[KruppeTheGreat]

So, I'm reading through the final stages of this... siege... (so no spoilers to anything that happens after it, pls) and I kind of feel like this was the weakest moments in the entire series I've found up to now.
I might be rushing to judgement, but I really want to share my thoughts in hot blood.

The whole debacle reminded me of this video series I've been watching, about the greatest military mistakes in history. This... "siege" would definitely fit on that list.
I'll outline the main issues I have with it now:

• That was hardly a siege. More like a battle. The Bonehunters get to the city, BAM, make a breach on day 1 and storm it. Without reconnaissance. Without negotiation. Without sending the Claw in, when I seem to remember from Pale that this was standard operating procedure for Malazan sieges. Without knowledge that Leoman had ordered no attempt to be made to defend the perimeter wall;
• Horrendous organization. Effectively the first event in the siege is a "sapper" setting off way too many munitions at once, apparently for the fun of it. While reading through the early moments in the battle, I got the impression that, just prior to deploying for the assault, a significant number of Malazans had just picked up some munitions from the storage and made themselves "sappers". One would think that a war machine as proficient as that of the Empire would have policies against common soldiery picking up devastating weapons without knowledge or training on how to use them;
• Appalling tactics, way beyond what is justifiable by the Adjunct being an inexperienced commander. Once the gargantuan breach is open, the 14th just sort of marching in, seeming to not even consider the possibility of resistance. While entering a city they know crammed with fanatical enemies. Even Fid, a veteran of the glory days of the Empire, does not seem to particularly object to this suicidal mode of attack.
• The characters: I am actually relieved Erikson killed off everyone (or almost everyone? I lost track) he'd introduced earlier in the book in the siege. I felt like the entire third half of book was Erikson trying to pull a George RR Martin, give the reader a bunch of faces to get used to, to then tug on their heartstrings by viciously murdering them in the assault. Well, didn't work with me. As dozens upon dozens of soldiers, corporals, sergeants and captains got introduced, I found myself growing numb. Didn't really get anything out of this hailstorm of new faces, at least not enough to make me feel anything upon their prompt demise.
• The Malazan Empire: a multi-continent, seemingly all-controlling organization, and yet pitifully unable to put together a force able to effectively besiege a single fortress. A rebel fortress. Not a rival nation, a single citadel held by a handful of ragged rebels. One for which the loss of three thousand men is a catastrophe. One wonders how the Empire even became such under these conditions. This question is shortly answered if you tell me this one battle is meant to show how the Empire has grown sloppy, decadent, and its military incompetent and lazy, but then every last bit of sympathy a reader might have had for anything within the Empire, which, to be honest, was quite high (at least for me) after the Chain of Dogs, vanishes.
• A similar point I could raise about the Letherii Empire, about how it basically controls a continent but a bunch of tribal peoples can crush its entire military and storm its capitol in a week or so. At least the Edur had Kaminsod on their side. Leoman had a bunch of nutjobs and a few jars of oil.
• The entire conflagration debacle is basically an overgrown, mutated, magicked version of the Battle of Blackwater Bay in the Song of Ice and Fire, and the usage of wildfire. However I will not take this point any further as I am not even sure this episode was written after said Battle of Blackwater Bay.

I think that's all my grudges for now. What I'd like to start here is a conversation about what this episode actually stands for, whether you think it (and the first third of this arc in this book) was effective or not, and whatever thoughts you may have on this whole ordeal.
Again, please no spoilers to the future of the bonehunters. Got enough of those.

[HoosierDaddy]

Just as an FYI, that subtitle is a spoiler for people not up to The Bonehunters. I've reported it so a Mod/Admin can make it safe. Now I'll read your post.

Edit:

Point 1 - The Claw is busy. Keep reading. But, it's kind of hard to predict an army destroying themselves in an immolation as Leoman does here.

Point 2 - Inexperienced army here, but Malazan's going nuts for munitions is pretty common in the series.

Point 3 - If you have a breach in a city wall, why would you wait? Take advantage of the hole before the enemy can react. Malazan armies usefulness is in their cohesion and battle lines so of course that's how they'd approach.

Point 4 - Err. No. Completely different writing styles and that wasn't the intent here. Malazan always gives you various sides of a fight, usually at grunt level. This won't change. Remember when you had a completely different set of characters just one book ago? That will continue. It's his style.

Yeah, complaining mid book is always a gamble. You need to keep reading. When has anything in this series ever been what it seems?

