Help
1. What was Skinner looking for?
2. Who was Ardata's daughter and why was Shimmer crying when she found who she was?
3. So, the Thamaturgs tried to bring down the Visitor to ice Kallor. Saeng prevented it? Osserc deflected it? Or did he channel power into Saeng that she could do it? And if they deflected it, what hit Kallor? Was it a fragment, a shard? The backlash of magic was to do with the events in Kolanse, but how were the other things affected by the TCG?
I just finished, and so this was is the only Malazan book I had left to read, apart from the novellas.
First of all a brief overview of ICE's books. I am neutral to NoK, liked bits of RotCG (Crimson Guard and the Old Guard were fairly unimpressive, but as always it was the various soldiers and officers of Malazan armies that stole the show for me), liked most of Stonewielder, liked very little of OST (Brood, Torvald, Spindle, Aragan and scenes with Pearl were awesome, the rest not so much) and now, Blood and Bone.
So the main storylines were:
1. Golan, Thorn and the army of righteous whatever, Pon-Lor
I found myself not caring a fig about Golan and Pon-Lor at the start of the book, and only midway did I begin to be interested with Pon-Lor. While I enjoyed the banter between Golan, Thorn, Pre and Waris, the general sarcastic undertones of it all mirroring some of SE's dialogue, but on the whole the story did not need to happen.
2. Saeng and Hanu, initially it was a lot of bla, but once we happened upon Old Man Moon, after that it became interesting and I actually cared.
3. Awoved (Shimmer) and Disawoved (Mara)
The Crimson Guard characters, as a whole, are really interesting, if still slightly confusing. I liked the two POV characters, and the T'lan ritual similarities are interesting. The humanity of the characters made me more invested in them, and thus more interested in what happens in Assail. Frankly a much better protrayal of the Crimson Guard than Return of the Crimson Guard.
However, their influence on the plot of this book is dubious. For the most part, they came, and then they went. I am trying to figure out if they had to be in Jacuruku at all, or if T'riss' journey there would be entirely unchanged with them not being in the books altogether. Possibly Rutana and Nagal not being there may have made the outcome of the "duel" between T'riss and Ardata different.
4. "Warleader" (come on), Jatal etc.
The Adwami armies started as the second most promising plotline, with Kallor, a reasonable leader in Jatal, the inter-tribal politics and romance, the perfectly sensible idea of uniting the tribes against a common enemy. Kallor has his hidden motives, this looks cool, here's a priest of Agon, here's a half-Trell who's friendly with this slightly more pragamatic version of the Luke Skywalker type character.... And then it descended into a horrendous doomed romance cliche plot, Jatal loosing his credibility as a POV character by being someone who's POV I wasn't interested in knowing, and quite similar uninteresting battle scenes. The last bit wasn't much of a criticism, but while I hoped that at least the fight scenes could salvage the plotline, they didn't.
5. Osserc and Gothos were a delight to read, and some of the most enjoyable segments came from there, second only to Murk and Sour.
6. T'riss and Ina - not much to say, as ultimately there was little of them, but it was quite interesting
7. Murk, Sour and the Malazans
As always, it seems that writing about the fate of the normal Malazan soldiers and officers is where both ICE and SE excel at. And Murk and Sour and Yusen are no exception.
Overall, I quite enjoyed Blood and Bone, even though sometimes I glazed over the pages a bit, and along with Stonewielder the two fit really well in the overall framework. I think a common comment on the forum that ICE is good when he gets to do some of his own worldbuilding, and yeah, I guess that's true.
This post has been edited by Ruthan Good: 24 March 2013 - 01:37 AM
