Books
Submitted by Abalieno on September 2, 2010 - 05:23.
 (the cover shown here IS NOT representative of content. Buy the book with your eyes closed, if you have to)
I don't know what to write here. I was hoping the last 120 pages of the book would offer me a better direction for my comments but I'm even more troubled now that I finished the book. I also read a few things online about some suspects I had and, finding them true, I blame myself for having doubted of their relevance. So I have this whole new point of view and interpretation that should have been there from the beginning.
Let's put down the framework first. "The Red Tree" is a kind of supernatural, horror, psychological journey that borrows heavily from the long and solid tradition and that recovers and updates what made Lovecraft "work". Not an homage or imitation, but the revelation that what built those genres is still well alive and relatively uncompromised. It's the first book I read of Caitlín R. Kiernan but I soon discovered I had also read some comics written by her so many years ago that I don't remember anymore anything specific about them (The Dreaming). The book is structured in a way somewhat similar to Danielewski's House of Leaves, probably far less convoluted and pretentious, but the aspect I think is more relevant is the game of mirrors. Trivializing a lot: a lesbian writer writes about a lesbian writer who writes a diary about herself. (and I should mention that I have a particular love for meta-narratives) Then at some point the mirror shatters and we have her discovering a short story about herself that she doesn't remember to have written at all. As well more mirrors of herself and her dead lover coming from the past, and maybe the future.
But that's misleading as the story is the one of this alter-ego fictional writer, Sarah Crowe, who flees from her former life and rents an house in the countryside. She begins to write her diary when she discovers in the basement of the big house the incomplete draft of a research written by the previous tenant (now dead), about a nearby oak on which converged a number of legends. The framework and execution, at this level, is made of the solid tradition I mentioned above. Soon the bits of legends Sarah reads seep into her reality and slowly build an estrangement from the "real" world. The researcher's obsession becomes the Sarah's own, and one doesn't even have to speculate the woman will share the previous tenant's fatal destiny as that is already spoiled right in the introduction. It's a descent into madness when the solid reality under one's feet starts to crack and give way. The "abscess" that opens and swallows, and that one's too frightened to look into. The ideal spook story would then end with a plausible rationalization that explains everything, but with the supernatural element still very possible and not completely fended off, and the reader left wondering if it was all true or not, and so the resulting haunting ambiguity.
All this stays true to this book. While I was reading I kept waiting for some reversal of canons that would bring novelty and would justify the great praises the book received, but that didn't come. It didn't come from the way I was expecting it. The story stays well within the canons, it's not a "modern" interpretation. It doesn't drop some classic conceits: it appropriates the canons. And that is where it hits, but also the part that gave me some problems and so I'm not too confident to wrap up and be done with it. The problem being that I'm not sure I have interpreted it in the right way, or in a way that can be reasonably considered complete or accurate. Too many aspects that I can't place correctly in the frame, and also the feeling I don't have any hope to eventually figure it out. A bit frustrating.
The whole context is of the kind that puts me off balance. I prefer much more to have things stated bluntly, so that I can get to the nuanced aspects once I get the perimeter well defined. While I have a really hard time to start from the nuances and relate to a perimeter in-the-making that is never quite set and solid. You know, punching holes into certainty. Rationalization as the antidote to comprehension. These habits and mindsets of mine don't really help here. Now excuse me the following utterly sexist and horrid sweeping generalization. It's like I'm gaping into the mind of a woman, feeling slightly intrigued, slightly amused, then set the thing down and walk away shaking my head, thinking: "What a fucking mess". But then I don't think I'm a sexist and so I come away just feeling I'm missing a whole lot and don't have what it takes to figure it out.
I should say that these "problems" are entirely my own and that I do not recognize in the novel itself. I just have to deal with writing an incomplete "review" and the feeling I can't leave the thing behind in a satisfying way. Yet do not worry, because even if you share my own shortcomings there's still plenty to appreciate. The book is really well written and gripping, a personal journey you will remember, and I think that even if I wasn't able to formulate a final explanation (or one that isn't so simplistic that I dismissed it right away), I was still able to grasp a core of meaning. The same core of meaning that builds the "worth" of this book.