Stop comparing Erikson and Martin. You aren't going to win that one. They are not remotely similar in style or approach, and anything you think is "trying to be like Martin" is just you.

This post has been edited by HoosierDaddy: 25 April 2017 - 11:53 PM

[Vengeance]

Topic edited. I don't think that Y'Gantan the name is a spoiler. But the bit about the rebellion I edited.

[HoosierDaddy]

Concur. Where, how, and when the "Rebellion" ends is the spoiler.

[worry]

I don't necessarily think your takes are out of bounds, even if I don't agree with them, but I still had some thoughts.

I can't argue that the "good guys" didn't screw up to some degree, cuz they did, but that's part of the story, not like an authorial oversight. From what I've gathered from essays/interviews, Erikson's interest in depicting war -- aside from the ground level brothers(and sisters)-in-arms aspect -- comes from the Vietnam quagmire, the ugly morass where nobody's necessarily doing things the "right" way. He has no interest in depicting sieges as pulsing back-and-forth battles set to swelling orchestral music. That said, I tend to agree with HD on the point that in a siege, a breached wall is a breached wall. I don't think I've heard of any siege situation in fiction where the critique was "the besiegers shouldn't have entered through the breached wall".

Also I think you might be overestimating just how omnipotent or even stable the Empire is outside of Quon Tali. Also, if I remember correctly, the "sapper" who blew up the wall was Crump...so...'nuff said?

[HoosierDaddy]

It was Crump.

Dujek "sieged", actually attacked, Coral without Claw. Problem with sieges in Malazan is that if the other place has mages, they can always reinforce and resupply via warren. So, they aren't like Stalingrad. Pale was different because they had claw present, and Moon's Spawn was hanging out above so it was a stalemate of fear.

[Coltaine -]

If I remember correctly they had the plague on their heels, so they couldn't wait too long with finishing the siege.

Also the Malazan Empire had a big problem at that time. All experienced field armies were gone. The Seventh was wiped out during the first half of the rebellion, the Second, Fifth and Sixth were decimated in the Siege of Pale and the Blackdog Forest and their remains were nearly obliterated in the Siege of Coral, leaving Dujek broken and with an army of recruits and former garrison troops.

Tavore actually planed for this Siege to be a mean fight, so that Fourteenth could become the new fist of the Malazan Empire, with real fighting experience. Aside from the veterans the rest of the army only had fought against Leoman and his riders in their hit and run attacks. If Leoman would not have burned down the city, the Malazans would have conquered it under losses, but we have already seen that some soldiers adapted to the situation really fast, like Hellian, so maybe in the end fewer would have died.

[Traveller]

I suppose a comparison would be Coral, where impulsive decisions lead to near catastrophic losses on the part of the Empire.

Crump blowing the wall wasn't planned, and the street to street could have worked if they'd paused to consider the empty streets to be a trap of some kind and adapted accordingly instead of just bundling in.

My real gripe was with the oil - if it was something more 'fantasy' it would have been more believable, but olive oil? It doesn't just ignite in sheets and explode buildings.

[Gorefest]

KruppeTheGreat, on 25 April 2017 - 11:13 PM, said:

• That was hardly a siege. More like a battle. The Bonehunters get to the city, BAM, make a breach on day 1 and storm it. Without reconnaissance. Without negotiation. Without sending the Claw in, when I seem to remember from Pale that this was standard operating procedure for Malazan sieges. Without knowledge that Leoman had ordered no attempt to be made to defend the perimeter wall;

First of all, when you speak of the 'siege' of Y'Ghatan, bear in mind that this city has been besieged many times before. I cannot remember the exact book content or wording, so I just wanted to clarify whether you weren't mixing up events here. Whenever characters in the book refer to the 'siege' of Y'Ghatan, they most often speak of the siege which happened a decade prior to the events in the MBotF and which was led by Dassem Ultor. I cannot recall whether anyone in Tavore's army actually referred to the assault in the Bonehunters as a 'siege'. I seem to recall that they were in hot pursuit of Leoman and the leftovers from the Whirlwind rebellion and that Tavore's army itself was threatened by the plague. So they needed to get in and out fast, there was no time for a full-on siege.

Secondly, you cnanot compare Pale with Y'Ghatan. At Pale, they had the Claw who neutralised the Pale mages, making a drawn out siege a viable option. In Y'Ghatan, Tavore did not have the luxury to sit outside the city and 'wait it out'. The plague was creeping up and her army was required in different places as well. So the whole point was to get in fast, hit decisively, and move on.

