[Knowing]

I'm fairly curious as to how other people have stumbled upon The Book of the Fallen, and I'm not just talking about how you heard about it from a friend or a suggestion from amazon.com. Rather, you're entire history of reading leading up to your discovery of Erikson's Gardens of the Moon. I figure it would be best to start with what you seriously began reading with as a kid, and the different authors that lead you into the world of the Malazan Empire. For an example here's my list in a rough chronological order (asterisk = vital change in how I perceive storytelling). Granted I read many of these authors at the same time as they wrote new books, but at least this is a list of who I discovered first and foremost.

Animorphs - K.A. Applegate (age 9)
X-Files - Numerous authors
Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
The Golden Compass series - Phillip Pullman
**The Silmarillion - Tolkien
Mithgar series - Dennis L. McKiernan
Shannarah Series - Terry Brooks
Sword of Truth - Terry Goodkind
The Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
A Song of Ice and Fire - George R.R. Martin
*****The Things They Carried - Tim O'brien
The Farseer Trilogy (and books after) - Robin Hobb
**The Inhumans Trilogy - John Marco
The Tyrants and Kings Trilogy - John Marco
The First Law series - Joe Abercrombie
Night Angel Trilogy - Brent Weeks
The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss
**The Lies of Loke Lamora, Red Seas Under Red Skies - Scott Lynch
The Malazan Book of the Fallen - duh (age 21)

Personally, when I look at my small library I'm quite proud (despite my young age), and there are certainly many books that I left out including Moby Dick, Dracula, The Illiad and a dozen other influences. Yet in the end this was a list that ultimately lead to my discovery of my absolute favorite author: Erikson. What I found most ironic, and why I asterisked it so many times, was that I read The Things They Carried during my senior year of high school. Sadly we were required to read a few chapters of the book, but instead I read the entire book twice over. It wasn't until a few months ago that I discovered Erikson too was reading his work as it came out. Sort of like one of the million forshadows Erikson presents in his works.

edit, somehow forgot The Name of the WInd

This post has been edited by Knowing: 16 July 2011 - 07:51 AM

[HoosierDaddy]

It's been a long, long time since I was introduced. But, my introduction was fairly simple.

Hobbit when I was like 11>
Star Wars EU (like all of them up until the point I ventured into fantasy, which is around 1998) >
Wheel of Time >
Stephen King's It, The Stand, >
Gardens of the Moon > recommended after Wheel of Time and having hesitated because Whiskeyjack was such a stupid name

I didn't start reading books for fun until I was 17 though, so I started late and jumped straight from Star Wars into hardcore epic fantasy. Haven't really left yet besides random asides of classics, sci-fi, and horror.

[polishgenius]

Something like:

CS Lewis
Tolkien
Eddings
Tolkien again with more understanding
Feist
Pratchett
Gemmell
Erikson

There were other authors along the way, obviously, but people such as Terry Brooks didn't really register in terms of making me seek out more, and that's not counting non-fantasies I read, but that was my route into being a real fantasy geek.

I suppose I should give an honourable mention to Erik Lustbader and his Ring of Five Dragons (Not Appearing in This Book) which was the last fantasy I read before Gardens of the Moon and which was so boring that it led me dashing to the library and picking up whatever I found to scrub it from my brain; cue Malazan. Curiously, thinking of it now, what I do remember of it was that the actual plot and, most specifically, the setting was quite unusual by my fantasy standards of the time, and though the book itself was dull, that might have been an influence on my later route into the New Weird and related creative areas of fantasy...

This post has been edited by polishgenius: 16 July 2011 - 10:02 AM

[King Bear]

I was well into fantasy by the time I picked up Malazan... and was completely blown away by it. Aside from being epic and awesome, it was a revelation and a breath of fresh air after the fantasy I'd been reading, which was overwhelmingly of the "traditional" vein. I haven't started another Tolkienesque series since (excluding Finovar as part of a GGK excursion), so it marked a watershed in my fantasy reading, one that was much needed.

Tolkien - The Hobbit, LotRs
Feist - Riftwar saga
Bradley - Avalon
Brooks - Shannara series
Donaldson - Thomas Covenant, Mordent's Need; Gap Series a few years later
Williams - MS&T, Tailchaser's Song; Otherland a few years later.
Eddings - Elenium/Tamuli (still need to read the Belgariad)
Moddesitt - Recluse saga
Jordan - Wheel of Time
Weis and Hickman - Deathgate saga
Douglass - Axis Trilogy (ick)
Goodkind - SOT (eeeeeeeeeeeeeeek)
Rawn - Dragon Prince and sequels
Gemmell - Drenai series
MALAZAN
Then... GGK, Wolfe, Zelazny, Cook etc...

