[pasua]

Hey guys. i just finished the second book and it was an amazing journey. This is going to be a long post and I'm horrible expressing my thoughts, so please try to keep up with this poor malaz regular!

First thing first. I didn't read the books in English. its too complex for me, and some of the things ill say here might be explained by a poor translation (even tho i feel like the poor souls that had to translate this book into Spanish did an amazing job!). Last disclaimer, I'm HORRIBLE with names, so I tend to use the nicknames i use to remember who is who .

I'm posting here because i really need to talk about some things that are killing me, and there is no way i get my friends to read this books, so i hope you can bare with me.

1) I really liked the pacing of this book. For a series that doesn't lose any time explaining what is happening, I found that the gardens sometimes got lost in some situations that didn't bring much to the book alone (i guess most of this situations will become interesting once you have a picture of the whole series, but i feel like in the first book the author fails making this scenarios interesting for a first time reader)

2) I feel like erikson has a lot of problems presenting the scenarios in a logical way, I have a lot of examples of this. The whole Kalam arch happens in places i can't recreate in my head, and at the same time, the timing is pretty weird. I'm going to give a couple of examples.

a) The fight in the ship where all the soldiers get killed. This is how things happen:
kalam is with the cap of the ship. they hit the boat of the pirates (friends of the tax guy). kalam falls to the ground, and immediately gets on his feet.
Every thing is fine up to this part. But in the time he takes him to climb the ladder again (seconds?) the fight is almost over, the bodyguard of the tax guy has killed 3 dudes and died injuring the cap. and kalam goes back to fight the soletaken.

For me this whole fight happened in a very strange way and i don't know if its a translation problem or if Eriksen fails when presenting the scenario.


the kalam vs laseen encounter.
so our hero escapes form the bad dudes with the girl (sorry but I'm horrible with names). he falls from the horse. they hide in a place that smells like a stable. kalam enters somewhere very dark. and the talk begins.

same thing. i feel like the events are disconnected and that things don't happen naturally.

I could give more examples but for me the actions sometimes aren't well exposed and even if the general picture of the scenes makes sense, if you get into the details, the whole thing starts to crumble. how do you guys feel about this general point? someone else has this problem following the action? is the Spanish translation not very good? am I a complete donkey and can't read properly?

3) I'm in love with the new characters. Duiker is a cool guy, the priest is a cool guy, the gay couple is SUPER cool and interesting, and i think I'm in love with Coltaine (he is the pinnacle of cool dudes) (may be Erikson went a little bit to far transforming him into jesus christ (we even have Longinus in the form of an arrow. But this outro felt kinda ok because the dude was the real protagonst of this book for me. PLEASE BRING HIM BACK).

i feel like this characters get so interesting because the actions aren't presented form the super hero point of view. If in the first book all we saw from Anomander was from other peoples point of view, he wouldn't feel such a generic and flat character.


4) last thing i want to rant about is the sudden ascension of characters.

so in one chapter felissin is bitching like always (its fine, i loved this aspect of the character, even tho it made me hate her ) and suddenly, she becomes a god out of camera because she reached the other gay couple? (again, i can't remember the names, one is a giant toblaki?)

happens kind of similar with the characters burned by the spooky dead dragon (here at least we have a reason to why this happened) and again when container punched the cap of the comedian trio (they call them almost ascended). Makes me feel kinda uncomfortable how everybody suddenly is a superhuman because of reasons.

For me the lack of importance given to some of this events make the experience feel weird.



All right, I feel better now. Thx for reading this wall of horribly written text. Its my first post ever on a forum and I'm not good with English (if you couldnt tell already)

Se you guys (and girls) in the memories of ice, lets hope the wikan Jesus Coltaine could make it with us!

[Abyss]

pasua, on 20 April 2017 - 10:30 AM, said:

Hey guys. i just finished the second book and it was an amazing journey. This is going to be a long post and I'm horrible expressing my thoughts, so please try to keep up with this poor malaz regular!

First thing first. I didn't read the books in English. its too complex for me, and some of the things ill say here might be explained by a poor translation (even tho i feel like the poor souls that had to translate this book into Spanish did an amazing job!). Last disclaimer, I'm HORRIBLE with names, so I tend to use the nicknames i use to remember who is who .

I'm posting here because i really need to talk about some things that are killing me, and there is no way i get my friends to read this books, so i hope you can bare with me.