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• Horrendous organization. Effectively the first event in the siege is a "sapper" setting off way too many munitions at once, apparently for the fun of it. While reading through the early moments in the battle, I got the impression that, just prior to deploying for the assault, a significant number of Malazans had just picked up some munitions from the storage and made themselves "sappers". One would think that a war machine as proficient as that of the Empire would have policies against common soldiery picking up devastating weapons without knowledge or training on how to use them;

The whole point of the setting is that the organisation is horrendous, so SE actually succeeds in what you criticise him for. The setting that is supposed to get conveyed here to us as readers is that the 'Empire' has recently had devastating blows to their military capacity. Between Genebackis and Seven Cities (Coral, Capustan, Raraku, Chain of Dogs, etc etc), the various hosts have been pummeled to bits. There are hardly any veteran soldiers left, the armies consist mainly of young local recruits with hardly any actual affinity with or connection to the Malazan homeland, and formal command structures are shaky or absent. So what results is sergeants and captains who have little control over their soldiers, untrained 'sappers' with very little actual experience with munitions getting their hands on stuff they have no clue how to use properly, and little groups of soldiers on the ground with incompetent commanders just doing whatever they think is productive. The 'proficient war machine' that you describe does not actually exist anymore, that is the whole point of this scene. Most of the experienced soldiers were with Coltaine or Dujek. And they were wiped out, decimated, or mentally broken. Tavore comes over from Qoun Tali with just a bunch of green Malazan recruits, complemented mostly with locals. And that is what you are seeing at Y'Ghatan. A group of mainly untested recruits. They were not tested in Raraku, as internal fighting in the rebellion and Raraku itself intervened; they again do not get the expected 'military' hardening at Y'Ghatan. This is the theme that Erikson is weaving over several books, that this is a group of untested soldiers in foreign hostile lands and at every turn their campaign is faltering or diverted. It is a huge thematic setup for the complete story arc.

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• Appalling tactics, way beyond what is justifiable by the Adjunct being an inexperienced commander. Once the gargantuan breach is open, the 14th just sort of marching in, seeming to not even consider the possibility of resistance. While entering a city they know crammed with fanatical enemies. Even Fid, a veteran of the glory days of the Empire, does not seem to particularly object to this suicidal mode of attack.

Again, as mentioned above, the whole point is that they need to get in quick and decisively. There is a breach, so they use the opportunity. What else do you do with a breach? Only the actual assault is rather haphazard as the command structure is weak.

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• The characters: I am actually relieved Erikson killed off everyone (or almost everyone? I lost track) he'd introduced earlier in the book in the siege. I felt like the entire third half of book was Erikson trying to pull a George RR Martin, give the reader a bunch of faces to get used to, to then tug on their heartstrings by viciously murdering them in the assault. Well, didn't work with me. As dozens upon dozens of soldiers, corporals, sergeants and captains got introduced, I found myself growing numb. Didn't really get anything out of this hailstorm of new faces, at least not enough to make me feel anything upon their prompt demise.

The comparison with George RR Martin I leave to you, I'm personally not invested in that sort of cross-referencing. SE has been killing off big characters by the bucket loads from the start of this series, so I'm not sure how it can suddenly be a surprise or a 'pulling a GRRM', especially seeing that both series were written pretty much consecutively and in some cases SE was even earlier than GRRM. If you are looking for any parallels or comparisons, you are better off looking to series like Dune or Glen Cook's 'Black Company'. Those would be far more accurate references as they are written much earlier than MBotF or SoIaF, and SE has never made it a secret that he is a great admirer of those series. Really what SE is trying to achieve with the many character viewpoints and deaths is an alternative look to how we usually see these battles portrayed, i.e. from the perspective of the guy on the ground in full chaos instead of with a bird's eye overview on neat tactical manoeuvres. War is nasty and sad, not elegant. And dirty city street scraps with booby traps doubly so. There is chaos, death, confusion, and tension. It is gritty. And often it is senseless.

Of course there is a reasonable argument to be made whether you think that SE actually achieves that goal and that portrayal or whether you think he missed the mark, but that ultimately is a matter of opinion and an altogether different discussion. I too think that some bits worked better than others and there was a bit of an overload at times.

