[cliftonprince]

I have just finished House of Chains and am now reading Midnight Tides. I find that the plot-line involving the character Trull Segnar ought to go in the other order. In House of Chains, the Prologue details how he gets banished by his tribe, and the remainder of that book takes place after this banishment. But in Midnight Tides, the entire book (as far as I've read) discusses his life from the times before his banishment.

This is my second recent thread about my disorderly reading. Heh ... so ... I guess I'm orderly-challenged? OK so, no big deal, I can figure it out. But why does the suggested reading order have these two books going in the opposite direction?

If you're wondering, my total reading through-put so far (read in the following order) Gardens of the Moon, Memories of Ice, Deadhouse Gates, Toll the Hounds, House of Chains, Midnight Tides (in progress, right now I'm on page 300 roughly). Yes, it's a bit unprecedented. It goes approximately 1, 3, 2, 8, 4, 5 ... presuming 4 & 5 are correct in the suggested-order chart, but I'm suggesting they be re-ordered 5-4, but hey ya know it's fun either way.

This post has been edited by cliftonprince: 05 March 2018 - 07:27 PM

[Nevyn]

Not every story is told sequentially.

Think of it like Karsa Orlong in Deadhouse Gates, and then the background on Karsa in House of Chains.

Erickson uses the character where he needs him.


But then he can introduce a backstory, as well as other characters and settings, when they are due to have relevance to the story.

[Puck]

I was going to say that it's not like you didn't already have an example of a major character being introduced and his backstory given only two books later in detail, but then I remembered that you bungled that...

The reading order of HoC -> MT is just fine, it's meant to be that way. If you paid attention, at the end of HoC Trull begins to tell Onrack his story. Well, MT is that story (minus the fact that Trull cannot know of the events in Letheras, but that's stylistic choices and so on). You're not meant to know how he ended up chained in the Nascent until he tells you, because HoC introduces the Tiste Edur as a threat and would make no sense when read after MT, where they are already full force at the centre of things.

[cliftonprince]

Sure, no worries. Just commenting.

Wonder how far an author can really stretch it? The "flashback coming" signal at the end of House of Chains wasn't missed by me. But sometimes the joy of a flashback is in the subjectivity of it. Erikson did not choose to provide Karsa's back-story from the point of view of ONLY Karsa. That method could have different advantages and disadvantages, of course. Karsa might miss things about himself, talk about his enemies as though they were utterly evil rather than understanding their motivations, etc.. It's one method of narration, in which the culpable narrator reveals himself through his own narrative inaccuracies. But Erikson picked a less Karsa-focused flashback method for the entirety of Midnight Tides, a method that isn't, exactly, JUST about how Karsa progressed from the start of his life up to the point where he gets banished at the beginning of House of Chains. Better choice for a lot of reasons, but, as a mental exercise, I'm wondering, how far could he (or any narrator) push the disorder?

Thanks for your comments btw

This post has been edited by cliftonprince: 06 March 2018 - 01:26 AM

[Puck]

I.. don't think you got the character you're talking about right.

Anyway, it's a matter of taste. That's first time I've seen this complaint in my 15 years of being a MBotF reader and fan, but to each their own *shrugs* My personal opinion is that I love it, because I love complexity and despise being spoonfed. Erikson assumes his readers to be thinking and intelligent human beings, not vegetables, unlike some other authors in the genre.

Also, it should be pointed out that MT in its entirety is NOT a flashback. It's just that the situation at the end of HoC is meant to indicate to you that what is coming has already happened, that's all.

Pretty sure Erikson does not actually use flashbacks.

This post has been edited by Puck: 06 March 2018 - 09:42 AM

[Gorefest]

cliftonprince, on 06 March 2018 - 01:24 AM, said:

Sure, no worries. Just commenting.