The only beacon I had is self-fashioned and about the whole argument of "truthfulness" in literature that i discussed in the past. For most of the book I was trying to "get" it, but already from the first pages I noticed and appreciated the style of writing. I said the book stays well within the canons, but this doesn't apply to the writing style. There's no use of classical language or rhetoric or fancy flourishes. It doesn't read like a dusty old tome. The language is modern and tight, the voice surprisingly authentic. It's the writing to surface and shine instead of the story, and I was captured by the mundane long before I started developing interest in the supernatural aspects. Sarah's character won me before everything else and I was wondering how the book would proceed if I continued to be so weirdly biased toward the mundane. I thought it was my own problem since as a teenager I fed so much on the horror genre that nowadays it hardly has anything to offer, but now I think that this effect was somewhat intended. The supernatural aspect comes up with more strength toward the end of the book, obviously, but it does so in an unexpected way. It's the mundane to become horror, and it's one own feelings to open on the pit no one dares look into. The darkness is the human being. Or, to quote Bakker, the darkness comes before, and AFTER:
It's only after that we understand what has come before, then we understand nothing. Thus we shall define the soul as follows: that which precedes everything.
Superstition. Everywhere and in everything, Leweth had confused that which came after with that which came before, confused the effect for the cause. Men came after, so he placed them before and called them “gods” or “demons.” Words came after, so he placed them before and called them “scriptures” or “incantations.” Confined to the aftermath of events and blind to the causes that preceded him, he merely fastened upon the ruin itself, men and the acts of men, as the model of what came before.
I still clearly haven't reconciled with this, as I am sure that the book reinforces this idea that the darkness comes after (so a man or woman create and shape it), as well its opposite, that the darkness comes before and that what was discovered was indeed out of time and true. Inhuman, absolute. That those hallucinations were real. And I'm even more fucked if I think my whole interpretation (the darkness that comes after) is only due to me reading Bakker, and so completely uprooted from what "The Red Tree" wanted to show. What a mess, indeed. A few hours ago on twitter I sent a comment to Caitlín Kiernan since she tweeted she didn't want her works to be classified as "urban fantasy" so I suggested Mark Charan Newton fancy definition of "Rural Fantasy". She replied directly and seriously to what was intended as just a transitory joke, but after finishing the book this offered, and confirmed, the different perspective. She wants it called "dark fantasy". And that darkness is maybe entirely within, and not outside.
In any case, there are elements of the plot I can't place at all (like the seven paintings and corresponding messages, I couldn't make anything out of them) and so the proof that even if I may have gotten something framed correctly the whole picture is still far away...
I should also mention that the descent into madness is also proportional to clarity and self-awareness. That's maybe the most unconventional and unexpected aspect of the book. The "unreliable narrator" is a device presented in a self-aware way, used to give the text that ambiguity that keeps the disparate interpretations plausible at the same time. But toward the end this unreliable narrator becomes the only authoritative guide. One assumes that madness corresponds to a loss of contact with truth, but here the whole meta-narrative becomes clear in the mind of the character and she even seems to mock herself for it, and maybe it's this to provide a way to escape madness by sacrificing an envelope to it.
I consider it quite an awesome book. In spite of these themes surfacing, I still personally enjoyed the characters so much that I would have loved it even if it removed all the supernatural parts and layers. I mean, I was loving that character with or without the darker side exposed. I was loving the unforgiving way Sarah saw herself, the nihilistic aspects. Her relationship and how painfully truthfully it is written. A kind of desperation that destroys any attempt for embellishment or rhetoric. Even WITHIN fiction:
I am usually at my most brutally forthright when making shit up. That's the paradox of me. And having lied, it doesn't mean that I was necessarily dishonest.
A book whose stronger aspect is, paradoxically, the demystification. And, maybe, literature as a form of therapy. One of the most emotionally involving and authentic novels I've read.
Submitted by Abalieno on August 28, 2010 - 04:09.
I hunted around for good copies of the maps printed in the "Prince of Nothing" trilogy, same as I did for Malazan.
The US edition of the book is rather badly done, the map is printed on two pages and the central part is missing. So here are the two maps in the best resolution I could find. These are better even than the official ones Bakker provided on his site (which I think is now offline).
- Eärwa
- The Western Three Seas
Submitted by Abalieno on August 27, 2010 - 00:45.
