[Ulrik]

blackzoid, on 08 March 2012 - 12:12 PM, said:

Was that drone in Icarium's mind the drone left nehind in Icariums' skykeep? That was a KCCM drone right? Or are you speaking about another one?
Where does it say that the KCCM actually bred the KCNR to be mindless servants? All I remember from Kallor's explanation in MOI is that the KCNR refused to join their magical power with the Matrons. Don't think Kallor said they were mindless. He said that they were ancient and "more primitive versions" of the KCCM. But he also said that "these new children were not as tractable as the Matrons were conditioned to expect among their brood"
Far from being mindless servants, it implies to me that the KCNR were more individualistic than the reguler KCCM. I don't get where this idea that the KCNR were a hive mind has appeared from. I don't think that was ever said in the books. They may have simply trained themselves to work in phalanxes of soldiers. That doesn't necessarily mean they were all of one mind.


Edit: Ah. I see what you mean. From DoD "then down to the Nah'ruk legions. Monstrous in their implacability - steal one away and it's damned near mindless. Gather them in their thousands, and their will becomes one"
Bit of a shame really. I must have (ironically) blanked this passage from my mind.

And I forgot it was KCCM drone...well, human memory is...weak Im glad you found it, I was truly lazy to search the book...and I admit it...sorry Still, this dispute is interesting, because we still dont know, if power comes from collective or hive mind...or rather one big bad Nahruk general...

[wullagaru]

blackzoid, on 08 March 2012 - 11:38 AM, said:

Ok, Wort as I said I didn't mean to misintepret what you originally said. Apologies.

I think we will have to agree to disagree on the KCNR issue though as I think the surprise wasn't really a surprise to me by the time the Bonehunters run into them. I'd guessed it was them killing the Barghast and from what I remember the KCCM Destriant is told by her main KCCM guard that KCNR were hunting them earlier in the book. Its about the time that the Undead Jaghut save them as I recall. I also don't think the KCNR troops are any more automaton-like than the KCCM Kell Hunters and we got Sag-Ruk's (whatever hes called) pov. I know Stormy or Geslar says that they have been "bred down" but I personally don't think that means that they are automatons in the sense of the Terminator. Though perhaps they are closer to the Ve'Gath soldiers than the Kell Hunters in personality. Just stand in a row and charge. (We did have Samars autoposy of one in TBH which did imply something artificial in them. Were they machine-like than? Maybe)

Ulrik. Where exactly does it say that the KCNR are a hive mind? This has been stated before on this baord but no-one has actually quoted the scene that says they are Borg like. Not bashing you, but where in the books is this said for certain?

I guess the FA povs do successfully convey the horror of what was done to the Kolansii and I did feel sympathy for them but it just seemed like a strange omission to me on SE's part to have an entire series of multi-pov charaters from all spectrums of society but not to include any adult pov from a country that is than stated to be liberated in the final book. The Snake don't quite cover that role but they are the closest. I agree that the addition of a pov rather than cutting out any other pov would have been the best way to satisfy both of us.

we get a KCCM POV for teh K'ell hunters but they are kind of teh elite soldiers, we never get teh POV of teh Ve'gath(SP?) which are teh shock troops of tehKCCM which it seemed liek what teh bonerhunters were up against vs the KCNR.

As for the snake represntig the kolansi I think that they show more than anything just what the FA did to the kolansi people. If you remember early on in teh snake we get on childs memories of fleeing frrom teh slaughter of his family and such

[D'rek]

I like how people get so hung up on there not being any Kolansii or KCNR PoVs. Let's take a look:

GotM - Actually, this one is pretty balanced because it chooses to grow both the Daru and Malazan cultures before WJ's squad even gets to Darujhistan. No big armies to have or not have PoVs in, really, except the battle at Pale and oh what's that? No PoVs from Pale whatsoever, before or after the conquest? Interesting...
DG - no PoVs from anyone in Korbolo's army
MoI - no PoVs from any members of the Pannion Domin, especially not from any undead KCCM. Certainly no Tenescowri PoVs (quite similar to the Kolansii)
HoC - Heboric, L'oric and Karsa had PoVs, but were all characters who had been outside Raraku and the Dryjhna army when their storeis began and were not gung-ho members of the Dryjhna force. The only PoV wholesomely on the Dryjhna side was Corabb, and he part of Leoman's conflicted faction (and his PoVs only start once he's outside Raraku). No PoVs from the big bads or mystical figures like Korbolo or any of his forces, Bidithal, the Deragoth, Raraku's ghosts, etc Oh wait, there was one PoV from Febryl before he got his head cut-off...
MT - Both main sides of the conflict were grown in this one, so it's not really comparable unless you wanted a whole book of Kolanse and its culture and wanted to be rooting both for and agaisnt the Bonehunters.
tBH - The only new non-Malazan-aligned PoV was Dejim Nebrahl. No PoVs from any of the magically-enraged mob in Malaz City (which arguably would be the most similar situation to the Kolansii troops).
RG - Like MT, Lether and Malazan are both already established casts and stories so if course it would have both those sides. Included the Redmask PoV (though more of it is Toc) and storyline and everyone complained about it.
TtH - I don't recall any PoVs from Gradithan or his folks, I think all our info there came from Salind PoVs. There was a Clip-while-posessed PoV, but that was a writer device to sucker us into thinking he wasn't posessed. No PoVs from any of the priests or rabid hordes of the Dying God (again, quite similar to the Kolansii).


So after having quite a trend of NOT having PoVs from the other side of big military conflicts (where the other side hasn't already been fully fleshed out and developed over the course of a book like Darujhistan and Lether), people are now complaining that books 9 and 10 follow the same trend as books 1-8.