Welcome, you've come to the right place...
Don't worry about being understood, your English is great and we have plenty of forumites whose first and second languages aren't English and we haven't accidentally declared war on anyone yet.
...well, except for Finland that one time...

Quote

...

2) I feel like erikson has a lot of problems presenting the scenarios in a logical way, I have a lot of examples of this. The whole Kalam arch happens in places i can't recreate in my head, and at the same time, the timing is pretty weird. I'm going to give a couple of examples.

a) The fight in the ship where all the soldiers get killed. This is how things happen:
kalam is with the cap of the ship. they hit the boat of the pirates (friends of the tax guy). kalam falls to the ground, and immediately gets on his feet.
Every thing is fine up to this part. But in the time he takes him to climb the ladder again (seconds?) the fight is almost over, the bodyguard of the tax guy has killed 3 dudes and died injuring the cap. and kalam goes back to fight the soletaken.

For me this whole fight happened in a very strange way and i don't know if its a translation problem or if Eriksen fails when presenting the scenario.

The scene is told from Kalam's point of view, so when he goes down initially, other things are still happening. I can't guess how the tnslation reads, but the 'jump' is supposed to happen, and i find it works because it draws you into the mess of the fight the way Kalam sees it.

It's also neat in that Kalam goes from 'just a really good soldier/assassin' to a guy who stabs flying monsters in the head, and sort of sets the stage for what happens on Malaz Island when we see just exactly how skilled Kalam really is.

Quote

the kalam vs laseen encounter.
so our hero escapes form the bad dudes with the girl (sorry but I'm horrible with names). he falls from the horse. they hide in a place that smells like a stable. kalam enters somewhere very dark. and the talk begins.

same thing. i feel like the events are disconnected and that things don't happen naturally.

It's a weird scene. What you can take from it is that Kalam was willing to kill Laseen, but was also open to being talked out of it. Laseen knew he was coming, and set up the meeting so that she was never at risk.
She was also perfectly ok with Kalam being killed by the Claw on the way to the meeting, but guessed, rightly, that wouldn't happen.

Quote

I could give more examples but for me the actions sometimes aren't well exposed and even if the general picture of the scenes makes sense, if you get into the details, the whole thing starts to crumble. how do you guys feel about this general point? someone else has this problem following the action? is the Spanish translation not very good? am I a complete donkey and can't read properly?

Again, can't comment on the quality of the translation, but i think what you're running up against are the shifts in perspective, from a single character's limited point of view to a wider more omniscient narrator. Erikson doesn't tel you everything, and sometimes what he seems to be telling is actually just what a character wrongly thinks is happening.

Quote

3) I'm in love with the new characters. Duiker is a cool guy, the priest is a cool guy, the gay couple is SUPER cool and interesting, and i think I'm in love with Coltaine (he is the pinnacle of cool dudes) (may be Erikson went a little bit to far transforming him into jesus christ (we even have Longinus in the form of an arrow. But this outro felt kinda ok because the dude was the real protagonst of this book for me. PLEASE BRING HIM BACK).

i feel like this characters get so interesting because the actions aren't presented form the super hero point of view. If in the first book all we saw from Anomander was from other peoples point of view, he wouldn't feel such a generic and flat character.

You have SO SO MUCHawesome AWESOME reading ahead of you in this series.
I envy you the first read of sheer mindblowingly great stuff you have ahead.
Trust me on this, MEMORIES OF ICE is going to fry your brains.

Quote

4) last thing i want to rant about is the sudden ascension of characters.

so in one chapter felissin is bitching like always (its fine, i loved this aspect of the character, even tho it made me hate her ) and suddenly, she becomes a god out of camera because she reached the other gay couple? (again, i can't remember the names, one is a giant toblaki?)

I assume the gay couples you are referring to are Leoman and Karsa (the human and Toblakai Whirlwind warriors in the desert guarding Sha'ik and meeting Felisin) and Icarium and Mappo (Jhag and Trell, on the Path of hands looking for Tremolor, in the other half of the desert meeting Crokus, Fiddler and co).

If you mean 'gay' in the sense of two men who are romantically involved, neither set of characters is that. Just close friends/brotehrs-in-arms sort of thing.

