Malazan Empire: Some early thoughts - Malazan Empire

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Some early thoughts Spoilers up to chapter 3.....

#41 User is offline   Egwene 

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Posted 08 June 2015 - 07:07 PM

View Postbenelori, on 26 May 2015 - 08:16 PM, said:

I've been waiting for this thread yay \o/

View PostKeysi, on 11 May 2015 - 08:32 PM, said:

Haha, fair do's
Thing is, I quite like Kallor, and I know I shouldn't, he's an evil twat, no two ways about it.


I like him too, despite his "evilness"...nothing's ever that black and white in this series, and the same applies to Kallor too...he just bears his grudges a bit more aggressively ;)




On the topic of best of the series...Midnight Tides, Memories of Ice and Toll of the Hounds (from 3rd place to 1st)...from what I've read on these forums, people tend to gravitate around the first part of the series I think


If you check out the Poll on the Wikia homepage, you'll see that there is a wide spread of what people term their favourite. Higher votes for the early books may be because some of the people voting have not yet read all the books and the last two should probably be listed as one as they are one continuous story, so hard to judge. Just to give you an idea how people's perception changes... When Toll the Hounds came out, it seem to get quite a lot of negative feedback and reviews. It's currently (out of 112 votes) in third position. That shows how much the books grow on you as you get further into the series. You'll find that on a re-read a book might take on a totally different dimension. What was a favourite becomes less so and what was not so impressive on the first read turns out to be the uncut diamond. Only one thing is pretty certain, having read this far, the series as a whole will blow your socks off!
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#42 User is offline   Andorion 

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Posted 09 June 2015 - 01:13 AM

Re-reads can be funny things. My first reread catapulted TtH, MoI, tCG to the top and reduced HoC and RG. But my currect 2nd reread has not reduced any book in my estimation, but raised HoC and RG again
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#43 User is offline   worry 

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Posted 09 June 2015 - 02:05 AM

Uh, this is the thread for early thoughts. Those thoughts are way late.
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#44 User is offline   worry 

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Posted 09 June 2015 - 02:05 AM

Try to make your thoughts earlier in the future, please.
They came with white hands and left with red hands.
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#45 User is offline   melonhead 

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Posted 09 June 2015 - 04:59 AM

maybe they are early thoughts, and you just thought they were late thoughts. think.
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#46 User is offline   Kanese S's 

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Posted 24 December 2015 - 11:07 AM

View PostKeysi, on 19 April 2015 - 12:51 PM, said:

Okie dokie, forgive my absence from all things Malazan for the last wee while, been pretty buy with work, studying and a very emotional season 6 of Sons of Anarchy. I could have cried.

Progressed a bit with MOI, can't help feeling a tad sorry for Kallor, he's many milenia older, hundreds of milenia in some cases than most of the other characters, yet gets threatened to be beten senseless and the occasional bitch slapping from these young upstarts, but hey at least great power was hinted at, being that Quick is a bit scared of him.


Wasn't much convinced by Paran's lament for the T'lan Imas, their thousands of years of sorrow and aall that. They were horrible creatures and deserve a lot of suffering. Gonna be interesting what happens.

One thing I have noticed so far, unless I have just missed it, is there is a distinct lack of racism going on, considering even amongst the human races there are at least several different colours of skin. Especially since many of the characters are soldiers, and being in the military myself I know that sort of thing goes on be it genuinely good humored banter between friends to out and out bullying. Any of you here also in the forces will know what I mean when I talk about the type of cut throat humor that goes on that would seem like bullying to civvies can in fact just be banter. (not condoning actual racism here either-obviously it's abhorrent). Plus with how dark fantasy like this tends to be and entertainment in general, I would have suspected to encounter real racism too, especially mentions of it regarding the enemy armies. With so many different nationalities existing in this world i'm just surprised to not have encountered a fair bit of it, in one form or another.