I took the occasion of a forum discussion to delve in some ideas I was brooding for some time. It's again the ideal link between all the books I've read lately, with "Infinite Jest" as the central pillar.
The discussion about characters is the excuse to examine literature and its position in the grand scheme of things.
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the soldiers are just random mouthpieces for the author, who'll switch attitude (I cannot speak of personalities: they don't actually have personalities) with every scene. It's not really hard to be more powerful than that :)
Take Gardens of the Moon. On my first read I could hardly match a Bridgeburner name with the corresponding character, if I did the description of the personality of that character would still be rather limited.
I'm following Tor re-read of the same book now. With the struggle to memorize names and context out of the way I'm discovering a whole new layer in characterization that was almost entirely missing on my first read. Dialogue that was before just between anonymous masks is now consistent with the character and unexpectedly rich in nuances. I feel like I'm reading a wholly different book. Not just consistent but filled to the brim with cross-references that required the insight I didn't have before. Things to glide over or just producing a big question mark to then move on with the reading. The last two pages I've read about Rallick Nom gave an introspection and depth to the character that I didn't remember was there, written really well. The tension of Kalam and Quick Ben when they are found by Sorry, and the realization that what they thought was correct, and that it meant they would be dead. Or when they leave for their mission, knowingly reciting a number of delusions as to exorcise them. Then the scene with Whiskeyjack waiting for them with the rest of the squad, a scene where every line adds something to the characterization and true friendship of the whole squad, the dialogue between them, and then the arrival of Quick Ben who cringes in front of WJ, and WJ losing his patience. An undeniable feel that these characters have been together for a really long time, and not just since the beginning of the written page. Characters that come out of the page, with natural dialogue between them and drawn from they are, and not directed to the reader.
That scene is as great as any Black Company scene written by Glen Cook, and it's from a book that is far from the best Erikson delivered when it comes to characterization.
The confusion and inconsistency isn't of the characters, it is of the reader. The books pretend a reader to memorize and familiarize way more than it is possible, way more than what it is reasonable to ask, and that's why re-reads are so revelatory in this series about both characters and plot. The confusion of the reader is undeniable because the series represents the far opposite of "accessibility". It's actually a big flaw the series has. It is inimical, too dense and unwieldy. But the characterization is there in that ink and it is consistent. It requires more patience than usual because you only get quick glimpses at a great number of characters, and they only become "real" characters with an adequate amount of pages and time, time that is definitely not easily available among readers who are already having an hard time getting through a so dense book and digesting Erikson parsimonious writing style.
Erikson's characterization can be compared to an impressionist painter who only delicately dabs and sketches. It will take time to familiarize and recognize a character for what it actually is, and to appreciate the panting that at a first glance appeared as just a confusion of random colors. The forms are in the painting, but it takes time to make the eye used to them and recognize them for their value.
This opposed to a traditional type of characterization (neither better nor worse, just different) where you stay in the mind of a character for the long haul. Full-on introspection that begins giving you the context of where and how that person is living, what he feels, what he loves, his fears, his desires. A thoroughly rationalized character. That makes a reader familiarize and understand it. Identify himself and so "caring" for the personal story and feel emotional attachment and empathy.
The heritage of "modern" fantasy was not in delivering characters that are "gray". But in forcing the reader into their PoV. We often have warring factions, but we zoom into both of them, taking both sides. All of the recent fantasy with gray characters could be turned into solid black and white by just removing the corresponding PoVs. Without motivations and alternative observation points, every story becomes polarized.
The thing Erikson successfully or unsuccessfully tries to realize with his characterization is about starting to show that "stories" exist with the characters, but also in spite of them. The real world chews characters and spits them out, is disdainful of personal stories. A book can usually follow the life of a character through an ideal arc, whose premises define its conclusion. But that's the nice trick and deceit that traditional literature does to the real world. The illusion that there is "sense" and "meaning". Beginnings and ends. Justice. Retribution. Payoff. We create "meaning" out of a meaningless, unjust world. Lives are cut short and no one actually dies only once he solved his issues. Flaws, imperfection, lack of meaning and especially the lack of understanding of others are the things that are always true. Humanity is about the damnation of the deceit of seeing "meaning" where there is none. It's a tragedy, and the Malazan series is written as a tragedy. It's not "fantasy", it's a 1:1 copy of this world, a reflection on a only slightly misshapen mirror.
