Would definitely recommend him. Nothing will ever beat Malazan for me but it is nice to be able to grasp the magic systems from time to time and Sanderson excels when it comes to magic systems (he has a science background so everything has logic to it).Originally Posted by Ian
Where to start with Sanderson is a tough one but I'd probably say the Mistborn series is as good a place as any.
I'll eventually read The Wheel of Time when I find myself with a spare few years...
Yeah the magic in Malazan probably does make sense but I only have a loose grasp of how holds, decks, warrens etc. all work.
Luckily you only need a loose grasp because it's fairly clear when Quick Ben is donning it.
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Dust of Dreams, a couple of hundred pages in, is off to a slightly odd start.
I only got about half way through that one, partly because I'd read the entire series back to back but also because it spends ages on people who I found it very hard to give a shit about.
It's doing an awful lot of jumping around between a lot of new or very minor characters.
You get a couple of pages of Tehol and Bugg and go "Aha, here we g-..." then it cuts to some kids dying in a desert. Then back to Fiddler or Tavore and again you think stuff is about to happen and it does but it then cuts away again.
It's really not apparent what bearing any of it will actually have on the plot as a whole, which makes it very difficult to care about. I really just want them to get to whatever the macguffin is they're going towards, I struggled to be interested in all the disparate groups of assholes in various stages of misery along the way.
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While we're talking Malazan, I'm probably in the final third of Deadhouse Gates now and it's been excellent so far. I've definitely enjoyed it more than Gardens of the Moon, which itself was pretty great.
My only real issue is that, whilst all the story threads are pretty entertaining, the bits with Duiker and Malazan 7th Army and their massive, impossible escape trek through the desert are so good that I always just want to get back to those bits.
He writes about large-scale military exchanges probably better than anyone else I've come across. It's always properly riveting stuff whenever they head into battle.
Dust of Dreams is starting to feel a lot like a "Right I need to get all this together before the finale"-type of book. I can't say I'm not enjoying it still because I like the way he writes the characters and the characters are excellent but it feels like there is a shitload rapidly being bundled together and that's why we're jumping about. There's now a bit more clarity about where the rest of the book is going to go but the way this is so far does make me curious about what The Chained God is going to be like.
Also it's frustrating that we're in Letheras but not getting more Tehol and Bugg.
The Chain of Dogs stuff is superb and you're right about the military exchanges too. Where the lore sometimes gets a little cumbersome and pool of characters can be unwieldy his writing for fights (either big military ones or scraps between two people) are always excellent along with the characters / dialogue.
It really is excellent. The further into it I read the less I see it having a happy ending, unfortunately. But the way he writes the about the various exchanges is brilliant. It's never unbelievable that they live to fight another day either, because you really do buy into the Malazan army as this well oiled, military machine that always has a plan.
I really like how he weaves magic into the military exchanges too. Whenever the mages or warlocks get involved it's never just some magical, deus ex machina that comes out of nowhere and neatly resolves an impossible situation. He kind of paints it more as this often pretty unpredictable, sometimes quite horrifying aspect of war where they're sort of lobbing these magical weapons of mass destruction at each other and seeing who is left standing at the end of it all.
The best example of this so far for me probably being in the beginning first book when they have all the mages attack the floating fortress (I forget what it's called now) that Annomander Rake lives in and, in the ensuing exchange of magic, end up accidentally wiping out a massive chunks of their own army when they get caught in the crossfire.
I think it's to some extent because battles aren't being won by Hero McPlotarmour murdering a load of people by him or herself. Sure you've got guys like Fiddler and Quick Ben who are an important part of any battles they're in and similar characters for other factions but not too many Big Damn Hero moments.
@Ian
I've finished Deadhouse Gates. What a fantasic read.
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Just you wait until you meet Tehol and Bugg.
Mappo and Icarium is good. Tehol and Bugg is amazing. And genuinely very funny.
Dust of Dreams has a really weird structure. I think when I skimmed the foreword he says it's not your usual novel or whatever but this is just a bit strange. For the penultimate book I was expecting a bit more focus and shuffling of characters together for whatever the final things are going to be in The Crippled God.
I am finally getting to a point in DoD where I'm actually keen to read more of it. It's only taken 900 pages.
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The last book must either be super busy or just leave half the threads with no conclusion. Unless lots of the stories are just supposed to be background colour and not have any proper resolution.
Did you say you haven't finished Dust of Dreams?
