[spartan301]

hands down favorite book thus far and I have a feeling it will be my favorite book in the series but I guess I'll see after I read more lol. Favorite character in this one? damn well if I had to pick... Itkovian, a certain talon might be the new kinght of hood, and quick is now a high mage? ha cant hide anymore, damn this book had so much in it that was reveled opening hands have be shown and the crippled god I'm sure has more up his sleeve but he has made some enemies that he should not overestimate. GotM was good but it took a bit to get into and then DG was amazing and I loved that a lot more than the first but this book I have to say tops them all. I am still hurting from all of the loses in this book though... Lastly some questions


1. so the grey swords have this structure about them with shield anvil and mortal sword of fener, but when they switched gods they still kept that structure so I kinda assumed that it was just their thing but then treach has his own mortal sword so is this like a gods of war type positions? because there's rake who is the knight in the house of dark so does that mean too that the gods of war are considered unaligned? or or am i still not understanding this ascendant stuff fully which is likely lol since it's still confusing and same with the warren stuff which brings me to..

2. K'rul is basically the bloodline of all warrens? did i understand that right? if that's true that brings a brunch of thoughts to mind and that would make K'rul technically infinitely powerful right? and so if the crippled god poisoned him well isn't he screwing himself too? since he draws from the chaos warren too right? so that'd make pretty much every being using magic from warrens would be in a bad place if K'rul died. But that doesn't make sense i don't know really i guess

3. i hope the bridgeburners ascend okay that's not a question but damn I hope we get to see more of them and grey swords and many others in this book later in the series.

Unfortunately have to wait for next pay check and/or library to get the next book but i can't wait to continue this series.

[Aptorian]

Yes. The War Gods are unaligned. There is some confusion surrounding the concept of MS, DS and SH compared to Knights, Champions, etc. in Houses. It might be a concept that predates the current Deck of Dragons structure as you will see in a later book.

The Crippled God does not really play by the rules. Chaos is not a part of the magical structure of the Houses or Deck of Dragons. In fact it's sort of the opposite. It's magical chaos that is poisoning the Deck of Dragons in MOI.

[worry]

Spoiler

1) There is a High House War in the Deck so the gods that are at the top aren't unaligned. But not every entity is necessarily represented specifically in the Deck.
Shield Anvil, Mortal Sword, and Destriant are a wholly different mode of structuring the relationship between mortal and god, so you can view them as an alternative to the Deck.

2) You heard it right. Chaos isn't actually a Warren though (even though it gets called one in GotM). But if K'rul died, yah, I'd say that'd be a bad day for magic users.

3) SE loves repercussions.

This post has been edited by worry: 20 January 2016 - 10:44 PM

[Puck]

worry, you might want to spoiler tag that first part.

That said, you could think of the Houses of the Deck as more general indicators of who's doing what, while the MS, SA and D thing is a hierarchy within a god's personal cult, with the positions being, as far as we know, fixed, while within the Deck everything is constantly in a flux.

[spartan301]

okay that makes sense, It's just weird to think about the whole K'rul thing i guess but thank you all for the replies and i can't wait to read the next installment in the series.

[Gorefest]

It can be a rather confusing concept, but there are many more similar concepts in the series. Apart from K'rul's blood being the Warrens, you also have the Goddess Burn who is the world, but at the same time she is a sleeping God.

The important thing to keep in mind that SE is an archeologist and anthropologist. So where a lot of fantasy authors tend to draw on medieval tales and 'western' folklore (nordic myths, fairytales, etc) to colour their worlds, SE is happy to draw from a far wider tableau (dinosaur age, Egyptian and African creation myths, etc). For instance, in the Egyptian pantheon it was quite common to have deities that were both an abstract concept and a personification at the same time. Horus was the sky God, depicted as a man with a falcon head. He could be a man (the pharaos would be his personified incarnation on Earth) but he could also be a falcon and, even more mindbogglingly, he was said to be the Sky itself. And the Sun and the Moon were his eyes. So he was a 'man', but at the same time he was the entire sky! And everyone in ancient Egypt just accepted that as a truth.

So although the concept may seem rather difficult to entertain and may be very hard to get your head around, the stage that SE sets for us is only bizarre and difficult to comprehend due to the cultural baggage and expectations that we carry with us. If you had been an early Egyptian and you'd be reading these books, you might have nodded understandingly at the K'rul and Burn bits but be completely and utterly baffled by the depictions of Shadowthrone or of Rake's Dragnipur.

I find the best thing to do in these situations is not to try and overthink too much certain implications of deity depictions and powers, but just accept them as part of the world that SE and ICE built for us and just run with the characters and events. Because a lot of the limitations and questions one places on things like power levels, ascendants versus deities, the nature of magic, etc, are often constrained and tainted by personal cultural baggage, not by the malazan universe itself.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 20 January 2016 - 04:42 PM

[spartan301]

i think of burn like a mother earth, like Gaia, I understand what you mean and SE writing like that is kinda why I think I like it so much. That archaeologist and anthropologist background brings a great thing to the table. overthinking i think is my problem a bit and creating this epic universe it well has a lot in it and figuring it all out is part of the fun.

[worry]

Okay, I spoilered it, but it seemed self-evident as of MOI to me.

[spartan301]

Worry, i don't think you spoiled anything really, maybe it isn't directly stated in MOI, that i know of anyway but i got the whole high house war stuff.

[worry]

Glad to hear that. But better safe than sorry!

[Kanese S's]

Mortal Sword, Shield Anvil, and Destriant refer, as said, to positions within some gods' cults of worship (usually war gods). These are separate from the positions in the various High Houses. Various gods may have house positions, the MS/SA/D setup, both, or neither.