To grieve is a gift best shared. As a song is shared.
Deep in the caves, the drums beat. Glorious echo to the herds whose thundering hoofs celebrate what it is to be alive, to run as one, to roll in life's rhythm. This is how, in the cadence of our voice, we serve nature's greatest need.
Facing nature, we are the balance.
Ever the balance to chaos.
"in the cadence of our voice" means a written page. Language. Or what only separates humanity from the rest of life forms. (I am a man. I stand apart from these things.) Nature is the chaos from where we desperately scrape meaning.
With that lacerating truth in mind, Erikson realizes characters whose story (and characterization) is shred and tattered. Suspicion and opaqueness are traits that are true in our world. And if a foe suddenly turns into a possible ally it's not "inconsistency", it's understanding. Full-on introspection doesn't work like that even for ourselves. (Foster Wallace attempts "true" full-on introspection with the result that it generates a tremendous annihilating whirlpool that either sucks you in or hurls you away) We don't have the privilege of a personal writer who overlooks what we do every day and inscribes meaning and finality into our lives. We are opaque and uncertain even to ourselves, even less to one that merely observes. Meaning is not "found" outside, it is created within. The story of the Malazan series is unmindful of characters, it's up to the characters to find their path, only to see it end abruptly. And up to the reader to decide what to do with them.
The only journey that lay ahead of him was a short one, and he must walk it alone.
He was blind, but in this no more blind than anyone else. Death's precipice, whether first
glimpsed from afar or discovered with the next step, was ever a surprise. A promise of
the sudden cessation of questions, yet there were no answers waiting beyond. Cessation
would have to be enough. And so it must be for every mortal. Even as we hunger for
resolution. Or, even more delusional: redemption.
Now, after all this time, he was able to realize that every path eventually, inevitably
dwindled into a single line of footsteps. There, leading to the very edge. Then… gone.
And so, he faced only what every mortal faced. The solitude of death, and oblivion's final
gift that was indifference.
The Malazan series is not consolatory, it is about compassion and reconciliation.
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Submitted by Abalieno on August 27, 2010 - 00:10.
I couldn't wait anymore to start reading R. Scott Bakker so I've taken The Darkness That Comes Before from the shelf even if I still have to finish The Red Tree, and before Sanderson's Way of Kings flies over here. After being engaged deeply with Erikson, Bakker's themes appear as a natural extension of what I've learned to appreciate. There's some sort of dialogue between these books and I'm intrigued by what will come out.
What comes before determines what comes after. Dûnyain monks spent their lives immersed in the study of this principle, illuminating the intangible mesh of cause and effect that determined every happenstance, and minimizing all that was wild and unpredictable. Because of this, events always unfolded with granitic certainty in Ishuäl. More often than not, one knew the skittering course a leaf would take through the terrace groves. More often than not, one knew what another would say before he spoke. To grasp what came before was to know what would come after. And to know what would come after was the beauty that stilled, the hallowed communion of intellect and circumstance - the gift of the Logos.
See how this excerpt, from the prologue of Bakker's book, will tie nicely with my next post.
Submitted by Abalieno on August 25, 2010 - 02:27.
 This is a lean book that took me to read way more than expected, mostly because it fits the "other read" while I was engaged with more meaty books. A debut, as a writer writing books instead of comics, and first in a rather long series made of standalones. This is where Dan Abnett started writing Warhammer 40K, accordingly to the internet not his best effort in the field, but a decent and solid one still. Optional as a starting point since one could start right with Eisenhorn or the multi-writer crossover of the "Horus Heresy" currently being published. Instead this specific series, whose opening volume is "First and Only", is made of twelve books already released with more planned, but the number shouldn't discourage as the story moves either through standalone stories or story arcs that are over in three or four books. There are also these nice & cheap omnibus that pack together those arcs in mammoths of 800-1000 pages, so you're not chasing in frustration a conclusion that never comes. You can satisfyingly read just one and stop, or go on as far as you want, guilt-free.