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• The Malazan Empire: a multi-continent, seemingly all-controlling organization, and yet pitifully unable to put together a force able to effectively besiege a single fortress. A rebel fortress. Not a rival nation, a single citadel held by a handful of ragged rebels. One for which the loss of three thousand men is a catastrophe. One wonders how the Empire even became such under these conditions. This question is shortly answered if you tell me this one battle is meant to show how the Empire has grown sloppy, decadent, and its military incompetent and lazy, but then every last bit of sympathy a reader might have had for anything within the Empire, which, to be honest, was quite high (at least for me) after the Chain of Dogs, vanishes.

Again, see comments above. The whole point is that the Empire *has* grown sloppy and incompetent because of recent events and questionable leadership. It is one of the core setups of the rest of the series, so you are meant to get that impression. It is not a flaw, it is actual intent. I am not sure why you think that you have to have sympathy with the Empire. The only sympathy that SE wants you to have is with individuals. And it doesn't matter whether they happen to be on the side of the Empire, in the rebellion, a tenescowri, or lone individuals. This is not a series about Empire, this is a series about individuals and human interactions. The 'Empire' is a tool, sometimes used for good, sometimes for evil, depending who leads it and who influences its activities.

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• A similar point I could raise about the Letherii Empire, about how it basically controls a continent but a bunch of tribal peoples can crush its entire military and storm its capitol in a week or so. At least the Edur had Kaminsod on their side. Leoman had a bunch of nutjobs and a few jars of oil.

Indeed. You got the point. How could a grand civilization like the Roman Empire be overrun by savages? It is overreaching, the middle cannot hold, corruption seeps in, overview gets lost, people get spread too thin, etc etc.

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• The entire conflagration debacle is basically an overgrown, mutated, magicked version of the Battle of Blackwater Bay in the Song of Ice and Fire, and the usage of wildfire. However I will not take this point any further as I am not even sure this episode was written after said Battle of Blackwater Bay.

Again, can't really do much with the GRRM reference. I'm not even sure if SE has ever actually read any GRRM. Fantasy and historical literature is loaded with battles involving big blazes. I'm sure GRRM based his Blackwater Bay story on other sources as well, it clearly relates to Greek fire used by the Romans. There are accounts of Ghengis Khan and the Mongols using fire to subdue cities. To specifically point to a water battle where they use wildfire on ships as a comparison with a desert city fight where they use oil fire seems a bit contrived and unfair to me. The whole point of the setting, which in my view makes it completely incomparable to the GRRM story, is that we have a group of defenders here which torch *their own* encampment to function as a big trap. That is quite uncommon, because they themselves are actually inside as well. That's why most defenders normally wouldn't do such a thing. It's equivalent to a mass suicide out of spite (or ignorance of Leomans' plans...).

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I think that's all my grudges for now. What I'd like to start here is a conversation about what this episode actually stands for, whether you think it (and the first third of this arc in this book) was effective or not, and whatever thoughts you may have on this whole ordeal.
Again, please no spoilers to the future of the bonehunters. Got enough of those.

I think it was very effective, but you can only judge that by the end of the series when you can put this event in a thematic context I'm afraid. I'd love to hear your comments at that time.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 26 April 2017 - 03:42 PM

[Gorefest]

I would like to add something more general to my previous post, because I fear you may be walking into a more generic thematical trap.

In most fantasy, sf, historical, etc books and series, you as a reader will start off identifying with a certain character, a group, or an institution. This will be your fulcrum throughout the story, the 'good guys/thing' that you are meant to support through thick and thin against various obstacles. And it will result in a big culmination where 'good' will ultimately overcome huge difficulties or near unassailable foes to emerge triumphant. Or there will be a devious twist in which it turns out that your heroes or the thing that you rooted for was the Big Bad™ all along and your preconceptions will get challenged and overturned.


This is not such a series. From the very start there is no clear 'good guy'. Even the Malazan troopers in GotM who operate undercover in Dharujistan under Whiskeyjack are sometimes acting as total dicks. Plus a lot of the characters that you might consider the traditional 'hero' of the story get killed off early in the series or within a single book, or written out of the story altogether, bar maybe a handful. You get most events portrayed from both (or more) sides of the conflict. Even institutions like the Malazan Empire or the Cabal in Dharujistan are not your typical 'force for good'. They are devices, tools, mechanisms of control and structure.

