[Onrack the breakable]

"My hearts are broken" - attributed to Icarium. Just kidding, I made that up but it sorta gets to the point.

Its childish to assume that for these supposedly super beings that having 2 hearts, 4 lungs, and 2 sets of lenses per eyeball is superior design to the human norm. Given the same volume 1 heart would tend to be stronger than 2, 2 lungs more powerful and efficient than 4, and 1 eye lense see more clearly than 2. Although the eye thing 2 lenses or more might be better if they have some bioengineered method of swapping and zooming. But then it would require having huge eyes.

[Keruli]

I agree the humor can go over board sometimes. Like Telorast and friend, that was so silly it wasn't funny IMO. And Apsalar is too serious a character to be mixed up in humor. Greyfrog and is hilarious and he doesn't disrupt the mood. Kruppe is great. The High Priest of Shadow and his wife has been a bit too much of late I think. I'm still not sure I think Tehol and Bugg was too much.

[Asheroth]

Humour is all well and good but in MBotF it all seems to be the same kind of humour - the unending monologue (Kruppe, Iskaral) or duologue (Telorast and Curdle) that is mostly nonsensical. I got bored of it in TB after a while - I much prefer the sardonic humour of the armies, or Tehol and Bugg in MH.

Funniest thing in BH - Sgt. Hellian trashing that Claw and going 'You! Finally! You're under arrest!'

Hooray for the triumphant return...

[ASAGO]

Caldazar;23910 said:

Now we all love the books or we wouldn't be here but what aspects or parts of the books or SE's writing don't you like?

The only think that I don't enjoy about the books is that sometimes SE when describing rock formations, geology etc he goes into a tad to much detail. I love detail but I really have no interest in rocks and using geology jargon just makes things worse. It just makes those sections drag for me.

Remember, critisim is healthy.

YOu have to rember that SE is a geoligist and an anthropoligist so it is in his interest to describe landscape and formations after all they are like time lines to the lands that we are in they are the most accurate historians

[polishgenius]

ASAGO;139901 said:

YOu have to rember that SE is a geoligist and an anthropoligist so it is in his interest to describe landscape and formations after all they are like time lines to the lands that we are in they are the most accurate historians

But the fact that it interests him doesn't mean we don't have to see it as a weakness.

I've never actually noticed a tendency in Erikson to overelaborate that, though.

[Grimjust Bearegular]

Svaran;20621 said:

My only critique about the Malazan is that death doesn't seem to be permanent, I just wonder who has really died from the days of the Emperor, Crust and his brother, Keeper are in hiding but they are supposedly dead, Hawl wife of Admiral Nok has been until recently alive unbeknowst to Nok himself? Dancer/ Emperor ascended unbeknowst to the Empress who thought she had them assasinated. Some how Dassem whom everyone suspects of being Traveller survived his assassination, Stormy and Gesler are part of the old guard the former once an adjunct? Is Toc the elder really dead? Toc the younger died and ended up in someone else's body, The Bridegburners have now all ascended including the likes of Hedge whom we see


SPOILER


SPOILER



SPOILER



making an appearance in HOC after getting too close to an explosive in the previous book. Makes me wonder if Iktovian will ascend as surely he deserves to.

at least it isn't as bad as in Jordan's books where no one dies at all...

I'm not sure what to think of Se's softer side..a part of me is happy that he spares the lives of my favourite characters, and a part of me is a bit..disappointed. Killing off the good guys was kind of Se's trademark....

[Folken]

All the death's that you have described are of the Old Guard. None of those deaths were ever actually deaths and were never stated straight forward as "oh yes they're dead". We always got the line "no bodies were every found" or "who also drowned"...so well their death's were always in question from the start of the novel.

As for death in the series the only real resurrection has been of Ganoes Paran. The other characters who have come back from the dead, well they never really died in the first place. Tattersail did not die, there was soul transfer, same goes for Toc, whose body was broken and so his soul was transfered

[Dolorous Menhir]

Hedge certainly died, and it didn't stop him continuing to play an important role.

[Asheroth]

What about Duiker? It would be silly to insist that he never really died.

[Dark Mac]

Sol Invictus;148477 said:

Those who've died for real and come back to life go through a lot of pain in the process. That's messy, and I'd hardly call what SE puts them through 'soft' in any way, given that they suffer so much and are left with permanent scars (both mental and physical) of their apparent resurrections.

ST and Cotillion didn't seem to mind dying much. Ganoes's death hurt, but the death itself didn't have much for lingering aftereffects. The only ones who really seem to suffer after they come back are Tattersail and Duiker, and they were reincarnated into corpses.

[Sol Invictus]

Toc the Younger/Anaster's whole experience was messed up, too. Toc was tortured and kept alive for months, while Anaster was basically empty. Not a very nice existence.