[wullagaru]

D, on 15 March 2012 - 03:37 PM, said:

I like how people get so hung up on there not being any Kolansii or KCNR PoVs. Let's take a look:

HoC - Heboric, L'oric and Karsa had PoVs, but were all characters who had been outside Raraku and the Dryjhna army when their storeis began and were not gung-ho members of the Dryjhna force. The only PoV wholesomely on the Dryjhna side was Corabb, and he part of Leoman's conflicted faction (and his PoVs only start once he's outside Raraku). No PoVs from the big bads or mystical figures like Korbolo or any of his forces, Bidithal, the Deragoth, Raraku's ghosts, etc Oh wait, there was one PoV from Febryl before he got his head cut-off...
tBH - The only new non-Malazan-aligned PoV was Dejim Nebrahl. No PoVs from any of the magically-enraged mob in Malaz City (which arguably would be the most similar situation to the Kolansii troops).
TtH - I don't recall any PoVs from Gradithan or his folks, I think all our info there came from Salind PoVs. There was a Clip-while-posessed PoV, but that was a writer device to sucker us into thinking he wasn't posessed. No PoVs from any of the priests or rabid hordes of the Dying God (again, quite similar to the Kolansii).


So after having quite a trend of NOT having PoVs from the other side of big military conflicts (where the other side hasn't already been fully fleshed out and developed over the course of a book like Darujhistan and Lether), people are now complaining that books 9 and 10 follow the same trend as books 1-8.

kinda off here

HoC actually we do see stuff from Bidithal (at least im pretty damn sure we do)

tBH - you get POV's from the claw hands, and corab before he went to teh bonehunters

TtH - while yo udont see Gradithan you do see his right hand man (for a time) in Monkrat and fleeting POvs of teh ones in black coral that seerdomin hunted down.

[D'rek]

wullagaru, on 15 March 2012 - 05:59 PM, said:

D, on 15 March 2012 - 03:37 PM, said:

I like how people get so hung up on there not being any Kolansii or KCNR PoVs. Let's take a look:

HoC - Heboric, L'oric and Karsa had PoVs, but were all characters who had been outside Raraku and the Dryjhna army when their storeis began and were not gung-ho members of the Dryjhna force. The only PoV wholesomely on the Dryjhna side was Corabb, and he part of Leoman's conflicted faction (and his PoVs only start once he's outside Raraku). No PoVs from the big bads or mystical figures like Korbolo or any of his forces, Bidithal, the Deragoth, Raraku's ghosts, etc Oh wait, there was one PoV from Febryl before he got his head cut-off...
tBH - The only new non-Malazan-aligned PoV was Dejim Nebrahl. No PoVs from any of the magically-enraged mob in Malaz City (which arguably would be the most similar situation to the Kolansii troops).
TtH - I don't recall any PoVs from Gradithan or his folks, I think all our info there came from Salind PoVs. There was a Clip-while-posessed PoV, but that was a writer device to sucker us into thinking he wasn't posessed. No PoVs from any of the priests or rabid hordes of the Dying God (again, quite similar to the Kolansii).


So after having quite a trend of NOT having PoVs from the other side of big military conflicts (where the other side hasn't already been fully fleshed out and developed over the course of a book like Darujhistan and Lether), people are now complaining that books 9 and 10 follow the same trend as books 1-8.

kinda off here

HoC actually we do see stuff from Bidithal (at least im pretty damn sure we do)

tBH - you get POV's from the claw hands, and corab before he went to teh bonehunters

TtH - while yo udont see Gradithan you do see his right hand man (for a time) in Monkrat and fleeting POvs of teh ones in black coral that seerdomin hunted down.

I could be wrong on Bidithal. Claw Hands and Corabb and random underground thugs, sure, but they're not unfathomable alien races or mind-altered humans, they're just regular humans. It's not different, IMO, from having the PoVs of the Perish who join the FA, or the High Watered serving the pure-blood FA. For that matter, we get PoVs from Calm and Reverence themselves. That's way more bad-side PoVs than we ever got in MoI, and the Tenescowri weren't even mind-altered, just starved but we never got a PoV from them, but no one complains about it.

[Excellence]

Not true... There were plenty of povs from the Whirlwind. Sha'ik. Korbolo. Febryl at the end. L'oric.

[Illuyankas]

Febryl a couple of times, Korbolo, Bidathal, that mage that taught Sinn had a short one, etc.

[Fredwin]

bluedust, on 02 March 2012 - 03:16 AM, said:

worrywort, on 02 March 2012 - 03:04 AM, said:

With all that time SE was spending with the Bonehunters and some others, he was likely just saying goodbye to many of them. So were readers, whether they know it or not at the time. And they're gone now.

But it was boring as shit for 400 pages. Make a side series and it's cool.

Honestly if DoD wasn't billed as half of the end I probably wouldn't have cared so much. But I ran through DoD, got to tCG and found half of it didn't have anything happen. I loved reading everyone's thoughts, but man.

Really, it's a matter of duplicate scenes. Most of the Malazan books, as you know, follow the same formula.

The way SE chooses to progress his story is often weird. Sometimes you get a PoV that's almost exactly the same as the previous PoV except with 1 small plot development at the end of it. There were times I felt like I could almost read the book backwards since the key plot developments almost always seem to happen right at the very end of the PoVs.

I believe DoD abused this the most with the children/snake storyline. There were at least 4 PoVs that were almost IDENTICAL with little to no plot development except at the last paragraph of each. Granted, the book shouldn't be just exposition, but there are times the balance is totally messed up.

I feel this is not a writing issue and is mostly an editing problem and that sometimes the books aren't properly edited. I believe that's the issue you had with TCG. I think a really good editor could combine some of those bonehunter PoVs and make them flow a lot better. That would have given SE more room to touch up on some other areas he may have missed.