Instead, what SE and ICE ask you to do, and why a lot of people find this such a difficult series to digest, is invest yourself in Humanity as the main 'character'. You don't follow a single person or group; instead, you follow human choices, you observe personal interactions, you live through physical and mental struggles. And it doesn't necessarily matter who are the subjects of the specific struggles and events. It is how human (or other species') nature deals with the world around them in trialing situations. How we overcome. And most of all, how we can be cruel but also compassionate beyond the limits of what we first thought possible. That is what this series is about. Of course we as readers need some sort of handhold and structure, which is why you get given various characters that you can associate with and through whom you can experience these sensations. But in the end the whole series arc is about how we as humans (or reasonable beings) can create horrible situations for ourselves and others even if we do this out of the best of intentions and beliefs, and ultimately how we deal with and overcome such situations. Will we break in the end or will we prevail?

It is highly ambitious and you can discuss forever about whether you think SE and ICE have actually achieved this feat, but you have to give them credit for trying. That alone makes this series unique, and is why I love it so much. Despite its flaws, which do exist. But I'm sure a Rembrandt or a Picasso have a streak of paint somewhere which is slightly askew.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 26 April 2017 - 04:20 PM

[Abyss]

ok, let's do this!

...and to be clear KruppeTheGreat i'm not picking on you, just discussing the points you raised... no attack intended below...


Characters... Most of those characters were introduced back in HOUSE OF CHAINS.
They weren't critical pov characters for the most part. But GRRM kills off well established and sometimes long-running characters, and this wasn't that at all.
Erikson introduced a bunch of soldiers (two books ago) and showed how a poorly executed plan in poor conditions resulted in many of their deaths. I thought that was better than faceless multitudes or a just single viewpoint character (ie: Pella, who was introduced back in DEADHOUSE GATES, btw) dying.


Blackwater Bay... Blackwater Bay was Tyrion using empty ships loaded with Wildfire to attack an invading fleet.
YGhatan was suicidal religious fanatics using their own suicidal deaths to create a fire elemental to attack an opposing army.
Just my opinion, but i think that the comparison ends at 'used fire, people died'. Which would cover about a thousand fantasy novels.

I'm guessing two things here...
One, you probably enjoyed the book to this point and became annoyed that the good guys lost, badly, and two, you probably enjoyed the book to this point so much that you read quickly and missed a lot of the reasons for the things that bothered you.

I think maybe you read the buildup to the attack really quickly... a lot of what you take issue with was flat out explained. You can disagree with it, but it was right there.The reasons why Tavore went is as she did, the lack of Claw or High Mages, the inexperienced sappers, the massive amount of oil Leoman had access to... all the things that bugged you were explained. I dunno, maybe you just didn't accept the explanations, but by example, they weren't a few jars of oil, it was the entire oil harvest for a massive region of 7C that pretty much mostly produces nothing but oil. Kind of a big detail to overlook.


I think that the rest of the book will satisfy you, there's a lot of great epic fantasy stuff ahead in BONEHUNTERS and in the series in general.
But, just a suggestion,t ake it as you will, this is a series that rewards attention to detail. If you miss things and then form conclusions on incomplete information, youre cheating yourself.

[Nevyn]

On the subject of the tactics, lets remember that this is not a long estalished force holding the city, it is a retreating force holed up there. There is a lot less reason to expect organized guerilla resistance, and the last thing they want to do especially if they can easily breach is give the army further time to dig in (not to mention the possibility of a hostile seven cities populace organizing a relieving army). The specific trap they fell for was unexpected.


As for the crazy soldiers grabbing munitions, that is kind of the flavour of Erikson's malazan armies across all the books, and sappers in particular. He has some comments throughout the series on why it has tended to work (the brilliance of the Malazan generals tends to be less on strict discipline in the ranks, and more on getting good use out of even the undisciplined, disobedient, and unconventional ones.

Oh, and the claw generally go ahead of invasions to wipe out a city's mages. In this case, mages were a bit less of a concern.

[Kanese S's]

KruppeTheGreat, on 25 April 2017 - 11:13 PM, said:

So, I'm reading through the final stages of this... siege... (so no spoilers to anything that happens after it, pls) and I kind of feel like this was the weakest moments in the entire series I've found up to now.
I might be rushing to judgement, but I really want to share my thoughts in hot blood.

