Malazan Book of The Fallen Book Club (Book 2) Book • Page 7

If it's any consolation, sticking to the schedule has made reading other books super easy for me. About to start Eye of the World (when I finish the other book I'm reading) actually. Then again, everyone has different reading patterns/habits, I just want more people in on the fun haha.

 

Finished Gardens. A little underwhelmed, but also interested to see how it unfolds from here. Gotta hope that book two pops up in an audible sale soon.

 

finally caught up on week 2!! I liked how they set up Rake in the earlier chapters to be this crazy scary evil powerful mysterious guy. . And then when we meet him with Baruk, he’s actually incredibly likable and cool.

A main thing I love about these books is you never really “pick sides” because of greyness of characters. I’m usually emotionally invested in every POV/storyline

 

The week 4 reading will be chapters 11-13, or book four, "Assassins."

How's everyone doing? I'm maybe 3 chapters into the second novel and rereading it makes me realize how much Gardens feels like a pilot to a series. It's endearing to me for many reasons, but it can be argued that stuff really starts to move in the second book.

 

Oh yeah absolutely. Gardens sets up this elaborate chess board, and introduces the magic system, politics, players, etc.,... but Deadhouse is where the real fun starts imo.

Finished week 3 reading! Dujek deserves MVP for all his savvy politic maneuvering (burning the census info to save the nobles, standing up for Tattersail vs Lorn). Tool shows up, who is one of my favorites and I audibly cheered when he finally appeared haha. This is also the turning point where I started to actually like Paran. But Tattersail...oh nooo :(

 

Haven't got to devote a lot of time to reading recently but hoping to get through much more of Deadhouse Gates next week, I'm only about 1/4 so far. The writing is much improved and the new cast is all pretty good but [LIGHT CHARACTER SPOILERS DG] my god is Felisin awful. I understand she has gone through a lot but she's just not an enjoyable character to read so far.

 

Deadhouse Gates spoiler related to yours I hate her for a long time

 

I'm reading Memories of Ice and I decided that I'm going to follow the publication order (which Erikson suggests) as far as reading the Esslemont books since it looks like they're a lot shorter.

 

She is the absolute WORSTTT for the longest time. I love Heboric and god I just hate Felisin lol you’re not alone

 

OP updated with the Week Four reading. I'm gonna post a sick picture from the Week 3 reading in the morning, so avoid the thread if you're not that far yet (even though you should be!).

 

Here's a cool pic of Adjunct Lorn being rescued from the Barghast warriors by Onos T'oolan.

 

This rules! Where does all of this artwork come from? It's really great putting images to names, helps me visualize as I make my way through the story.

 

Most of the ones I've been posting are from the Subterranean Press editions of the series, which all have these detailed depictions. They're insanely expensive, otherwise I'd be all over them.

 

I’m sorry I didn’t get as involved in this as expected, but I did totally read the whole book. I need to go back and read all the spoilers posted.

 

I'm all for trying to make this discussion a bit more active, if possible, but I find myself tripping over where I am vs. where others are since I tend to read the assigned pages over the weekend/at the very beginning of the assigned week.

Also, I just started The Wheel of Time and it's actually been really fun and interesting reading Eye of the World and Gardens of the Moon side by side. Shows you just how different fantasy can be and I'm kind of hoping I keep a pace that has me reading each book in each series around the same time.

 

Right before I read GotM I had just finished EotW for the first time, two DRASTICALLY different experiences. I can't do books side by side, gotta focus on one, but I do think I'm going to get a couple Wheel of Time books in after I finish Deadhouse Gates and maybe one more Malazan book.

 

I typically don’t like Tarot-esque inclusions, but this was easily the most fascinating part of the book for me. Especially how the certain characters reacted differently to the knowledge/what they still wanted to be a mystery.

 

I can’t imagine reading Eye of the World for the first time alongside this. Bravo to all of you. I need to go by my local used bookstore to see if I can pick up these paperbacks. Don’t have the $120 to drop on the audiobooks right now.

That being said, I’m totally starting my Wheel of Time re-read soon. I miss Aviendha and Thom.

 

You do you man, just glad to have people reading along. Hardly an important thing when compared to real world stuff!

I wouldn't be able to read two fantasy series at the same time haha. Especially since The Wheel of Time and Malazan are like the complete opposite of each other. I'm willing to give that series another go someday. I do remember liking the magic system, and I know Jordan's depiction of strong female characters was pretty revolutionary for the genre at the time.

Yeah, and it is doubly important because the cards represent players and Ascendants that are active in the "game" so to speak, so flipping over the Knight of High House Dark tells you that Rake is involved in whatever is going on, for example.

 

What's amazing about this is how badly they've aged, in some regards, too. Like he took a huge step forward, and in the end, it still appears so far back from where we've arrived. And I'm saying that as one of the biggest WoT fans alive.

 

Ah thank you, i was just gonna say this. I started Wheel of Time about two years ago and was super turned off by how sexist it was. I didn’t think about it relative to the other series/time it was written in though.
I need to try giving WOT another chance, I got to book 5 and it was feeling a bit repetitive, but as a Sanderson fan girl I wanna get to the end

 

Yeah. And I think he course-corrected a bit by the end? I loved Egwene and Nynaeve start to finish, but there are definitely some rough moments.

Sanderson’s female characters are heavily influenced by Jordan. But he’s definitely more modern with them.

 

It's pretty crazy to see how Jordan's depictions of women were a big deal and now they seem backwards. It's interesting to see how even writing fantasy evolves alongside society and culture. I remember thinking when I first started this series (I hadn't read a lot of fantasy at that point) that Erikson's treatment of women was something I hadn't encountered before. You can chalk that up to a lack of exposure, but I like how he writes about women as soldiers/marines/sappers in the Malazan empire. For a series as gritty as this one, it was a refreshing take on many of the common tropes that plague the genre in terms of gender.

 

YES! Ive been paying more attention to this in books nowadays, and giving it special attention on this read through of Malazan.

And I don’t know how to say this without it sounding dumb, but ..I like that Erikson writes women characters as ..just people? He doesn’t spend paragraphs emphasizing their feminity or physical appearance or sex differences, and they can just exist/belong side by side all the men. Whether they are mages or soldiers or assassins or gods. Like, yes there are women in this story, but that’s not their defining idenity.
It’s really refreshing and I hope that’s at all coherent hah

 

This makes SO MUCH SENSE. Again, reading both TWOT and Malazan side-by-side is really bringing some of these differences to light and as someone who obsesses over characterization and avoidance of tropes, I think part of the "weird fantasy" angle of Malazan is simply how un-tropey many of the characters are. Like, you almost EXPECT them to be a certain way, but they're so difficult to fully place in any box that it almost adds to the density of the story (in a very welcome way.)

As far as TWOT goes, and I'm not even done with EOTW yet, I love Nynaeve. She's maybe my favorite character so far. With that being said, there are little subtleties in the writing of Nynaeve and Egwene so far that, while progressive for the time, definitely anchor on them being female characters - though one could also argue that the stereotypes only show through as heavily as they do because their overall characterization is strong. Again, I'm not far enough to make too educated of a statement, but that's how it reads to me.

For Malazan, the statement that "Erikson writes women as people" really rings true to me. I look at Tattersail, Sorry, Lorn, Laseen, anyone really, and there is very little of their characterization that makes them read strictly female to me. Even Crokus' encounter with the girl in the bedroom, which is definitely one of the more "sexualized" sequences, if it can even be called that, does not read in an indulgent way. It's a really nuanced and "human" sequence that feels innocent despite the circumstances.