Quote

happens kind of similar with the characters burned by the spooky dead dragon (here at least we have a reason to why this happened) and again when container punched the cap of the comedian trio (they call them almost ascended). Makes me feel kinda uncomfortable how everybody suddenly is a superhuman because of reasons.

For me the lack of importance given to some of this events make the experience feel weird.

This is an important element to the world... 'mere' humans come into contact with magic and end up changed because of it. But, importantly, they aren't necessarily superhuman, just no longer 'normal'.
Felisin and co jumped out of the Silanda just as the undead dragon breathed on it. Later, Baudin thinks this made him invulnerable and ends up dead instead. Neither Heboric nor Felisin draw much benefit from that exposure.

The trio, Stormy, Gesler and Truth, were more exposed. As a result they do become 'near ascendant', but notice how Coltaine, supposedly 'normal' breaks Gesler's nose. The revelation there is that Coltaine is ascending just on the strength of his bringing the Chain of Dogs as far as he had.

And it's not 'everybody', but Erikson is showing you the interesting characters, not the boring ones .

Quote

All right, I feel better now. Thx for reading this wall of horribly written text. Its my first post ever on a forum and I'm not good with English (if you couldnt tell already)

Se you guys (and girls) in the memories of ice, lets hope the wikan Jesus Coltaine could make it with us!

Don't hesitate to post more, this kind of thread is fun even for people who have finished the series.
MEMORIES OF ICE... seriously, i'm jealous of the reading you have ahead of you.

[D'rek]

pasua, on 20 April 2017 - 10:30 AM, said:

Hey guys. i just finished the second book and it was an amazing journey. This is going to be a long post and I'm horrible expressing my thoughts, so please try to keep up with this poor malaz regular!

First thing first. I didn't read the books in English. its too complex for me, and some of the things ill say here might be explained by a poor translation (even tho i feel like the poor souls that had to translate this book into Spanish did an amazing job!). Last disclaimer, I'm HORRIBLE with names, so I tend to use the nicknames i use to remember who is who .

I'm posting here because i really need to talk about some things that are killing me, and there is no way i get my friends to read this books, so i hope you can bare with me.

Glad to hear you're enjoying the read!

Please, post and rant away! That's what we're here for!

pasua, on 20 April 2017 - 10:30 AM, said:

1) I really liked the pacing of this book. For a series that doesn't lose any time explaining what is happening, I found that the gardens sometimes got lost in some situations that didn't bring much to the book alone (i guess most of this situations will become interesting once you have a picture of the whole series, but i feel like in the first book the author fails making this scenarios interesting for a first time reader)

"doesn't lose any time explaining what is happening" -- ha, yeah, that's a great way of describing it!

There are definitely some parts of Gardens that make more sense on a re-read once you have pieced together more of the world, but at the same time it's also Erikson's first novel (and written many years before the rest were written) so in some ways it just doesn't have as good of a structure to it, too, with some scenes and story bits not lining up with everything else as nicely as they could have.

pasua, on 20 April 2017 - 10:30 AM, said:

2) I feel like erikson has a lot of problems presenting the scenarios in a logical way, I have a lot of examples of this. The whole Kalam arch happens in places i can't recreate in my head, and at the same time, the timing is pretty weird. I'm going to give a couple of examples.

a) The fight in the ship where all the soldiers get killed. This is how things happen:
kalam is with the cap of the ship. they hit the boat of the pirates (friends of the tax guy). kalam falls to the ground, and immediately gets on his feet.
Every thing is fine up to this part. But in the time he takes him to climb the ladder again (seconds?) the fight is almost over, the bodyguard of the tax guy has killed 3 dudes and died injuring the cap. and kalam goes back to fight the soletaken.

For me this whole fight happened in a very strange way and i don't know if its a translation problem or if Eriksen fails when presenting the scenario.


the kalam vs laseen encounter.
so our hero escapes form the bad dudes with the girl (sorry but I'm horrible with names). he falls from the horse. they hide in a place that smells like a stable. kalam enters somewhere very dark. and the talk begins.

same thing. i feel like the events are disconnected and that things don't happen naturally.

I could give more examples but for me the actions sometimes aren't well exposed and even if the general picture of the scenes makes sense, if you get into the details, the whole thing starts to crumble. how do you guys feel about this general point? someone else has this problem following the action? is the Spanish translation not very good? am I a complete donkey and can't read properly?

