.

Then at the end Cots murderizes the Crippled God... for what?

Afterwards the two Shadow Gods are talking and one of them wonders how many of the Gods now hate them, probably everyone.

So what actually happened there. Were the Shadow Gods working together with K'rul and Mael? Meaning that they were meant to stab-stab-stab the Crippled God at the right point, to what? Send the Crippled Gods soul up to the Jade Statues? Or to prevent him from doing just that?

Why would "they" think this was a failure? Why could Cotillion not win that? The impression I got was that what ever Cots did was his own scheme not connected directed with ST.

I was expecting at the end that the Shadow Gods had betrayed K'rul and Mael to take the power of the Crippled God or something. But that didn't appear to be the case, since the rest of the Malazans seemed okay with what Cots did.

It would have been interesting if Cots and ST had piggy backed on the Jadestatues to invade the Crippled Gods world instead. How would that be for ambition.

I am finished at the moment as I have ran out of time, i'll read through the rest and try and reply at a different time.

[Salt-Man Z]

Someone asked where we last saw the "Spar of Andii". It was in GotM. QB and puppet-Hairlock meet and have a chat, then Quick kicks Hairlock off the cliff and into Chaos.