Genre is military sci-fi. Common theme to the series are "Gaunt's Ghosts" a specific regiment in the Imperial Guard faction and the ongoing campaign on Sabbat Worlds, whose name correctly implies dealing with Chaos and defining Abnett's own playground. Gaunt being the name of their leader and main character/hero, Ghosts being the nickname of said squad (the story will give some insight into the choice of the name and origin). It's effectively tie-in fiction, and so branded with prejudice, but the fact is that Abnett is a competent writer who can stay perfectly within the canon, know what his public wants, and deliver a successful product. There's nothing bleeding edge, innovative, or breaking the boundaries of the 40K setting, but the execution is good and the book delivers what it is meant to. Abnett can understand and squeeze out of the setting all the specific tropes that make it interesting and fascinating, and can write it so that it doesn't feel plain and spoiled by the game it's based on. Meaning that the "canon" successfully empowers instead of trivialize and conform. That's always the gamble, knowing the canon and so knowing the "range" of the possible story, tiptoeing within the strictly defined perimeter. Abnett proves then that you can have fun with those toys instead of creating new ones, that there are qualities within to exploit.
Writing a good book here pairs with giving a specific audience "tied-in" the canon what it wants. I'm not really familiar with the setting so I can't comment if the picture Abnett gives is a faithful one, but he definitely seem to get the basics that make it work. WH40K is an apocalyptic setting about excess and exaggeration, but also about human traits and artifacts brought to the extremes. The potential for drama is high, but also the potential for something spectacular and epic and ultimately fun. In this book Abnett bundles epic infantry warfare with military/political intrigue, so while the plot goes through a number of setpieces/key battles on various worlds, there's also an overarching story that links and gives meaning to these battles, leading to a culmination where the import of all happened before is finally revealed. Both of these story threads are handled well through a structure that alternates the main battles with flashbacks from Gaunt's life that slowly build the character and plot, and why the reader should care about them. Every "block" adds a piece, chunking the story in an episodic way, in which each battle/chapter is brought to a conclusion, and then linked to the specific arc that starts and ends within this lean book (vaguely similar to the first Black Company book). This results in a tight structure and plot where nothing is superfluous and where the pacing doesn't slow down. The aim is set from the first page and the pacing is resolute and constant. The "fun" is there on plain sight, the action scenes equally distributed, and you don't have to wade through weak parts to get to it. If you enjoy the ride you'll enjoy it on every page without being let down.
Daylight rolled in with a wet stain of cloud, underlit by the continued bombardment. The lightening sky was streaked and cross-hatched by contrails, shell-wakes and arcs of fire from the massive Shriven emplacements in the distant shrouded hills. Lower, in the wide valley and the trench lines, the accumulated smoke of the onslaught, which had now been going on for just about twenty-one hours, dropping two or three shells a second, curdled like fog, thick, creamy and repellent with the stink of cordite and fycelene.
Abnett is rather good at writing what takes the stage the most: action scenes and some spectacular setpieces. There's a sort of unintended anticlimactic effect since the battles escalate in size and impact, but the first one is the most successful because it mimics some aspect of WWII, with infantry moving through trenches and trying to survive heavy bombardments. The perspective of those men caught in the mess just works and resonates with the real scenes one is already familiar with. Some acts of desperate heroism, some unlucky sudden deaths, sudden change of plans, last minute saves. You can see some canonical situations taken from a number of movies that are here reinterpreted in the new setting, all the while, but without pushing too much, trying to give a name to those soldiers, slowly learning their roles and a couple of personality traits for each. The recipe is well known, after all. At the end of the book I was still struggling recognizing who's who and there's no character that delivered substantial depth or anything more than two-dimensional, but I also don't think the book tried to go in that direction. It's relatively unpretentious and focused on the fun things. It doesn't take itself too seriously and it is not even shallow. Characterization is proportional to its use and purpose within the scene. Some characters are even made for just one or two scenes, to then step out again (often dead). Fun, fast paced, straightforward, and with characters that are good enough to fit the situation and make it work. No more, no less.
The prose is functional too. It's not bloated and at the same time it gives some impressive and effective imagery. Battles on a big scale are a complicate thing to deal with, especially battles that have so strong fantastic elements. Abnett deals with all this with ease and familiarity, not betraying the fact the book is a "debut". Action is crystal clear, never confused and keeping a pace that doesn't disrupt the flow. I guess that's the most important aspect in writing this sub genre of military sci-fi. With the plot filled with surprises and the mysterious aspects being well managed, the book is quite successful all over. The only quirk in the prose I don't personally like is that it can be way too pompous and rhetorical, including the metaphors used and the uncompromising manly men described. "Subtlety" is something banished here, everything is upfront and direct and explicit.