Hmm, I don't remember feeling like these sequences were very disjoint, but it's been a while. Maybe it is the translation, maybe it is just the style of writing.

pasua, on 20 April 2017 - 10:30 AM, said:

4) last thing i want to rant about is the sudden ascension of characters.

so in one chapter felissin is bitching like always (its fine, i loved this aspect of the character, even tho it made me hate her ) and suddenly, she becomes a god out of camera because she reached the other gay couple? (again, i can't remember the names, one is a giant toblaki?)

happens kind of similar with the characters burned by the spooky dead dragon (here at least we have a reason to why this happened) and again when container punched the cap of the comedian trio (they call them almost ascended). Makes me feel kinda uncomfortable how everybody suddenly is a superhuman because of reasons.

For me the lack of importance given to some of this events make the experience feel weird.

"Ascension" isn't necessarily all that big of a deal. Yeah, the marines Gesler, Stormy, Truth, Baudin and Kulp (and also Heboric and Felisin, but maybe they weren't as affected by it) passed through a warren of fire opened by a dragon, and according to Sormo Enath that makes them "amost ascended" or something... but has that really changed them all that much? Baudin and Kulp still died, and Stormy still went down with one punch. They haven't suddenly gained the power to summon dragons or anything.

As for Felisin, it was more political expedience than anything. Sha'ik had just died, so Leoman and Toblakai (who are NOT a gay couple, by the way! Unless... wait are they?! ) stuck the title of Sha'ik reborn on Felisin, but Felisin isn't actually Sha'ik reborn through some mystic ritual... she's just pretending to be that because it gives her political power.

Felisin does indeed get some fancy magic powers out of it, but those aren't even really hers. Felisin doesn't really have the new powers, rather the Whirlwind Goddess that was previously using Sha'ik is now using Felisin, too. That's handy for Felisin as long as their goals align, but make no mistake, the Whirlwind Goddess could switch to some other willing human puppet anytime she wants to, and it would leave Felisin right back as a normal human again like she was before.

I'm kind of worried that you said this happened "out of camera" though... those scenes were depicted fairly directly in the English version. Now I'm worried the Spanish translation is actually leaving out parts of the book...

[Puck]

D, on 20 April 2017 - 03:10 PM, said:

I'm kind of worried that you said this happened "out of camera" though... those scenes were depicted fairly directly in the English version. Now I'm worried the Spanish translation is actually leaving out parts of the book...

Unlikely. Iirc, we get Felisin opening the Book of the Apocalypse and the next time we see her, she is already settled in as Sha'ik Reborn. My assumption is that pasua is talking about how we never really 'see' Felisin becoming Sha'ik Reborn, although from context it's easy to tell what happened, so we don't really need any additional scene, but I guess some people need it spelled out in that much detail or it feels disjointed.

[pasua]

Abyss, on 20 April 2017 - 02:33 PM, said:

pasua, on 20 April 2017 - 10:30 AM, said:

Hey guys. i just finished the second book and it was an amazing journey. This is going to be a long post and I'm horrible expressing my thoughts, so please try to keep up with this poor malaz regular!

First thing first. I didn't read the books in English. its too complex for me, and some of the things ill say here might be explained by a poor translation (even tho i feel like the poor souls that had to translate this book into Spanish did an amazing job!). Last disclaimer, I'm HORRIBLE with names, so I tend to use the nicknames i use to remember who is who .

I'm posting here because i really need to talk about some things that are killing me, and there is no way i get my friends to read this books, so i hope you can bare with me.

Welcome, you've come to the right place...
Don't worry about being understood, your English is great and we have plenty of forumites whose first and second languages aren't English and we haven't accidentally declared war on anyone yet.
...well, except for Finland that one time...

Quote

...

2) I feel like erikson has a lot of problems presenting the scenarios in a logical way, I have a lot of examples of this. The whole Kalam arch happens in places i can't recreate in my head, and at the same time, the timing is pretty weird. I'm going to give a couple of examples.

a) The fight in the ship where all the soldiers get killed. This is how things happen:
kalam is with the cap of the ship. they hit the boat of the pirates (friends of the tax guy). kalam falls to the ground, and immediately gets on his feet.
Every thing is fine up to this part. But in the time he takes him to climb the ladder again (seconds?) the fight is almost over, the bodyguard of the tax guy has killed 3 dudes and died injuring the cap. and kalam goes back to fight the soletaken.

