[cliftonprince]

Just finished Toll the Hounds. Enjoyed it a lot! But then I looked back at the suggested reading-order and realized that I left out several books. I've previously finished only Gardens of the Moon, Memories of Ice, and Deadhouse Gates (and now Toll the Hounds). Doh! :

So in the Erikson (Malazan Book of the Fallen) series, I've read numbers 1, 2, 3, and 8. Whoops! What to do about 4, 5, 6, and 7 (House of Chains, Midnight Tides, Bonehunters, Reaper's Gate) now? The reading-order chart makes it look like I'll be OK reading the neglected four in usual order (House of Chains next, then MT, BH, RG). Hope so. (And I haven't read anything by Esselmont yet. I own Return of the Crimson Guard, reading-order says it comes before Dust of Dreams, I'll stick it in as 8-b when I get there).

I think there were a few pieces of information in Toll the Hounds that will be spoilers to developments in the books I missed

Spoiler

stuff about (for example) what Crokus / Cutter had done (and Envy, Spite, Sorry / Apsalar!, ummmm ... a few others? can't recall) in the interim (between the timeline of Memories of Ice and then the subsequent timeline of Toll the Hounds)

but I figured it out just fine, as far as understanding Toll the Hounds goes. It didn't really disappoint me much either. Certainly didn't hurt.

We'll see if my out-of-sequence knowledge of their interim behaviors ruins my experience now that I'm going back to read the books from the interim.(PS it's been about two years since I've been here on the fora / forums / forui.)

This post has been edited by cliftonprince: 26 February 2018 - 07:30 PM

[Puck]

Congratulation, however you managed to have the luck of randomly grabbing exactly those couple books which do make sense when read ouf of the context of the rest of the series.

But yes, your next step ist to go back and start over with HoC, because you certainly can't go on to DoD. As to whether having read TtH would spoil them.. Nah, that's highly unlikely, TtH is pretty unconnected to the other two major arcs.

[Abyss]

Puck, on 26 February 2018 - 07:38 PM, said:

...you managed to have the luck of randomly grabbing exactly those couple books which do make sense when read ouf of the context of the rest of the series....

This.
You basically read one (awesome) complete almost-half of the (awesome!) story more or less up to TOLL. You're safe. Go back to HoC and get reading!

The Crokus n co storyline will be filled in but i doubt it affected your read of TtH. ...and hey, there's always the reread.


So welcome back, now pick up HoC and get reading... i envy you for what you're about to read for the first time.

[cliftonprince]

Puck, on 26 February 2018 - 07:38 PM, said:

you managed to have the luck of randomly grabbing exactly those couple books which do make sense when read ouf of the context of the rest of the series

I think I actually had known what I was doing, about two years ago when I had chosen Toll the Hounds to be my next read after the first three. Something about not having access to the intermediate four, seeing that the sweep of action on different continents was represented in the reading-order chart, etc.. It wasn't totally dumb luck, just beginner's dumb luck, mitigated by the suggestion of a helpful librarian, if I remember correctly.

In fact, I had also read numbers 2 and 3 out of usual order, having swapped the usual sequence of Deadhouse Gates and Memories of Ice. There's a two-year-old post here somewhere by me (under same user-name? I think so?) about how there weren't any troubles with that rearrangement, either.

Over the intervening months, Deadhouse Gates has really stuck with me as a very accomplished book. The pathos of the entire Chain of Dogs saga, the way it's viewed from Duiker's cynical yet dutiful perspective, the establishment of Coltaine as a very sympathetic flawed and not-unreasonable hero, even the little side-trip among the pups, with the lap-dog that gets carried around by the more beastly trained war-hounds, it all remained solid and worthwhile in my memory. I had spent a good deal of this past summer reading many of the great classics that I should have read but never did, things they assign in Freshman English at College (or even in High School), such as Where Angels Fear to Tread (brilliant! brilliant brilliant brilliant!), Brave New World (fun and silly!), O Pioneers (yeh pretty good), Siddhartha (meh), Fahrneheit 451 (didn't like it), many others in that vein. Yet I feel like Deadhouse Gates keeps pace with them, pretty well. The intentions and goals are, of course, different for an epic fantasy novel number 2 or 3 in a series of 10 or 11 (and that's going to be the case for any of the books in that list, each with its own challenges) but I think DG keeps up admirably.

[cliftonprince]

Just caught up to myself. Had previously finished 1, 2, 3, but then I read 8. Now I have gone back and read 4, 5, 6, and 7, therefore caught up to myself at 8. I now have 9 and 10 to go. Making this note more for my own records, necro-post to my own thread!