[bhokaralasenator]

Finished FoL last week. Gardens of the Moon was the only Malazan book to take me that long to finish. I've seen lots of reviews on this site and I mostly agree with them. I generally liked it, but man. Getting through that was tough.

My rambling thoughts are that this is Erikson at his most Erikson-y. It's potent, dense, mysterious, and stuffed full with philosophizing. At several points I had to just put the damn book down for a couple of days... SE spent a lot of time making a single point: civilization is born with the seeds of its own destruction. I get it, dude... If for no other reason than that he had every random character in this mish-mash primordial realm think it and say it, time and again.

While many of the characters were memorable, I didn't get a sense of this book really being "about" any of them. All of the Tiste were just sort of sliding down this unavoidable path to civil war, while the Azathanai characters were quite random, though terribly fun. The Skillen Droe/K'rul scenes definitely stole the show, with Telorast & Curdle (!) coming in a close second.

Korya didn't have much to do in this one except hang out with Hood's army and bug Arathan. I think it's becoming clear that she's a sort of protoform of Quick Ben. As for Arathan, I'd love to see him turn out to be Ruthan Gudd. I like the idea of the 2 of them landing so close to each other millennia down the road and not knowing it.

And then there's the Jaghut, and Hood's War on Death. I liked all of the Jaghut interactions, but I'm just as baffled as Arathan as to how the Jaghut supply themselves with things like wine, clothes, and books if they've all seemingly abandoned civilization. I thought his comments on the subject were a bit of self-aware snarking on Erikson's part.

I didn't really care for the Thel Akai husbands or the Dog Runner witches - for some reason both sets just fell flat for me.

Anyway, I hope SE got all of the pontificating out of his system and that Walk in Shadow is an action-packed, fast paced book. If it's as, um, rich, as this one, it's gonna take me a while to get through.

[Amby Bole]

Usually SE books are like 600 pages building up the story and characters to just reach one big peak ( lets call it conflagration or whatever ).

But this series is more like 3 on 1, meaning the 2 first and probably part of the 3 building up to the end of everything. I have faith, the 3rd one will be great, and hopefully solve lots of questions.

[RACHEL]

I pretty much agree with everything you said. I didn't mind the Thel Akai husbands or the dog runner witches sections but you otherwise summed up how I felt. I had to put the book down and read something else numerous times. I can't say for sure that this book took me the longest to read but I do kno it was the only one I had to push myself to read. For me the book seemed to have such a negative outlook it depressed me. It felt like every part had the underlying theme that civilization sucks, everything sucks, there is no chance to ever be happy so what is the point of it all and it got to me so I had to read it in smaller doses. That being said I will definitely read the next book even if I have to push myself. There were so many great things in this book that I would have missed had I not finished (Ereko's mom, potential Kallor mention, race and god origins, Telorast and Curdle ect.).

My biggest gripe was Renarr. Naive peasant girl loses virginity to Osserc, gets adopted by Urusander, then decides to whore herself out for money while suddenly rambling about the give and take of whoring and other topics like a college professor. It annoyed me and for me it just didn't work. In FoL she thinks about Osserc in a way that implied she felt like he raped her and stole her innocence. I must not remember FoD because I thought she willingly had sex with Osserc. Did he rape her or did I just read wrong and she was talking about something else like killing her boyfriend stole her innocence. I may not be clear on her whole story but her turning into a whore made no sense to me and it seemed to have no real point. Maybe I just found her parts boring so if I do a re-read I will probably skip her parts. I must admit I liked her at the end even though I wish she would have killed Hunn Raal instead.

[Kasig]

RACHEL, on 07 September 2016 - 06:01 PM, said:

My biggest gripe was Renarr. Naive peasant girl loses virginity to Osserc, gets adopted by Urusander, then decides to whore herself out for money while suddenly rambling about the give and take of whoring and other topics like a college professor. It annoyed me and for me it just didn't work. In FoL she thinks about Osserc in a way that implied she felt like he raped her and stole her innocence. I must not remember FoD because I thought she willingly had sex with Osserc. Did he rape her or did I just read wrong and she was talking about something else like killing her boyfriend stole her innocence. I may not be clear on her whole story but her turning into a whore made no sense to me and it seemed to have no real point. Maybe I just found her parts boring so if I do a re-read I will probably skip her parts. I must admit I liked her at the end even though I wish she would have killed Hunn Raal instead.