For me this whole fight happened in a very strange way and i don't know if its a translation problem or if Eriksen fails when presenting the scenario.

The scene is told from Kalam's point of view, so when he goes down initially, other things are still happening. I can't guess how the tnslation reads, but the 'jump' is supposed to happen, and i find it works because it draws you into the mess of the fight the way Kalam sees it.

It's also neat in that Kalam goes from 'just a really good soldier/assassin' to a guy who stabs flying monsters in the head, and sort of sets the stage for what happens on Malaz Island when we see just exactly how skilled Kalam really is.

Quote

the kalam vs laseen encounter.
so our hero escapes form the bad dudes with the girl (sorry but I'm horrible with names). he falls from the horse. they hide in a place that smells like a stable. kalam enters somewhere very dark. and the talk begins.

same thing. i feel like the events are disconnected and that things don't happen naturally.

It's a weird scene. What you can take from it is that Kalam was willing to kill Laseen, but was also open to being talked out of it. Laseen knew he was coming, and set up the meeting so that she was never at risk.
She was also perfectly ok with Kalam being killed by the Claw on the way to the meeting, but guessed, rightly, that wouldn't happen.

Quote

I could give more examples but for me the actions sometimes aren't well exposed and even if the general picture of the scenes makes sense, if you get into the details, the whole thing starts to crumble. how do you guys feel about this general point? someone else has this problem following the action? is the Spanish translation not very good? am I a complete donkey and can't read properly?

Again, can't comment on the quality of the translation, but i think what you're running up against are the shifts in perspective, from a single character's limited point of view to a wider more omniscient narrator. Erikson doesn't tel you everything, and sometimes what he seems to be telling is actually just what a character wrongly thinks is happening.

Quote

3) I'm in love with the new characters. Duiker is a cool guy, the priest is a cool guy, the gay couple is SUPER cool and interesting, and i think I'm in love with Coltaine (he is the pinnacle of cool dudes) (may be Erikson went a little bit to far transforming him into jesus christ (we even have Longinus in the form of an arrow. But this outro felt kinda ok because the dude was the real protagonst of this book for me. PLEASE BRING HIM BACK).

i feel like this characters get so interesting because the actions aren't presented form the super hero point of view. If in the first book all we saw from Anomander was from other peoples point of view, he wouldn't feel such a generic and flat character.

You have SO SO MUCHawesome AWESOME reading ahead of you in this series.
I envy you the first read of sheer mindblowingly great stuff you have ahead.
Trust me on this, MEMORIES OF ICE is going to fry your brains.

Quote

4) last thing i want to rant about is the sudden ascension of characters.

so in one chapter felissin is bitching like always (its fine, i loved this aspect of the character, even tho it made me hate her ) and suddenly, she becomes a god out of camera because she reached the other gay couple? (again, i can't remember the names, one is a giant toblaki?)

I assume the gay couples you are referring to are Leoman and Karsa (the human and Toblakai Whirlwind warriors in the desert guarding Sha'ik and meeting Felisin) and Icarium and Mappo (Jhag and Trell, on the Path of hands looking for Tremolor, in the other half of the desert meeting Crokus, Fiddler and co).

If you mean 'gay' in the sense of two men who are romantically involved, neither set of characters is that. Just close friends/brotehrs-in-arms sort of thing.

Quote

happens kind of similar with the characters burned by the spooky dead dragon (here at least we have a reason to why this happened) and again when container punched the cap of the comedian trio (they call them almost ascended). Makes me feel kinda uncomfortable how everybody suddenly is a superhuman because of reasons.

For me the lack of importance given to some of this events make the experience feel weird.

This is an important element to the world... 'mere' humans come into contact with magic and end up changed because of it. But, importantly, they aren't necessarily superhuman, just no longer 'normal'.
Felisin and co jumped out of the Silanda just as the undead dragon breathed on it. Later, Baudin thinks this made him invulnerable and ends up dead instead. Neither Heboric nor Felisin draw much benefit from that exposure.

The trio, Stormy, Gesler and Truth, were more exposed. As a result they do become 'near ascendant', but notice how Coltaine, supposedly 'normal' breaks Gesler's nose. The revelation there is that Coltaine is ascending just on the strength of his bringing the Chain of Dogs as far as he had.

