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My edition of House of Chains gives three maps. Three! Yet all of them turned out to be nearly useless. This edition prints the "Central Malazan Emprie" map, the "Northwest Genebackis" map, and the "Pan'arak Oasis (Raraku's Heart)" map. Here they are at Malazan Wiki (weird, how they prevent you from adequately linking, sorry)
http://malazan.wikia.com/wiki/File:Map_Malazan_Empire.jpg
http://malazan.wikia.com/wiki/File:Map_Northwest_Genabackis.jpg
http://malazan.wikia.com/wiki/File:Map_Raraku.jpg
The first map above (Central Malazan Empire) is utterly pointless. There is literally NO action on that map during the entire book, at all. The closest you can get to having something happen on that map, is action either on Drift Avalii or in Aren. Both of those locations appear as words on that map, but the words have arrows that point to a space OFF of the map! In other words, even the very map that they provided, indicates of itself, that it doesn't help readers with those locations! Kind of like telling a story about Antarctic explorer Shackleton, while providing only a map of southern Argentina with an arrow pointing off the bottom of it toward the South that says "Antarctica, that way." Why bother with the map, if every part of the map that might be used, isn't on the map in the first place? Doh!
The second map (Northwest Genebackis) could have been reduced to nothing more than the upper right one inch, where it shows "Laederon Plateau (Teblor Tribes)" and "Silver Lake." Or left out entirely. The activity in that part of the map takes place when Karsa Orlong is on his first raid. But even that action was not particularly map-oriented, since a great deal of the travels are circuitous and not identified specifically by place-names on that particular map. He's just wandering around in the blank space labeled "Plateau" so having a map without further detail wasn't helpful anyway. I suppose there's a quick traverse of the remainder of that map (when Karsa gets captured, chained, and taken to Genebaris) but again, the map's not helpful, just extra.
The third map is not as useless as the first two. It's vaguely on point. The use of it was unnecessary for me as a first-time reader in order to understand the layout or motions of the characters. But at least it isn't a total waste of paper.
So they gave me three maps I turned out to not want.
But when reading, I felt that I needed a map of the entire Seven Cities eastern sub-continent. There are lots of events that span several of those locations and some of the descriptions got me slightly confused. A map would have been nice! Eventually I got out my copy of Deadhouse Gates and referred to the map in it:
http://malazan.wikia...house_Gates.jpg
What I wonder is, why the heck is the first map above (Central Malazan Empire) in this book, and the last map above (Seven Cities from Deadhouse Gates) NOT? Strange choices ...
This post has been edited by cliftonprince: 04 March 2018 - 04:37 AM