Why would you think her naive? She knew what she was doing with Osserc, as I remember it he's actually a bit baffled himself to realize that after they sleep together. She knows the implications, confesses to her betrothed and clears things up between them to the point that the bloke fights most of his family for her, then Osserc manages to misunderstand and kills the guy on his way out of town throwing her life and the remaining of her fathers life into disarray. She lets things settle back down and doesn't correct the again wrong assumptions about the motive of the murder because it helps her father and Urusander and even the long gone by now Osserc's image. Basically everyone get what they need and want from all that, except her. She's beaten up, lost her fiancee, will lose her father soon, will move in with Urusander and has to live that lie.

[Abyss]

I liked Renarr in FoL. Her segments tended to be jarring, in a good way, and yes, there was philosophizing, but the events that sparked it... the soldier's suicide, her confrontation/discussion with Sheltatha.... tended to be sufficiently engaging if not shocking that I actually wanted to see where the train of thought would go, vs, say, the scene where a group of characters sat around the fire at Drac's castle and discussed civilization because they felt like it.

And that ending... THAT was a shock, and a good one. It made perfect sense in context, but there was no warning for it. Also turned everything building up to that point sideways on the reread.

[worry]

She's also not just a random 'peasant'. She's the daughter of a dead war hero and her broken widower. She's already a casualty of war when we meet her originally.

[Siergiej]

Quote

SE spent a lot of time making a single point: civilization is born with the seeds of its own destruction. I get it, dude... If for no other reason than that he had every random character in this mish-mash primordial realm think it and say it, time and again.<br style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.5px; background-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">

This. This a 100 times. One of my biggest problems with FoL was that I could not say one internal monologue from another. Like all the characters were parts of a hive mind that just has one thought about civilization and rehashes it to no end.

[blackzoid]

Siergiej, on 08 September 2016 - 08:44 AM, said:

This. This a 100 times. One of my biggest problems with FoL was that I could not say one internal monologue from another. Like all the characters were parts of a hive mind that just has one thought about civilization and rehashes it to no end.

Well put.

[RACHEL]

I mentioned that I may be remembering FoD wrong. I know Renarr's mom was a soldier who died in an earlier war but I thought the town Renarr grew up in was small and she was not wealthy or worldly. I thought she was a virgin but it is no surprise that a virgin would have an idea of what goes on during sex. I am sure Renarr knew what went where but that doesn't mean she was not naïve. Naïve means lack of experience, wisdom, or judgement which I think perfectly describes her first time with Osserc. All that makes no difference to me because her becoming a whore did not work for my personal taste. A person becoming a whore as a way to rebel or protest her hard life instead of out of need for money just annoyed me. I'm not saying that she didn't have some tough things in her life but choosing to become a whore seemed silly to me. I am also not saying it can't happen but it just seemed far fetched to me. She could have gotten the same knowledge just by spying on the whores and that would have felt more real to me. I will say again that I may remember things wrong but her progression from small town virgin to college professor level philosophical rambler seemed sudden to me. For a girl who is (if I remember correctly) in her late teens to early twenties and is acting out by whoring it up it seems strange for her to have such deep philosophical thoughts and knowledge. Like I said it just didn't seem realistic to me and so it bothered me but she made up for it in the end.

[worry]

All whores are philosophers, and vice versa. There's nothing odd about it.

[Puck]

I don't think Renarr's story is all that simple. For one, she was educated at the Yan Monastery, so hardly an ignorant peasant girl. Her mother died protecting Urusander from an assassin, and her father blamed Urusander and the entire Legion for that for the remainder of his life, only longing to join his wife in death (even though he could have had himself healed from whatever sickness he was suffering, he preferred to die instead of staying with his daughter), and letting his daughter know that. I'm not saying she wasn't naïve when she let Osserc talk her into having sex with him, but at that point already she understood more than she should have, and actually pitied him. When she is adopted by Urusander, she is acutely aware that he only does that because he feels he owes both her (for what Osserc did) and her father (for her mother's death). She is basically plucked from everything she knew and wanted (Osserc killed the man she loved and planned to marry) and planted into a glass tower, with her father dead and her reputation down the drain, and everyone expects her to just go on like nothing happened. So she decides to rebel, and feels like since she already whored herself out to Osserc and managed to break apart her own life, she might as well do so properly. And she's listened to her father hating on Urusander and the Legion - probably for years. Could she have done something else instead? Of course. But this is the path best reflects the bleakness of the entire story. And it's not like she can just up and become a whore. There's a lot of commenting on how none of the other whores want her there. Basically, she feels like her life has been taken from her and she wants revenge of everyone for that, herself included. It's not like she's the first character in these books to do that in a philosophically tinged way.