Fire patterns winked in the russet darkness. Yellow traceries of venomous death.
The turret guns screamed into life, blitzing out a scarlet-tinged, boiling stream of hypervelocity fire.
The plasma guns howled phosphorescent death into the void.
One has to wait the final battle develop to get the big revelation about what it was that Gaunt and his Ghosts chased for all the previous pages. While I said the structure of the book is solid and well executed, this can also be a problem because it's as if the import and meaningfulness of what happens is left hanging and undecided till the end. It's hard to trust the book because one can't say till the last 20 pages if it's going to be worth it or if it will be an hoax. The pre-finale, after the big revelation is dropped, is painfully predictable, but there are a number of pages left and even if the plot seems to have exhausted its fuel, it keeps going on and keeps surprising, tying together every small subplot even too neatly, including a nice bow. The surprises continue to come till the very last line, so even if the whole conclusion is made by a number of scenes that all feel somewhat trite and cliche, the overall result is fun and convincing thanks to the good execution of those traditional elements and scenes. Like an action movie that doesn't disappoint.
I haven't read any military sci-fi before this book, so I can't gauge how it may compare. I think it is well executed and its strength are in its deliberate focus on action and intrigue, making a reckless and fun journey. The battles excellent and varied, from huge showdowns of thousands of men to chainsword duels, described in vivid gory detail. The downsides are built-in the model, many of the elements that compose both the story and characters are cliche and drawn/taking inspiration from the multitude of books and movies that have something in common with the genre, but I wouldn't point this as a "flaw", since the use of these conventional elements is competent and well realized. Even if dipped in predictability in various points I wasn't bored by the plot and the pacing was perfect. I only faltered about the trust in the book, since as I said the stakes are only revealed at the very end and so the reader is kept in the dark about some major motivations. Also consider that this is a starting point and, accordingly to other readers' comment who read more than me, Abnett only gets better. Truly recommended for those who look forward to some pulpy military sci-fi with a fast paced plot and epic battles that rock whole worlds.
Submitted by Abalieno on August 10, 2010 - 21:43.
While on other blogs the cover blurb for The Crippled God is being posted, I asked Hetan if she could provide the wordcount for this last novel in the series, and she did.
Being myself at the 5th book yet to start, the internet is now filled with spoilery perils, including that synopsis. Hopefully I won't stumble on something that ruins my own reading in the next months and years. I have to hone my dodging and skimming skills.
So, this wordcount that Hetan provided is still tentative since the book is currently in the editing phase, but it should give a decent approximation of what to expect, and then sum up with the rest for the final count of this staggering (on all levels) achievement.
We'll now wait for the cover and official release date. The tentative one is 20 January 2011
Here's the summary:
Malazan Book of the Fallen - Steven Erikson
Gardens of the Moon: 209k
Deadhouse Gates: 270k
Memories of Ice: 351k
House of Chains: 306k
Midnight Tides: 271k
The Bonehunters: 365k
Reaper's Gale: 386k
Toll the Hounds: 392k
Dust of Dreams: 382k
The Crippled God: 378k (tentative)
Total: 3M 310k
other wordcounts
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Submitted by Abalieno on August 2, 2010 - 18:23.
I'm re-reading some parts of Gardens of the Moon to follow the Tor official re-read and I'm amazed/dismayed to realize that most of the flaws I had noticed in the book, some of which even pointed out in my review, were only due to my lack of attention and familiarity with this series. The book is really incredibly dense with details I couldn't pick up, so leading to call for apparent mistakes when it was just this reader who wasn't being smart enough to catch the nuances ;)
Anyway, I just opened the book on a random page and found a nice Kruppe quote:
That one's own skull is too worthy a chamber for deception to reign - and yet Kruppe assures you from long experience that all deceit is born in the mind and there it is nurtured while virtues starve.
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Submitted by Abalieno on July 22, 2010 - 22:23.
I've hunted for this news for the last four months, after about two months of delay on the original deadline The Crippled God is complete and now going in the hands of the publisher.
The current estimation for the release is the 20th January, but it may as well be anticipated (it happened before) or postponed. Now it depends entirely on the publisher, hoping they'll do a great job since Erikson deserves it.