[Loki]

Here's the abridged version starting at age 9 and ending with GotM (approx age 15) -

Stephen King - 'salem's Lot, It,The Stand, The Dark Tower series
Emily Rodda - Rowan of Rin series
Douglas Adams - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 'Trilogy' (It counts )
Michael Pryor - The Doorways Trilogy
J.K Rowling - Harry Potter
L.E. Modesitt Jr - Recluse series
Robert Jordan - Wheel of Time series (I managed to get halfway through Crossroads of Twilight before I just did not care anymore)
Stan Nicholls - Quicksilver Trilogy
Steven Erikson - Tale of the Malazan Book of the Fallen

There were a bunch of other stand alone titles and first novels of series I didn't bother reading past but that's the bulk of it.

Fantasy has always been a favourite genre of mine but I don't like very many fantasy authors so whilst the premise of a story is interesting to me the actual writing of said story usually doesn't make me want to read it *cough* Tolkien *cough*

[LinearPhilosopher]

harry potter series (been reading fantasy since book 2 came out)
LOTR
Amos Daragon
La quete d'ewilan
les chevaliers d'emeraude
leonis
Inheritance cycle
Stackpole (dark glory war saga)
R.A Salvatore(drizzt saga, sellswords trilogy)
Erikson.

theres countless other fantasy book in between, though its a question of remebering them. Im a big library person so i dont own alot of the books ive read.

This post has been edited by BalrogLord: 16 July 2011 - 12:47 PM

[Gust Hubb]

This is a great OP Knowing!!!

So, you have to start with my family to follow my reading roots. My Dad was of the sans-fantasy generation when LOTR was a big, big leap forward. He read that series (as far as I can tell) at least 10 times over since first discovering it. As a result, my father began seeking out other hits and that is the time when I started on the train. Also, my father loved to read to us, so much of my early fantasy exposure is due to his narration.

If I remember correctly, we started on Terry Brooks' "Magic Kingdom For Sale" series with High Lord Ben Holiday, Abernathy, Questor Thews, Willow, Nightshade, Strabo, and of course, Filip and Sot. My Dad did voices, so we (my sis and I) were easily able to transport ourselves into that world.

From then onward two things happened. I branched out into Redwall by Brain Jacques and even attempted to keep up to date on my Dad's reading list which at the time was Anne McCaffrey's Pern series.

The next big thing was Patricia C Wrede which my Dad and sis began reading together some years later. Dancing with dragon, etc. revolutionized fantasy for us three and then everything was a spiral into:

more Patricia C Wrede
Dianna Wynne Jones
Terry Pratchett
Neil Gaiman

These Canonical four of my family's fantasy origins established our branching points that led to other authors including Tad Williams, Sara Douglass, and so on so forth (lots of authors).

Eventually, thanks to Amazon matching, I stumbled upon SE, gave him a shot and the rest is well, more history.

This post has been edited by Gust Hubb: 16 July 2011 - 01:28 PM

[Salt-Man Z]

The following timeline is very rough, and likely not in the proper order, as some authors/series I read one book from early before coming back to the rest of their work later on. But anyway:

Hardy Boys
Star Trek novels
Tolkien
Michael Crichton
Richard Adams
Star Wars novels
John Grisham
Asimov's Robot books
Orson Scott Card
Ken Follett

At this point, I married my wife, who was big into fantasy, while I was a relative newb. She started me on the Xanth series. (I also read some Feist and McCaffrey, but was not a fan.)

Piers Anthony
Stephen R. Donaldson
Steven Erikson

With a new-found taste for fantasty, I visited Half Price Books and came across 5/6s of Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant on the clearance rack for 50 cents each and figured that was a pretty safe investment. Read all of Donaldson's stuff shortly thereafter, and then his online "gradual interview" led me to Malazan. I'm sure I'm missing something somewhere, but that's the gist of it.

[Grace]

My intro to Malazan was rather abrupt... A friend on another forum mentioned it and I thought it sounded interesting, so I jumped in. But here's a brief, general idea of my reading past anyway, from around age 8/9 and ending at 13:

Tamora Pierce
Patricia Wrede
Philip Pullman
Anne McCaffrey
Kate Constable
JRR Tolkien
Alison Croggon
Steven Erikson

So actually, I only started reading "adult" fantasy after Erikson. Made GotM an interesting experience, but I guess it turned out well.