If one thing that's just happened where I'm at is about to be explained how I think it is then I think a bunch of characters are about to be herded together here (that was happening to an extent in Toll the Hounds to an extent as well) toward whatever the climax in The Crippled God is going to look like.
EDIT: It's also interesting how mixed a reception The Crippled God seems to get when you look at rankings, reviews, etc. Everything from "don't even bother reading this even if you're read the first 9" to "this was a perfect way to end the series." Presumably the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Last edited by Ian; 10-05-2019 at 03:13 PM.
My kindle tells me I got 55% of the way through before all those miserable tribes doing miserable things to each other drove me away.
At the very business end of Dust of Dreams now.
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How many of these books are there?
Ten of the main series. There are other, related series that I've no idea if I'm going to bother with, they're not essential to the story anyway.
This radio thing doing the rounds is pretty good (go from about twenty minutes). The woman wrote a book about how the Victorians started executing men for being gay, which obviously informs prejudice today and blah blah blah, and which is obviously getting praise all over. Then matey blows a big hole in it and she tries to 'Well yes but...' her way through it.
Watched that earlier. Lol at her.
Right, that's Dust of Dreams done and winging it's way towards me soon will be the finale. DoD ended with more of what Erikson's good at and pulled some of the random stuff together. I'm still not sure what it's all doing there or why certain things happen but hopefully they'll be explained in The Crippled God.
I also started the Luther book which is a prequel and it's actually quite engaging. Not the most complex writing but he adds extra layers to the characters that he doesn't get to in the short TV series.
Luther: The Calling is decent but when you know exactly where it ends it does take some of the tension out of it. Decent though and whereas watching the first series you basically just got told that Henry Madsen (the guy Luther lets fall in the very first scene) is a bit of a wrong'un it's in the book you learn what a proper nutter he was. I think it loses something from not having him and Luther get a proper interrogation-style chat on the go as I liked those bits a lot in the show, more so than Luther magically realising the killer must be mimicking deaths from 1760s literature because he eats his Big Mac before his fries or whatever.
Onto Unseen Academicals now and I've not got very many Discworld books left which makes me a bit sad.
I thought they petered out a bit with the last couple of books. Going Postal was the last really good one for me.
I like Making Money a lot but I think the Tiffany Aching books are more consistent than the non-YA ones by the time he was writing them in turns.
Unseen Academicals finished. I enjoyed it because I just like how Pratchett wrote and the Discworld in general but it's probably the least I've laughed reading any of his books. Only 4 Discworlds to go now.
Started The Crippled God this morning on the train. In a radical change of pace for the opening of a Malazan book I'm about 6 pages in and I either recognise all the characters so far or at least know what story thread they're part of!
Did a load of reading last week and polished off the main Malazan series plus the three Path to Ascendency books. Crippled God was a thousand times better than the previous awful trudge of a book and on the whole he did a great job of pulling the relevant plot threads together into a good ending. My two big gripes with the series remain though, the amount of pointless shit that had very little bearing on anything (try counting the number of plot strands that ended up leading nowhere) and would it have killed him to just explain a few things every now and again or been slightly less allergic to letting some of the main players get any page time.
Path to Ascendency I highly recommend for anyone who liked the main series, it makes some of the stuff you've already read about make a lot more sense.
Yeah, I thought Dust of Dreams sorted itself out slightly right at the back end but there was too much mystery and set-up for other things and not enough shit going down for any book in a series, let alone a penultimate one. Crippled God is significantly better so far. And with some of the stuff I know / assume is coming there's plenty left to look forward to.
If you're looking for more fantasy stuff with that out of the way I can recommend the First Law trilogy if I haven't done that previously.
I'll check that out once I'm done with the other Esslemont books (in the probably vain hope that someone tells us what the hell went on with Laseen and any tiny bits of Dassem I can get)
Let me know how all the Esselmont ones are as I was undecided whether I wanted to dig into all of those.
The three Path to Ascendency books I can already recommend, it's basically the Empire origin story. I'm not loving the others quite as much, possibly as they're one-shots rather than being part of a series but they are interesting in that they fill in bits of the background the main series either leaves out or glosses over. If you're interested in what went on in the Empire after the main series went elsewhere then I reckon you'll like them.
Last edited by Disco; 09-07-2019 at 05:00 PM.
Today I learned that Steve Bruce has written three novels, and if this review is anything to go by they are brilliant:
https://www.balls.ie/football/steve-bruce-novel-293169
I mean she did two but still, Brucey's won that one.Harper Lee has famously only published one novel in her lifetime. Well, she can eat shit because Steve Bruce has published three.
