[I HATE PORMQUAL]

hey all

i just finished House of Chains (much to my dissapointment after the climatic ending to Memories of Ice) and am about to move on to the next book. i am curious however which book to read next. it seems im faced with a choice, Trull Sengars tale seems quite isolated an independant to the rest of the books. i am eager to get onto Bone Hunters but i wonder if it is worth getting onto Midnight tides.

is it a change of pace? does it have much sway with the other books? is it even an nessecary step to read it to understand the others?
opinions please

[vahlar]

Read The Book.
Why Do People Even Ask These Questions?
They Call It A Series For A Reason.

Oh Yeah, It Also Might Be The Best Book In The Whole Series So Far.

[I HATE PORMQUAL]

ahhh, touche

[Illuyankas]

Read it. It is awesome.

Shut up. You're getting annoying.

EDIT: Was a bit harsh, but thought it was a flood of 'what happens next?' through the whole forum, and I was having a bad day :ehh:

[blewin]

When I finished House of Chains, I found it so hard to get into Midnight Tides that I even thought of skipping it (that was before the Bonehunters was published). Reasons? a total change of setting and a whole new cast of characters. Trull didn't grab me as much in the 3rd book, though I did find him kind of interesting.

anyhow, I got bored one day so I decided to pick up Midnight Tides. And I was hooked! Midnight Tides was by far one of the best I've read. In the Malazan series? either 1st or 2nd place. And it is crucial to filling up most of the holes in the series.

so yeah, I wouldn't skip it if I were you. Even though it might take a bit of effort to get into the book at first, don't give up. *thumb up*

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

Of course read it. I can think of no reason not to, eve nif you didn't like the last one. Would you skip a song on a new CD because you didn't like the one before it? Not a great example, because as was previously mentioned, it is a series. If you skip this now, you won't know what is going on later. Because, guess what. Even though it is a bunch of new characters, I bet, since it is a series, they will become part of the overall story and be important later. Because it's a series. This is not a stand alone book thrown into the rest of the series because SE got tired of writing the series. It. Is. Part. Of. The. Series. If you feel the series is dragging, or not worth your time to read all of it, stop now and don't finish it. Skipping one book out of a series is one of the....let's say silliest ideas I've ever heard. So what if it's new characters? Think of it this way. The overall story is expanding that much more. Also, Bonehunters will be a very strange book if you haven't read it, as will the rest of the series. Read it.

[Dark Mac]

A lot of the stuff in TBH is based directly on MT. You won't really get the book unless you read MT first. I don't know why the hell nobody's mentioned that so far.

[Agraba]

Why do you guys have such a hard time reading a book with new settings and characters? How'd you read GotM?

Midnight Tides is my favorite book of the series thus far, out of all six. Second is Memories of Ice.

Read it. The characterization is better, the drama is better. He makes the most effective connection of divided plots out of all the books thus far.

[I HATE PORMQUAL]

agraba my point wasnt that i DONT want to read it. its that i am so eager to find out what happens in BH that this tangent seemed the long way around and a straight path.

raymond man you make a good point. i dont skip songs on cd's. ill go out and buy MT tomorrow

[dktorode]

bah!!

[Mane of Chaos]

You shouldn't think like this. I still haven't read The Bonehunters and I don't know if I would manage to understand it without reading Midnight Tides, but I have to say that Midnight Tides is one of my all-time favourite books and in my opinion the best book in the series. Don't skip it. It's the best so far, as Agraba has already said.

[Agraba]

Yeah, you didn't skip DG with eagerness to get back to Genebackis, right? You have to get used to Erikson's style. He diverts all the time. It's because there's so much going on in his world, that if you just stick at one place at one time, you're missing too much of what's going on elsewhere.

Plus, as mentioned above, there are parts in BH that you have to have read MT to understand.

[Lord of Salvation]

Its worth it just to hear from characters such as Tehol, and Bugg.

Not to mention how gods enter the fray.

The Crimson Guard are a nice touch, especially the avowed.

[jayisspecial]

It's a new cast, but it is a great cast. Imagine that on another continent somewhere distant of the Malazan empire, there are characters scheming every bit of cunning that Kruppe and the gods. Imagine there's swordsmen as skilled as any other found in the book. There's the Cripple god at work, manipulating the world on such a grand scale that no place is untouched... If you pass it up you will be sorry.

[Folken]

well this is the first novel we get to meet the crippled god for more than a few pages and actually get to hear his thoughts and what has become of him, its an important novel for the very reason that it deviates from the main sequence. Bonehunters would be confusing as no tommorow if one should skip this novel. Can you imagine what you would think when characters start popping in and out of nowhere and you're just thinking "how in the world..." and "who the hell is that!"

Lastly...its a bloody series. the books come out in an order for a reason why even think about skipping it just so you can get back to characters you like?

[I HATE PORMQUAL]

WOOT, crimson guard, im sold.

fyi im holding my new copy of MT right now, i shall begin to read

[caladanbrood]

Thats the right decision to make:D

[Rat Mentor]

Just read the the Prologue...

It's the best advertisment for Midnight Tides possible.