And it's not 'everybody', but Erikson is showing you the interesting characters, not the boring ones .

Quote

All right, I feel better now. Thx for reading this wall of horribly written text. Its my first post ever on a forum and I'm not good with English (if you couldnt tell already)

Se you guys (and girls) in the memories of ice, lets hope the wikan Jesus Coltaine could make it with us!

Don't hesitate to post more, this kind of thread is fun even for people who have finished the series.
MEMORIES OF ICE... seriously, i'm jealous of the reading you have ahead of you.

For the most part you answered all my questions Thanks!

Just as a comment i feel like the hole mappo and icarium history feels like a romantic plot. As romantic as as an intespecies relation of immortal beings can be. Ericson even presents us the character of iccariums father who rejected his son because of who he is. For me it was very clear that this two had something else.

I might be thinking to deep, but i like to go one steep further when reading this kinds of books. I guess i got too ahead of myself there (rip best couple 2017)

Quote

Unlikely. Iirc, we get Felisin opening the Book of the Apocalypse and the next time we see her, she is already settled in as Sha'ik Reborn. My assumption is that pasua is talking about how we never really 'see' Felisin becoming Sha'ik Reborn, although from context it's easy to tell what happened, so we don't really need any additional scene, but I guess some people need it spelled out in that much detail or it feels disjointed.

Yeh, that's probably the problem. I think that I lose perspective of the scenarios and events because sometimes things happen in spectacular ways (like paran being saved by oppon), and other times things seems to happen very quietly (felisin now can force three super wizards to bend to her pure will). In the end seems like its on my end to get used to the changes in the ways the actions are presented.

Quote

I'm kind of worried that you said this happened "out of camera" though... those scenes were depicted fairly directly in the English version. Now I'm worried the Spanish translation is actually leaving out parts of the book...

I don't think that's what happened. I don't want to throw a shade on the translator work (she must have had a really interesting time trying to mimic eriksons writing style). Its for sure on my end to keep attention on whats going on (or on erikson's who likes to make things difficult, as it seems).


I forgot another thing i wanted to comment.

I feel like the ending of the chain of dogs arc dehumanizes the characters too much.

I dom't see how 10000 hight tier soldiers see themselves crucifixed even after watching his leader dying. I get that the author wanted to imply the super discipline of the malazan army, but he could have done that in a more elegant way. That whole thing left me with a bad taste in the mouth. At least some fighting would make the situation more human.



And kinda the same happens with Duiker. After the evolution of his character, from a pacifist historian to a soldier who carries the memory of the wikans. it feels like he lets himself get killed too easily.

I mean we see how in his last conversation with Coltaine he calls himself and old man (kind of a fusion between his past as a soldier and his new duty as historian). Now this super loyal old dude can't defy promqual?.
hmmmmm, debatable seeing how his character evolved. I think i would have been much better if he got killed inside the city, or if he survived the battle (and didn't need to be resurrected, which i think its what is going to happen).

This might seem like useless talk but my point is. did I lose some aspect, or some reasoning for why he wen't full kamikaze and threw himself into that trap? (HE COULD HAVE ESCAPED WITH THE AREN DEFENDERS AAAARG)

*edit: this post looks horrible, i need to get used to posting in forums like this one. (sorry!)

This post has been edited by pasua: 21 April 2017 - 11:03 AM

[Puck]

pasua, on 21 April 2017 - 10:59 AM, said:

For the most part you answered all my questions Thanks!

Just as a comment i feel like the hole mappo and icarium history feels like a romantic plot. As romantic as as an intespecies relation of immortal beings can be. Ericson even presents us the character of iccariums father who rejected his son because of who he is. For me it was very clear that this two had something else.

I might be thinking to deep, but i like to go one steep further when reading this kinds of books. I guess i got too ahead of myself there (rip best couple 2017)

What's wrong with characters being friends?

No, seriously, I think what you're experiencing is a lack of options to verbalise and/or life experience for what you're seeing (I don't know how old you are, but you don't have to be very young to not have encountered that before, and Erikson uses various kinds of relationships other authors don't). It's colloquially called a bromance. That's when two people are so close and commited to their friendship they are willing to do pretty much anything for each other, cross the entire world for the other, but are still friends, not romantically involved. We are conditioned to believe that romance is the be-all-end-all of relationships, but between simple friendship and romance there's an entire host of relations between people and you don't need books to find that out, it's everywhere all around us.