Wonder how far an author can really stretch it? The "flashback coming" signal at the end of House of Chains wasn't missed by me. But sometimes the joy of a flashback is in the subjectivity of it. Erikson did not choose to provide Karsa's back-story from the point of view of ONLY Karsa. That method could have different advantages and disadvantages, of course. Karsa might miss things about himself, talk about his enemies as though they were utterly evil rather than understanding their motivations, etc.. It's one method of narration, in which the culpable narrator reveals himself through his own narrative inaccuracies. But Erikson picked a less Karsa-focused flashback method for the entirety of Midnight Tides, a method that isn't, exactly, JUST about how Karsa progressed from the start of his life up to the point where he gets banished at the beginning of House of Chains. Better choice for a lot of reasons, but, as a mental exercise, I'm wondering, how far could he (or any narrator) push the disorder?

Thanks for your comments btw

It's isn't 'just' an exercise though. There are clear thematic reasons why Erikson chose to do the story arc in this order, but he is using Trull (not Karsa) as the vehicle to ease readers into the thematic shift. With DG and MoI, the reading/publishing order was more of a 'happy accident'. After GotM, SE wrote the story that was eventually going to be MoI, but his manuscript got destroyed in a fire or lost or something like that, and instead of restarting he decided to do a whole different story arc instead, which became DG. But for HoC / MT, there is a clear thematic shift. The first four books are all taking place on the same two continents (Genabackis and Seven Cities) with some forays into Quon Tali, but the main story arc is much bigger and so he needs to introduce the third and final set of characters and locations (Lether). A lot of stuff has been happening there already before and during the timeline of the previous four books, so that means SE either needed to do loads of flashbacks or an actual time jump. But to jump into completely unknown realm in time AND space with a whole new cast of characters after four novels would be a terribly jarring experience for most readers.

So he uses Trull as a familiar anchor to ease the readers into this new environment. And by setting it up as a Trull backstory/memory, it is clear to the readers straight away, without the author having to put in actual time stamps or elaborate expositions, that we are looking at 'historical' events. That is the main goal of having Trull offering the setting up as a memory in HoC, to make that time jump and to anchor the narrative. After that, SE can introduce other unrelated characters and stories into the narrative because by then the reader has come to grips with the time and space jump.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 06 March 2018 - 01:50 PM

[cliftonprince]

No, I meant Karsa Orlong. I was suggesting how a character could be presented out of chronological order, not which character inherently was presented out of order. But one could use Trull Segnar as the case-study for the question, "what flashbacks would be problematic or non-problematic?" instead and yet come to similar thematic literary revelations, as the above thread attests.

[Siergiej]

You... you read Toll the Hounds before House of Chains? Why?

It's like watching Westworld episodes in a random sequence. Sure you can do that but why.

This post has been edited by Siergiej: 17 April 2018 - 03:02 PM

[worry]

Yah. It's wrong, like watching Westworld episodes.

[cliftonprince]

Siergiej, on 17 April 2018 - 03:02 PM, said:

You... you read Toll the Hounds before House of Chains? Why?

Just didn't have the right books in the house. It didn't really cause too much trouble -- number 8, Toll the Hounds, make sense as a self-contained unit, no problems really at all, even though inserted out-of-order right after 1 through 3 and before 4 through 7. The hard part is now, putting together what I did or didn't know, and when I learned it. I can't remember whether I found out about (for example) Trull Segnar "too early" or "too late" or "in the right order" without looking it up, because I don't know what order things were "supposed" to come in. Generally speaking, I'm therefore letting myself read with a lot more liberty to misunderstand, than I would if I were taking this more seriously. If I miss something, or if I get confused, I don't bother to go back and rectify my confusion. I just keep going straight through, trying to keep the attitude of "cool story bro'!" without worrying about it. This has the disadvantage of leaving me without accurate "knowledge" (so I promise I won't try to correct the Wiki pages!) but an advantage which I have never really indulged in, for most of my life, of reading strictly for relaxation and enjoyment rather than for "winning at the English-major sweepstakes." So to speak.

worry, on 17 April 2018 - 06:54 PM, said:

Yah. It's wrong, like watching Westworld episodes.

I think there's supposed to be a joke in there somewhere ...

This post has been edited by cliftonprince: 17 April 2018 - 10:04 PM