I think that Ganoes suffered from a lot of lingering aftereffects that lasted well until the end of GoTM, because if you recall, he sunk into a deep depression and ennui. His journey into the sword Dragnipur to free the trapped Hounds of Darkness had a positive effect on his soul.

[Dark Mac]

Hm, I suppose you might be right about Ganoes, though a lot of that is due to him becoming the MotD. Toc's suffering was also before he died though. He seemed okay after he entered Anaster's body.

[polishgenius]

I'm so thankful the Mhybe only had a small part (though it seemed much longer). She nearly ruined Memories of Ice on my first read.

[drinksinbars]

the one problem i have with the whole series is the supposed romance between tattersail and paran, it didnt last very long in the first book, but there was implied this great love. Of course in the timeline she was sleeping with the other mage a few weeks before, she slept with paran once and then supposedly they were in love. In MOI paran is meant to mean so much to her to bridge the camps, but i just dont believe it. i wonder if that is why in the books erikson has sort of removed romance as a central theme, in the later books you have cutter chaisng apsalar but nothing is central to the story.

not that i mind, just rereading at the moment

[Bottle]

Not quite sure if I love it or hate it, but the way WhiskeyJack goes from a grumpy old sergeant in GoTM to a super sexy stud muffin in MoI with every female character in sight swooning over him.

I don't like the use of Dragons, as to employ something so generically fantasy as them would be just as lame as putting vampires in the books (okay maybe not quite so lame!) Even if they had just been giant winged reptiles called Elient I would have been much happier.

Then a few inconsistencies bug me, I can't give too many examples but I recall a few times wondering how two characters can suddenly speak each others language, the Bonehunters and the rescued children is all that springs to mind and that’s not a great example : / I think Corabb's sudden mastery of Malazan is another example.

And I find it really hard to believe that with the rank-and-file regiment based warfare the other human cultures use, that the malazans would ever win using the "superior" tactics of 10-man-squad based skirmishing armies.

Also as I mentioned in the GoTM thread, I don't like the way the bridgeburners go undetected in Darujhistan despite them being a miss-match of ethnicities that all happen to have a genealogy of a different race already assimilated into the Malazan Empire.

And as far as SE's anthropological knowledge helps him out, it makes me wonder what crazy racial migrations could have occurred to result in Blue skinned people (Napan), Chinese looking people (Itko Kan), presumably African looking people(Dal Hon), and presumably white skinned people(Malaz Island -based on the hands of the claw members attacking Kalam from the BH front cover; which must have some credibility at least.), all living so close together at the bottom of Quon Tali.

But don’t get me wrong, I totally love the books : )

[Dolorous Menhir]

Bottle;165194 said:

Then a few inconsistencies bug me, I can't give too many examples but I recall a few times wondering how two characters can suddenly speak each others language, the Bonehunters and the rescued children is all that springs to mind and that’s not a great example : / I think Corabb's sudden mastery of Malazan is another example.

Hmm, it's probably best not to think about language barriers in the books. Since there must be a huge number of them and they rarely (if ever) prove a problem. The only translator who comes to mind is the Taxilian in BH who was mediating between the Edur and new races they encountered. Everyone else seems to communicate fine no matter where they go or who they meet.

Quote

And as far as SE's anthropological knowledge helps him out, it makes me wonder what crazy racial migrations could have occurred to result in Blue skinned people (Napan), Chinese looking people (Itko Kan), presumably African looking people(Dal Hon), and presumably white skinned people(Malaz Island -based on the hands of the claw members attacking Kalam from the BH front cover; which must have some credibility at least.), all living so close together at the bottom of Quon Tali.

But don’t get me wrong, I totally love the books : )

I think Seven Cities natives are African-analogues, and the Dal Honese and Wickans are more Native American or Aborigine types. Not that I know that for sure.

[Bottle]

Native Americans or Africans, it doesn't really matter what the Dal Hon look like, the point still holds true. For an anthropologist I would have expected a more 'realistic' proximity between ethnicities so varied. Though maybe SE has a perfectly good history of the movements and conflicts that’s resulted in the racial make-up of Quon Tali by the time the empire was established. I guess it's irrelevant to the main plot. Shame though, as its the sort of stuff I'm really interested in reading about when I want to become fully submerged in a world.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

drinksinbars;159940 said:

the one problem i have with the whole series is the supposed romance between tattersail and paran, it didnt last very long in the first book, but there was implied this great love. Of course in the timeline she was sleeping with the other mage a few weeks before, she slept with paran once and then supposedly they were in love. In MOI paran is meant to mean so much to her to bridge the camps, but i just dont believe it. i wonder if that is why in the books erikson has sort of removed romance as a central theme, in the later books you have cutter chaisng apsalar but nothing is central to the story.

not that i mind, just rereading at the moment

That has bugged me as well. It seems a little contrived. Not a huge deal though. I guess some people do fall comppletely in love that quickly. It just seemed hard to buy between those two.