As a point of advice, get used to the idea. Erikson LOVES to write bromances and generally deep friendships between characters. If you keep looking for signs of things that are not there, you'll just strain your metaphorical eyes.

pasua, on 21 April 2017 - 10:59 AM, said:

I forgot another thing i wanted to comment.

I feel like the ending of the chain of dogs arc dehumanizes the characters too much.

I dom't see how 10000 hight tier soldiers see themselves crucifixed even after watching his leader dying. I get that the author wanted to imply the super discipline of the malazan army, but he could have done that in a more elegant way. That whole thing left me with a bad taste in the mouth. At least some fighting would make the situation more human.



And kinda the same happens with Duiker. After the evolution of his character, from a pacifist historian to a soldier who carries the memory of the wikans. it feels like he lets himself get killed too easily.

I mean we see how in his last conversation with Coltaine he calls himself and old man (kind of a fusion between his past as a soldier and his new duty as historian). Now this super loyal old dude can't defy promqual?.
hmmmmm, debatable seeing how his character evolved. I think i would have been much better if he got killed inside the city, or if he survived the battle (and didn't need to be resurrected, which i think its what is going to happen).

This might seem like useless talk but my point is. did I lose some aspect, or some reasoning for why he wen't full kamikaze and threw himself into that trap? (HE COULD HAVE ESCAPED WITH THE AREN DEFENDERS AAAARG)

*edit: this post looks horrible, i need to get used to posting in forums like this one. (sorry!)

Here's something to consider: Duiker and the soldiers are all human. It's easy to imagine how you'd never let that kind of thing happen to you, how you would fight it and hos illogical it is for them to just do nothing. But there's this thing called shock and disbelief. We are much more fragile than we like to imagine ourselves, and after enough pressure (just think about what Duiker and the Malazans have experienced/seen) we go into shock. Some people can endure more, some less, but the point come eventually, and at that point automatic behaviours kick in. The disbelief at what is happening to you becomes so great that denial kicks in, and as long as you don't acknowledge what is happening, it cannot be happening, right?

The reason soldiers in any given time period of history have to undergo rigorous training to condition them to fall back on behavioral patterns learned in that training at times of great stress/shock. Else the automatism of non-trained people would kick in, making them unable to act. But even soldiers are not entirely immune and in times of shock, falling back on conditioned behaviour for them means to follow orders.

There's also the idea of prolonging the inevitable. If you are one of ten thousand about to die, and you are alone because you don't know the feelings/thoughts of everyone else, you have two options: fighting and dying anyway, because you don't know who would join you in your fight, who would even bother or think your fight pointless, to break out of their shock, or getting it over wiht already. Especially when you know you're surrounded by enemy troops who exceed you in number. It's pointless either way.

You also want to go with dignity, if you're still capable of enough conscious thought, and screaming and kicking isn't exactly considered dignified.

Additionally, Duiker throwing himself into potential certain death tells us so much more about him and his character than if he'd remained in the city, and this is, after all, a story.

I'm personally not a big fan of Duiker being spirited away afterwards, but I see no way how he could've done anything different and the point of the scene still could've been made.

This post has been edited by Puck: 21 April 2017 - 12:57 PM

[Abyss]

Also, take a closer look at what happens to the Aren Legion.

Their leader, supposedly on the reliable advice of his closest advisor, says there are just a few thousand untrained Whirlwind assholes out there, let's go wipe them out in memory of Coltaine and co.
Everyone wants revenge for Coltaine. Everyone is deeply trained to obey the chain of command. Ok, our orders are ride out and kill, let's go to it. Off they go...
Straight into a massive ambush where they are outnumbered and outmaneuvered.

...this, more than anything else, is the important point.... if the Malazans had fought at this point, they were certain most of them would die. No deception or misinformation here, they are surrounded by 2x or more their number of hardened Whirlwind tribals holding the high ground. They're royally screwed. Some might survive, but most are dead meat. Even Duiker acknowledges this.

Now Pormqual plays down to everyone's expectations and bargains for his own life, pretending to give a crap about the soldiers. He tells them we surrender, we get to live. It will suck, but no one dies. Now the soldiers are faced with a choice... trust their command and try to save everyone, or break and be responsible for most/all of them getting killed AND being labelled a traitor. Military discipline wins out, they are lined up, disarmed and bound. Cue mass crucifixions.

