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Two gripes, and both centre on the Riders.
[1] The Riders are supposed to be such a serious threat that it requires the best individual soldiers in the world, the Stormguard, to hold them back. But not once in the book did we see the Riders kick some ass on the Wall, or resemble anything like the threat that the text made them out to be. The disparity between claim and reality was stark. The book could have done much more to make them a convincing force. It required a real suspension of disbelief to buy them as a serious threat.
[2] ICE was not at all forthcoming about their origins. Even a forensic reading of the text gives few hints. On the one hand, the references to the Riders being pale skinned, and reminding someone of Tiste Andii, imply that they are Liosan. However they clearly aren't part of the Liosan army that appears elsewhere in the book. Their powers bear no relation to what we know of the Liosan. And the idea also makes no sense within the parameters of the story itself.
As I explained in a different thread, I believe that the Liosan hints are misdirection, and the Riders are the original inhabitants of Korel/Fist - the fishermen - inundated by a tidal wave when the Crippled God fell (as seen in the prologue), and thus nursing a strong enmity against the 'invader', the Lady (she being a piece of the CG that became sentient due to its size and power). So I think that they are originally humans that have gained unexplained powers.
In NoK, the dying Rider appears human and bleeds red. There are also hints of them looking almost human in Stonewielder, p. 295 (UK edition), where Bars smashes the helmet of a rider.
The idea of the Riders as being human would explain much about their motivations. It would explain why they bleed red, and sound human ('Why are you killing us'?). And fishermen are sea-beings, if you like, in the same way the Riders are.
It would also fit with the major recurrent textual themes of Stonewielder, the question of who lived in Korel/Fist first, and who the 'invaders' are (it's repeatedly made clear that the Malazans aren't the first 'invaders' - and indeed we see the first batch of invaders in the prologue, the men who meet the Lady and are tasked with building the Wall). The concept of invaders/outlanders is dealt with in every scene in the prologue, even thousands of years after the fall of the Crippled God - which has to be significant. The book is basically about successive generations of invaders contending for control of the continent, but none of them are the original inhabitants. We see those original inhabitants in the first scene (the fall of The Crippled God) and, in the very next scene, the Riders are assaulting the recently-arrived 'invaders' who go on to build the wall. There is no sign of the Riders in the first scene, i.e. before the fall.
We also know from Stonewielder, and Greymane's relation of a conversation with a Rider, that they speak a version of the Koreli language. In NoK, the old man who discovers a dying Rider at Malaz Isle relates that he speaks a 'halting Korelan'. Perhaps a primitive, original form of the dialect? The Rider at the end of NoK is described as having the flesh of a fish and a bad smell. The Lady, introduced at the very beginning of Stonewielder, is described as having a repulsive smell and flesh like 'a pale dead fish'.Too much of a coincidence. There's some physical relationship here between the Riders and the Lady (a piece of the CG). It could be that the CG's power is the explanation for the transformation of the humans into beings like the Riders.
The fact that Greymane sees himself as righting 'an ancient wrong' (Stonewielder, p. 806) in destroying the wall and allowing the Riders to swarm over it onto the land, and when this happens in a huge tidal wave, 'left behind in its passing lay an entirely new coastline, resculpted and washed clean' are perhaps significant statements from ICE; they lead me to believe that the righting the 'wrong' is connected to what happened in the first scene in the book, with the destruction of the original inhabitants with the fall of the CG and then, in the next scene, the Lady later tasking recent arrivals to Fist with building a wall to keep out the Riders. Also, that the Riders attack and destroy two fragments of the Lady at the end of the book, and the revelation that her whole purpose had been keeping the Riders stranded in the Ocean of Storms and unable to get to her fragments to destroy them, could be taken as further evidence of an ancient vendetta resulting from what happened in the very first scene of the book.
This post has been edited by Mob: 20 December 2014 - 08:45 PM