[Thelomen Toblerone]

I've gotten say, I actually really enjoyed FoL. I put it off for ages as everyone said it was so turgid (I had terrible visions of a whole book long version of the snake from DoD), but was completely gripped by it and thought it was a marked improvement from FoD. I feel like I definitely need to sit down and do a proper re-read, but the pace felt decent to me and I loved the insight in to the Rake brothers' personalities and differences - it felt to me like a lot of what I read made me go "oh that makes sense!" when thinking back to the main mbotf series.

I would say I disagree that the internal monologues are too similar (in both books) - by their very nature, a lot of the characters are musing in similar situations and circumstances and from similar backgrounds - take me and someone who grew up in the same area and way as me, throw us in to a civil war and you'll get similar viewpoints. To that extent I think it just reflects reality. But I did notice significant differences - as noted above, renarr's bleakness was strongly evident and to me gave a unique flavour to her monologues, as did Syntara and Hunn Raal's venal egotism and avarice, wreneck's naivety and almost innocent resolve, sheltatha's fundamental decency and vulnerability, etc . Just my take anyway!

[Overactive Imagination]

Fall of Light was my least favourite Malazan book so far. It wasn't bad, but I actually found myself skimming, and even skipping, entire pages at some points. This never happened in previous books. The internal monologues were so boring and similar to each other. For such a long book, not enough happened.

There was some cool stuff though, and I was really into it at some points, but then there would be another several, literally dozens of pages, of nothing happening again.

Forge had a good amount of the philosophical musings, but I though that any more would be too much. Unfortunately, there was waaaay too much of it in Fall of Light. Erikson could have easily trimmed off a couple hundred pages.

[worry]

A couple hundred fewer FoL pages would just lead people to read a couple hundred more pages of some garbage author. Oh some idiot manned a wall during a siege? Ladders were pushed away and boiling oil dropped on a battering ram crew? Great, thanks for telling me that exact thing I've read a million times!

There was no better use of your free time than reading this book.

[NaturesNapkin]

Ah I have to agree with Overactive Imagination, this book did not do it for me, and yeah, FOD was right on the limit. It wasn't so much the depressing philosophy (I actually like that stuff), it was that I didn't care for the characters or their fates. Each to their own, I still have hopes for Walk In Shadow, though they are not as high as they were.

This post has been edited by NaturesNapkin: 01 November 2016 - 11:28 AM

[Gorefest]

I finished FoL yesterday. After various comments on the supposed denseness of the book I was a bit worried that it would be a slog, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Great stuff with the Jaghut and the war on death; lots of deeply tragic events which feel almost inevitable even as you are led to their sordid conclusion while screaming 'no, you fools, if only...!'; some of the best descriptions I have ever read of the devastating implications of choices in words and actions that people take (or choose not to take) which at first seem fairly innocuous. I cannot really figure out whether Prazek and Dathenar are SE's 'rozencranz and gildenstern' or the 'waiting for godot' blokes with their wry yet witty comments on current events and on life in general. Loved to see K'rul and Skillen Droe and all the insights we are getting into the azathenai, their motives and their divine flawedness. They are all intensely moral but without any concept of consequence, like scary childlike gods in a sandbox. So many little throwbacks to the MBotF to make you giddy with 'aha' moments. And some very thoughtful contemplations on society, civilization and the nature of man.

I can see how people may find it a tad contrived in its verbosity, but whether you agree with his choices or not, you can just feel that SE is pouring his very essence into trying to lift this vehicle of fantasy into a work of literary merit. And I for one applaud him for it, even though I am not erudite or scholarly enough to judge whether he is succeeding or sadly overreaching himself. I happily leave that verdict to informed students of the arts. But damn I admire him for even daring to go there. That takes massive balls. And I can't wait for part three.

[bhokaralasenator]

I also can't wait for part 3... but I hope SE learned some lessons from the response to this book.

[Gorefest]

Well, clearly he already learned to put part three on the backburner, sadly.