We see all this from Duiker's perspective, and keep in mind by this point Duiker is beyond shock into full blown PTSD/mourning/exhaustion. He's beyond numb, he's physically, emotionally and psychologically exhusted. He was pulled along because the Malazan leaders needed a scapegoat for the Chain and Fall and were either setting him up for it or looking to contradict his version with a great victory.

So nothing is dehumanized, but the events and perspective are set up, after the horror of Coltaine's Fall, to show events from a slightly detached point of view. It's a trainwreck in progress, compounding the Fall and everything before it.



As for Icarium and Mappo, there is a deep friendship there, could be called a form of love, but it's not romantic. Both express some clearly hetero feelings for some nuns they met the last time they were in 7C.

[worry]

Yah, I consider these two pairs "bromances" -- but there are gay individuals and even couples down the line of the series. It's just that Erikson is more likely to get emotionally "squishy" with friendships/brothers-in-arms situations rather than romances, at least at the start. I think it has to do with when the characters were conceived -- when Erikson and Esslemont (and friends) were young men, and they were less comfortable or even interested in exploring that side of life -- and it changes as they get more developed as authors. At least, I once asked him in a Q&A why their pantheon had no God of Love and that was the essence of his answer.

And yah, with the end of the Chain, there's a lot of factors: exhaustion, disappointment, despair, trauma.

And I'm pretty sure all the parts of the Chain of Dogs from beginning to end have historical precedent. Mass executions, even of soldiers numbering in the thousands, are not historically rare enough to be galling inspiration.

[pasua]

All right, no romance. Too much thinking on my side.


And even considering all your reasons, I still have the feeling that the mass crucifixion was a pretty weak ending to the chain of dogs arc.


About 20% into MOI. Now i have problems with the power level of the characters, ascended, deities, and all the different beings in general .


Ill prepare some new points to discuss when I finish the book (I already have a couple of them )

Thanks for all your responses!

[Gorefest]

It must be a hell of a series to translate. I never tried the Dutch translation myself (my native language is Dutch), I only read the English books, but I imagine that with this series more than many others a lot will get lost in translation. The sentences are meticulously crafted and the wording is often chosen very deliberately to convey a certain message or carry double meanings. It is hard enough as it is to follow all the plot lines and events in the English-language books, let alone getting translation biases thrown in. I do suspect that unfortunately a number of 'jarring' items that you may find will be due to translation choices. That is not a dig on the Spanish translator(s), who I am sure are doing a splendid job, but it is simply a really tricky series to process. A translator will know at best just about as much (and possibly a lot less, even if they communicate directly with SE and ICE on translation suggestions) as a lot of us on the various fan forums and even we find new meanings in the text and subtext over time.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 24 April 2017 - 01:03 PM

[Kanese S's]

pasua, on 21 April 2017 - 10:59 AM, said:

And kinda the same happens with Duiker. After the evolution of his character, from a pacifist historian to a soldier who carries the memory of the wikans. it feels like he lets himself get killed too easily.

Duiker was never a pacifist. He was a soldier before he was a historian.

[Not Noto]

Kanese S, on 01 May 2017 - 10:52 PM, said:

pasua, on 21 April 2017 - 10:59 AM, said:

And kinda the same happens with Duiker. After the evolution of his character, from a pacifist historian to a soldier who carries the memory of the wikans. it feels like he lets himself get killed too easily.

Duiker was never a pacifist. He was a soldier before he was a historian.

He also had a little bottle in a necklace.

How old is Duiker anyway? 100-500?

[Coltaine -]

Not Noto, on 02 May 2017 - 08:00 AM, said:

Kanese S, on 01 May 2017 - 10:52 PM, said:

pasua, on 21 April 2017 - 10:59 AM, said:

And kinda the same happens with Duiker. After the evolution of his character, from a pacifist historian to a soldier who carries the memory of the wikans. it feels like he lets himself get killed too easily.

Duiker was never a pacifist. He was a soldier before he was a historian.

He also had a little bottle in a necklace.

How old is Duiker anyway? 100-500?

If he really was a founding member of the old guard, like Nok suggested in HoC, he would be older than 100 years, but probably not too much, as he joined them as a normal soldier. 120-130 maybe.