[WhiskeyJackDaniels]

I guess something like...

Elementary School:
Brian Jacques - Redwall
T.H. White - The Once and Future King (gotta say my mom lovvvved when the Library made her buy it because the cover was bent...thought that would really encourage 4th graders to read more)
Richard Adams - Watership Down
Tolkien - Hobbit/LotR/Silmarillion
Couple other kids type books that I can't remember right now

Jr. High/HS:
Card - Ender's Game/Shadow
Jordan - WoT
Farland - Runelords
(kinda stopped reading fantasy in hs)

College and beyond:
GRRM - asoiaf (the series that got me back into fantasy)
Glen Cook - Black Company
Erikson/ICE - Malazworld
Abercrombie - First Law
Bakker - Prince of Nothing
Lynch - Gentlemen Bastards
Sanderson - Pretty much everything
Guy Gavriel Kay - Tigana, Lions of Al-Rassan (best), Last Light of the Sun
Rothfuss - Name of the Wind/Wise Man's Fear

Since almost all of these are series there is some pretty heavy overlap (obviously WoT and ASoIaF were like the first two and I'm still truckin' through them)

[Slow Ben]

I NEVER used to read. I mean nothing. Then in college a friend gave me his first 4 copies of Harry Potter to read since i was always making fun of him for reading it.

I devoured them in a matter of days, reading GoF twice in a row without a break.


Then i googled "Best Fantasy Books" and, surprise surprise, ended up at bestfantasybooks.com. Number 1 was Martin so i read those, and by this point i was officially hooked on fantasy.

#2 was Malazan, but it took my library so long to get GoTM so i read Wheel of Time next. Then picked up Gardens of the Moon and, of course, it blew my friggin mind.

I'm not sure what i did with my life before i started reading in my spare time.

[Mischiefs' Folly]

Way too many to list. I remember going to my local book shop, scouring the shelves in the fantasy section. I had noticed Steve Erikson a number of times, but always hesitated because of the godawful US cover of Gardens. Once I did finally pick it up, I remember missing my stop because I was so into the book.

[Coco with marshmallows]

hooo-boy. this could get long.

First intro to fantasy was a bunch of short stories my dad used to write and send home to be read to me and my older brother when we were kids (my dad was Navy, in case you're wondering)

after that, the Scandinavian / Roman / Greek myths,

after that started on basic kids fantasy like "Blade of the poisoner" (and thanks to StephenOfCloverfield for figuring out that was the book I was trying to remember)

At the same time, most of the Asterix and Obelix books,

then CS Lewis when I was about 8, after the BBC tv series started, which lead to Tolkein by about 10. dipped into Redwall, found it a bit meh, and from then on largely ignored it.

Rosemary Sutcliffe's historical fiction was next, along with the Pern books by Mcaffrey

When I was 12, got a couple books by a guy called Christopher Rowley when I was on holiday - Bazil Broketail and Sword for a Dragon - pretty solid military fantasy (though the later books in the series take a drastic slide into the "orphan discovers magic power" route, which was just......sad really. The first couple of books are pretty damn inventive, and i retain a certain fondness for them even now)

Read Tower and the Hive series by Mcaffrey next, started with Pratchett (still reading him to this day)

Also started reading Feist (stuck with him till the Serpentwar saga)

from Feist went to Eddings - Belgariad, Malloreon, Eleneium and Tamuli (which I bought as it came out)

after Eddings, next big one for me was GRRM when I was 16 - I actually liked the old style 'framed' covers on Game of Thrones - the ones that made it look vaguely like an illustrated manuscript.

after reading AGOT, picked up a freebie for WoT - first couple hundred pages of book one that was being given away free as a lure, basically, because book 6/7 had just been released.

Read some Brooks / Dragonlance series

anyhoo, at about 17 got distracted by drink, drugs and women, the way most guys do, then went to uni at 18 - too broke to afford books for a year or so.

Gradually got part time job, leading to finances getting under control, so started reading again - bit of Goodkind (I dabbled. I'm ashamed to say I got to book 4 or 5. Can't remember which, and I refuse to go into the attic to look at the books to find out)

Around about this time I saw a poster in a train station for a book called Deadhouse Gates. Went looking for it, found out it was the second book in a sequence, so picked up GotM, and there we are.