Announce that came from Erikson's Facebook page (but it is private and not open to fans):
"GASP! That would be me, coming up for air. How long was I down there? About twenty years, from conception to completion. The Malazan Book of the Fallen is done. Sure, editing and all that crap to follow. But ... done. I don't know who I am. Who am I again? What planet is this? Three months of butterflies ... maybe this double whiskey will fix that. Hmm. No. Delayed reaction going on here."
According to my wordcount list the complete series will be around 3 millions 3 thousands words.
It's a monumental achievement in literature in general. No one can realistically embark for a 10-books series and expect to be successful, because no one can realistically plan ahead 20 years of his life, even more insane if this sort of plan is artistic in nature, and so more capricious and out of control. Erikson succeeded in the only way possible: sticking to deadlines and keep delivering without losing focus. He survived his own staggering ambition.
He made it. It is done.
Here's a pertinent quote from the recent introduction to Gardens of the Moon:
The journey ahead, of words on a screen and then paper, still awaited me in the idyllic state that was the future. Yet the publication of Gardens of the Moon was, for me, a momentous event; for it permitted me to sharpen my focus, as I slowly, almost disbelievingly, comprehended that what was now coming to pass was indeed possible. These things could be reached. The import of that statement cannot be overemphasized. They can be reached.
I am now on the cusp of the tenth and final novel in the Malazan Book of the Fallen. Almost ten thousand pages span the gulf from Gardens to The Crippled God, a detail even more numbing than the decade it took to compose them. I am often asked; how do you sustain it? A difficult question to answer. How do I not? I have a tale to tell and until it is done an inexorable momentum drives me, an impatience against which I still struggle, knowing I need to do it right, and that haste is my deadliest enemy. Especially now.
I cannot claim any prescience with that opening; perhaps, indeed, I was aware on some subconscious level that I was fighting the very thing that confounds many readers with this series. For me, it was the push to advance the story versus the pull to keep it under control, to hold tight on the reins no matter how wild the bucking beast. For the reader, the whole thing reverses: the story pulls, the details prod, claw and tug.
Prod and pull, 'this the way of the gods ...
I can only say that I'm glad I found these books, I feel like I've waited all my life just to read them :)
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Submitted by Abalieno on July 12, 2010 - 01:29.
 I began to read the book almost a year ago but got sidetracked after about 70 pages, so when I took it again a couple of weeks ago I had to restart from the first page since I had a very vague idea about the part I had read. Not that it got so much better the second time through, the story defies control and one has to struggle to distill from the book some form of logic progression. Reading this, day after day, feels like you never make any progress, which I guess is the point. There's a direction, a sort of abstraction of the concept of the "quest" in its most absolute form. The endless, ultimate journey toward something that is perceived as the definitive "Truth". Or better, this is the conceit, the Mac Guffin. Roland, the Gunslinger, on his journey toward a mythical, capitalized Dark Tower. Only that this is one book, part of a series. So for this single instance Roland is chasing after another Mac Guffin, the "man in black", who, when caught, would hopefully point Roland in the right direction.
The starting point is not present. We see this chase when the chase has become a consolidated reality that seemed to go on forever. The beginning is a blur, a movement whose beginning was lost. It starts with a desert that represents the absence of a definite space and time. An infinity whose confines are misty and dream-like. The quest is a journey, but here it seems trapped in a stasis: the longing for something that can't be achieved, the distance that never closes. I'd say it doesn't even work as a "tease" because we can't grasp anything meaningful of Roland himself or the object of his longing. Merely an assumption. You witness obsession without motives. One has to reach the very last few pages of the book to have at least a glimpse of what the tower represents. The story is not one built to entice the reader and follow along. The place is haunted and inhospitable, but it's maybe in these traits that someone may find some fascination.