The whole debacle reminded me of this video series I've been watching, about the greatest military mistakes in history. This... "siege" would definitely fit on that list.
I'll outline the main issues I have with it now:
That was hardly a siege. More like a battle. The Bonehunters get to the city, BAM, make a breach on day 1 and storm it. Without reconnaissance. Without negotiation. Without sending the Claw in, when I seem to remember from Pale that this was standard operating procedure for Malazan sieges. Without knowledge that Leoman had ordered no attempt to be made to defend the perimeter wall;

Time wasn't on their side. There's a plague going on in Seven Cities at the same point that this battle occurs, so Tavore wants to wrap up the rebellion and get the fuck out of dodge.

Why negotiate? The Whirlwind rebels have demonstrated no willingness to negotiate so far.

Also... cause Tavore has so much Claw resources at her disposal. She has... like two assassins.

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Horrendous organization. Effectively the first event in the siege is a "sapper" setting off way too many munitions at once, apparently for the fun of it. While reading through the early moments in the battle, I got the impression that, just prior to deploying for the assault, a significant number of Malazans had just picked up some munitions from the storage and made themselves "sappers". One would think that a war machine as proficient as that of the Empire would have policies against common soldiery picking up devastating weapons without knowledge or training on how to use them;

The specific sapper in question is a former Mott Irregular. Also, because soldiers never fuck up IRL?

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Appalling tactics, way beyond what is justifiable by the Adjunct being an inexperienced commander. Once the gargantuan breach is open, the 14th just sort of marching in, seeming to not even consider the possibility of resistance. While entering a city they know crammed with fanatical enemies. Even Fid, a veteran of the glory days of the Empire, does not seem to particularly object to this suicidal mode of attack.

The only reason it became "suicidal" was the trap Leoman had laid. Tavore didn't anticipate that Leoman would be willing to burn Y'Ghatan to the ground.

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The characters: I am actually relieved Erikson killed off everyone (or almost everyone? I lost track) he'd introduced earlier in the book in the siege. I felt like the entire third half of book was Erikson trying to pull a George RR Martin, give the reader a bunch of faces to get used to, to then tug on their heartstrings by viciously murdering them in the assault. Well, didn't work with me. As dozens upon dozens of soldiers, corporals, sergeants and captains got introduced, I found myself growing numb. Didn't really get anything out of this hailstorm of new faces, at least not enough to make me feel anything upon their prompt demise.

Who, specifically, are you talking about? Sorry you have such a short attention span.

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The Malazan Empire: a multi-continent, seemingly all-controlling organization, and yet pitifully unable to put together a force able to effectively besiege a single fortress. A rebel fortress. Not a rival nation, a single citadel held by a handful of ragged rebels. One for which the loss of three thousand men is a catastrophe. One wonders how the Empire even became such under these conditions. This question is shortly answered if you tell me this one battle is meant to show how the Empire has grown sloppy, decadent, and its military incompetent and lazy, but then every last bit of sympathy a reader might have had for anything within the Empire, which, to be honest, was quite high (at least for me) after the Chain of Dogs, vanishes.

"Seemingly all-controlling organization." That's your mistake right there. How effectively do you think the USA could have fought a civil war right after Vietnam? The costly campaigns on Genabackis have bled the Malazan Empire dry. Also, as mentioned, Seven Cities is undergoing a plague at the time, so they're not going to be sending many more armies that way. The other one they did send is elsewhere in Seven Cities (the place is huge), and is stricken with plague. There's no time to assemble a proper siege.

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A similar point I could raise about the Letherii Empire, about how it basically controls a continent but a bunch of tribal peoples can crush its entire military and storm its capitol in a week or so. At least the Edur had Kaminsod on their side. Leoman had a bunch of nutjobs and a few jars of oil.

The Edur aren't your average "tribal peoples." Also "tribal peoples" have brought vast empires to their knees in real history, so your complaint here is pretty dumb. And it was more than "a few jars of oil." We're talking about vast quantities.

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The entire conflagration debacle is basically an overgrown, mutated, magicked version of the Battle of Blackwater Bay in the Song of Ice and Fire, and the usage of wildfire. However I will not take this point any further as I am not even sure this episode was written after said Battle of Blackwater Bay.I think that's all my grudges for now. What I'd like to start here is a conversation about what this episode actually stands for, whether you think it (and the first third of this arc in this book) was effective or not, and whatever thoughts you may have on this whole ordeal.
Again, please no spoilers to the future of the bonehunters. Got enough of those.

Your grudges are stupid. Fire is used extensively in military operations. It's not a copy of A Song of Ice and Fire just because fire is used. Also Erikson hasn't read it, so there's that.

This post has been edited by Kanese S's: 01 May 2017 - 11:13 PM