[volafox]

Cut my teeth on Bulfinch's Mythologies and Poe
Devoured all of Steven King
A bit of Peter Straub
Redwall series helped me calm down during a turbulent time in my life
Steven Brust's Taltos series then his Romances ( no, not gushy, more like 3 musketeers meets Taltos)
HP Lovecraft,
W. Smith's Egyptian histoical novels
Now, Malazan...and I've read the series twice, and going through it again. Every time I do, I get something else from it!
I'm sort of disappointed, and at a loss as to what to pick up next. Any suggestions?

[Stalker]

Hmm, well initially when I was about 6-7 my Dad would read to me. He read LotR, the Hardy Boys (like 1-70 haha), and a few other things to me (thanks Dad).

In middle school it was the likes of:

Eddings
Orson Scott Card
Forgotten Realms (Salvatore)
DragonLance (Weis and Hickman)
Robert Jordan
Robin Hobb
Feist
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Frank Herbert

High School brought my largely sci-fi phase with multiple older rereads:

John Ringo
Warhammer 40k stuff
Alastair Reynolds
Ian Banks
Dan Simmons
Richard Morgan


Then I found Erikson right after the US MoI release, at which point I read all 3 books and ordered the next immediately from the UK. I've been hooked since.

The post-joining the forum/college days brought some great authors like:

Jim Butcher
Joe Abercrombie
R.S. Bakker
Glen Cook
Pat Rothfuss
Brandon Sanderson
Brent Weeks

Of course, there are many others that I have failed to remember, but those are a large influence.

This post has been edited by Stalker: 17 July 2011 - 12:51 AM

[McLovin]

As I'm nearing the close of my fourth decade, not even gonna try to list.

I stumbled upon MBOTF via sfsite.com, whose reviews of DG and MOI convinced me to order them from the UK.

[TaxManATX]

Goosebumps was the only thing I really recall reading for fun in elementary school.

I don't think I read anything during middle school and likely the first couple years of high school. I was too busy being a idiot teenager with the mindset that reading sucks.

I can't remember how old I was, but my first experience with fantasy didn't go well. I bought the first Lord of the Rings book a few months before the movie was due to come out (so around sophomore year of HS) . I got about 5 chapters in and quit. I didn't like it at all.

I ended up reading the book my sister bought instead - Harry Potter - and I loved it. Read what was out at that time and then not much else.

Flashforward a few more years to freshman year of college. I read Ken Follet's Pillars of the Earth and it started me on a reading kick which lead to me reading several other Follet novels. However, I didn't like these nearly as much so I kinda gave up on reading again.

My sophomore year of college I finally gave in to the demands of a friend with whom I played Final Fantasy XI, and picked up Gardens of the Moon. I've been hooked on the series ever since then.

At the moment, I have about 10 books waiting to be read (ASoIF, Bakker, Neuromancer, Ender's Game, House of Leaves, Dark Tower) but they will have to wait until I pass this damn CPA exam.

[Bonesaw85]

As taxman said, Goosebumps was really the only thing I read growing up (except maybe a few Hardy Boys books) and that was basically it up until at most 2 years ago. I was in a store in an airport coming home Vegas and I saw a pretty cool looking cover (GoTM). Picked it up, read the description and decided it would be a good time killer for the flight home.

I didn't understand shit while reading it and had a shitty vocabulary, but it was still cool as hell to me. Since then I've read books 1-7, NoK, and am currently half way through RotCG. Plus I've read the first 2 books of ASoIaF, first 2 books of the Gentlemen Bastard Sequence, House of Suns, Terminal World and have many more books waiting on my bookshelf.

I just wish I could sit and read for hours on end, but I'm just not that kind of person.....



P.S. When I first told my story of my intro to MBotF, there was no rep feature and somebody said they would give me loads of rep if they could. Now's a good time as I'm sick of looking at this single pather rep.



P.P.S. I'm drunk, sorry if I'm ranting!

[Use Of Weapons]

I really don't think the question makes much sense. While Erikson has become perhaps my favourite author, that's not the same as saying that all my reading up to this point has in any way been leading to or preparing for reading him, in the way descent by inheritance provides a direct chain of causal links.

[McLovin]

UseOfWeapons, on 18 July 2011 - 09:36 AM, said:

I really don't think the question makes much sense.

Ah, you wanted "sense." The Star Trek forum is two clicks over.