Kruppe, Kruppe, Kruppe, Kruppe, Kruppe, Kruppe. Poor Kruppe, he seems to have been relegated to mere comic relief for the short appearance he has had so far, and I know that with him that's all an affectation, but it's not coming across as that here. The hitching a ride on the flying table thing made me sad. I loved Kruppe.

Interesting memory from DG, the T'lan Imas got offended at the notion of another 'Fiirst Empire' and quickly showed them who the real proper Firsts were. This happened some 9000(or 11000?) years ago, and yet umans in their modern form have been a specie of their own at least a hundred thousand years ago when Kallor was king. I wonder how many other "First" empires existed in that time and were summarily put in their place by the Imass.

Definetly feel sorry for the Crippled God at this point. Dragged into this world from an "alien" world. He didn't even want to be here and hhas been put through some shiz nit. Maybe a happy ending would be to find a way to send him back. I doubt that is where any of this is going :rolleyes:


I love this book

Re: the lack of racism among humans. There is some, but it's more by region than skin color. Like "Malazan" versus "Seven Cities," or "Talian." Keep in mind that this is a world where some humans have blue skin just because. When you think about it, not really giving a crap about human skin color makes sense, though, considering how many non-humans there are running around. The Malazans, for instance, have been fighting the Tiste Andii on Genibackis, and they're very obviously not human. The army you mostly see, as far as human armies, is the Malazan 2nd/5th Army, with the Bridgeburners. This is a unit that has been together a long long time. Keep reading and you will meet some soldier characters that are maybe... a little more on the dysfunctional side.

The T'lan Imass go to extremes, yes, but not extremes unknown in ancient warfare in our world, and their reasons are far better (Raest was not the only Jaghut Tyrant... and they really were as awful as everyone in GotM made them out to be).


View PostKeysi, on 10 May 2015 - 08:54 PM, said:

Also meant to say- What really is the script with Brood and Kallor? Brood doesn't seem to respect him, constantly tells him to shut up etc and not sure how well he rates him as a warrior. Though, he clearly does have some decent abilities, since that Jag clearly didn't want to fcuk with him, he leveled an entire continent, nearly ascended and put a curse on three elder gods. Obviously Brood is a hard bastard but he seems to suffer Kallor's existence and little else. Kallor letting Whiskeyjack bitch slap him was also strange.

Just thinking out loud here, if the answers are too spoilery then just gloat!!

Same with Crone. No one is ever nice to Crone.

So, obviously you know what a powerhouse Kallor is. Think about ways it might make total sense for Brood to be unconcerned by this.

View PostAbyss, on 11 May 2015 - 05:29 AM, said:

All you need to take from it is that Brood and Kallor have a long history and Kallor was an asshole for most all of it.

Fixed :p

Kallor has never not been an asshole.

View PostKeysi, on 11 May 2015 - 08:32 PM, said:

Haha, fair do's
Thing is, I quite like Kallor, and I know I shouldn't, he's an evil twat, no two ways about it.

An evil, genocidal, mass-murdering twat, to be specific.


View Postamphibian, on 19 May 2015 - 07:45 PM, said:

View PostNevyn, on 19 May 2015 - 07:16 PM, said:

View PostKeysi, on 17 May 2015 - 09:25 AM, said:

Do the books continue to get better each installment the way it has so far??


You have a lot of books to go. If each one one upped all the previous ones by the time you reached the end of the series you wouldn't be able to leave the house.

The consensus seems to be that this book and DG are among the best in the series. But every book has its redeeming qualities, and is important to the overall story.

There is no real consensus on which of the books being the best. Every time we've done a poll, it's ranged from DG, MoI, MT, RG, TtH to the people smushing DoD and tCG together.

I'll say that each of the books has its own flavor, while still retaining a "Malazaness" quality, and there's enough range that people of all walks of life glom onto different books for different reasons and they're all pretty much valid and cool.

But yeah, Erikson does get better as a technical writer as the series goes on, while shifting his focus a bit from a primarily military/action mindset to something much more expansive than that.

heh heh, smushing.

Yeah, there's not a total consensus on which books are best.
Laseen did nothing wrong.

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