Still powering through The Crippled God. Yedan Derryg.
Also lol'd reading this exchange on the train:
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Last edited by Ian; 22-07-2019 at 01:26 PM.
Into the last third of The Crippled God now and we're definitely into the realms of:
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Today I learned that Steve Bruce has written three novels, and if this review is anything to go by they are brilliant:
https://www.balls.ie/football/steve-bruce-novel-293169
I mean she did two but still, Brucey's won that one.
Still powering through The Crippled God. Yedan Derryg.
Also lol'd reading this exchange on the train:
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Looks brilliant.
Whatever you think about the lead up to it the last book is pretty damn good.Into the last third of The Crippled God now and we're definitely into the realms of:
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I know it helps that it's coming off the back of Dust of Dreams (which probably in hindsight will prove to have been useful even if it's not any fun to read) but The Crippled God is just full of good moments.
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I enjoyed surprise Kruppe.
I should have been more clear that I'm still going through it but that bit WAS good.
Love a bit of Kruppe.
Crippled God finally finished. It really felt like the reward for trudging through Dust of Dreams.
Because there are so many characters it feels like a bunch of them didn't get a very satisfying ending but I suppose that was always going to be the case. So many good moments though.
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I did see that Eriksson is doing the "Witness" trilogy now which is to do with Karsa Orlong.
The whole series is basically Truncated Story Arc: The Novel, a larger than normal proportion of the books are given over to storylines/characters that never really go anywhere (HI KALLOR) beyond building a better picture of the world. I think this is partly down to the origins of the setting itself (a homebrew rpg campaign) but it can be slightly jarring, and exactly what you might expect from an author who purposefully made the first few chapters of book one as impenetrable as he could in order to discourage particular readers.Crippled God finally finished. It really felt like the reward for trudging through Dust of Dreams.
Because there are so many characters it feels like a bunch of them didn't get a very satisfying ending but I suppose that was always going to be the case. So many good moments though.
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I did see that Eriksson is doing the "Witness" trilogy now which is to do with Karsa Orlong.
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Have you decided if you're going to dip into the other books yet?
Yeah you very much feel like rather than trying to tell a complete story or set of stories he's telling you, as the name suggests, the story of a handful (so to speak) of key Malazans (because even the Empire stuff didn't get wrapped up as snugly as I thought it would) so Kallor and a bunch of others play their part in that then go about their business.
I definitely want to get into this Witness trilogy when it comes about.
What else would you recommend of the other ones?
I wanna give some Brandon Sanderson a go at some point.
I think how much you enjoy the other ones will depend on how interested you are in what happens to the empire away from the focus of the main books.
The Path to Ascendency trilogy I would definitely recommend, Esselmont has a similar enough style that you don't really notice (swap word or the day 'potsherds' for 'gyre' and that's basically it) and I enjoyed these three the most. If you like them then read his other 'Novels of...' I've read nearly five of them and while they aren't quite as good as the main series they're worth checking out.
I shall bear it in mind. I think I am gonna give it a little break though. I borrowed a couple of Pratchett books I've not read off my friend so I've read Dodger (it's fine, but a little like his collab with Stephen Baxter in as much as not an awful lot happens and it feels like they're giving you a slice of a time period and telling you about it, though in this case sort-of historical London rather than futuristic sci-fi) and am now on Snuff.
I've got I Shall Wear Midnight on the way to so I can keep on top of reading all the Discworld stuff in order once I've read Snuff, slightly out of order, and I think then I might have a look at some Sanderson.
Or possibly this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Steel-Frame...gateway&sr=8-2
Joe Abercrombie is starting a new series in the same setting as The First Law trilogy.
So since previous posting I've finished Snuff (decent) and I Shall Wear Midnight (excellent) by Pratchett and a Mass Effect tie-in book (much better than I expected.)
Now on the first Mistborn book and have high hopes for it given what a good job Sanderson did with ending The Wheel of Time.
Since the last post I've cleared off the first couple of Mistborn books which were both excellent so I'll be getting into some more of those, probably something else I've forgotten, '52 Times Britain Was A Bellend' which was quite entertaining and am now on the last Discworld book.
So it's fairly clear that The Shepherd's Crown wasn't a hundred percent finished when Pratchett died and having seen something Neil Gaiman commented on that he didn't get written in time there's obviously some stuff that would have been expanded upon. Still good though and there are things about it that make me wonder if he knew it was going to be his last.
I've now made a start on Steel Frame by Andrew Skinner, which is basically about mech pilots though they don't call it that. It's off to a good start.
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