The introduction written by King himself is the most revelatory part. It explains the origin of the idea, especially its naive ambition. The rest of the book is, at the same time, talented, immature and pretentious. All together in a mix that represents the real quality to find here. There are no restraints typical of the established writer, no control of the parts, but this has the consequence of "freeing" the creativity and let it go wild and uncaring. The writing is powerful as it is naive. A core of talent as wordsmith mixed with the pretentiousness, egocentricity and impudence of the young. It takes itself so seriously that it builds a wall of detachment, not reaching out to the reader or gaining his sympathy or empathy. The place is haunted, all characters being like phantoms of momentary conscience, fading in and out, being themselves lost too and living aimlessly. There's everywhere, on the characters and the places, a sense of nostalgia. Something missing or forgotten that can't be pinpointed. Even if nostalgia should be a thing of memory. Everyone is missing something but without being able to remember what it was. Nostalgia of the future. A suspended and undefined state of agony.
The scenes are all dream-like, evanescent. Their symbolic meaning more important than the factual one, but at the same time esoteric and impenetrable. The book is filled with symbolic myths but nothing at all is explained or even placed into context. These are shattered lives, like glass whose pieces do not connect anymore. I guess the purpose is to to establish this mythology that will only start to make sense later and in retrospective, when the story will loop on itself. There's already here the impression that the pattern has been repeated, that these characters are themselves victims that follow trails that are merely their own. Condemned to retrace themselves, only to forget again. It sounds, and is pictured, like a torture.
If anything, Roland is the only character who seems to have maintained some tangibility. Of self-awareness. Other characters are all hopelessly lost, unrecoverable. Roland seems the only one who produces a difference, sometimes catastrophically, but still a change or a disruption of that agony. When he exterminates a small town the feeling is one of gratitude for having put those ghosts out of their misery, but at the same time he certainly doesn't win a sympathy in the reader. Roland is himself haunted and hallucinated way beyond any hope of recovery. We have no insight and so one cannot sympathize or understand. This first book works merely as a framework and I'm sure the character will grow toward something more human later on, in this first he stays obscure and maybe for this reason vaguely fascinating. A twisted, black anti-hero that plays maybe too much with being against the convention. A kind of anti-stereotype that is itself a stereotype.
In the end this book taken as a single entity is not generous and rather opaque, I didn't get much out of it beside the fancy, dislocated atmosphere. Abstraction without substance. It closes, before setting up the sequel, with a trippy space journey taken straight out of '2001: A Space Odissey', but here the meaning is painfully obvious and plain, revelatory of the fraud hidden behind. Containing just a promise of something more meaningful to be revealed later on, coinciding with the promise of the Tower and the conclusion of the series itself. It dresses itself as wise and resourceful but the conceit is evident. As Roland, I have no solid motivation to carry on with the hopeless and insubstantial chase. You need to entice me with with something more than mystical mumbo-jumbo and esoteric made-up terms. What's actually there? A boy being sacrificed for ludicrous reasons, largely foreshadowed but delivered in a way so forceful that it defies every purpose that part of the story may have had. Follows a host of prophecies again grounded on nothing, neither abstract nor concrete, if not in offering bland hooks to the following book. Instead of building curiosity for the mysteries set within a context it may easily lead simply to irritation, with the man in black representing perfectly that feeling. Inhuman, inconsistent, pretentious and ridicule. His display of powers does not impress anyone and that part of the story is so inconsequential that it's like watching animated puppets play a trippy script whose pages were thrown into the air and scattered.
What is good? The sheer talent and creative pretentiousness. The lack of restraints. The outrageous metaphorical descriptions filling the pages. 'The artificial glow from the wet rock was suddenly hateful'. All this being not only something glaringly obvious in the text, but it's King himself explaining it. "On being nineteen". And the book has to be appreciated in regard of this creative, unhampered recklessness. The ambition and courage that coincide with carelessness. It becomes then, in potential, a strength if one considers the series as a whole. With the latter books representing a conciliation of all this with the wisdom and moderation that one can legitimately expect to come with the mature, more broken King. Coming to terms with his own creation and trying to tie loose ends in some sort of coherence and meaningfulness, maybe.
The rest is magic, or sleight of hand.
Submitted by Abalieno on July 10, 2010 - 19:24.
I'm known to follow the most disparate links. This one is weirdness incarnated.
Enjoy:
Wise men have regarded the earth as a tragedy, a farce, even an illusionist's trick; but all, if they are truly wise, and not merely intellectual rapists, recognize that it is certainly some kind of stage in which we all play roles, most of us being very poorly coached and totally unrehearsed before the curtain rises.
Submitted by Abalieno on July 8, 2010 - 17:36.
Beside the subtleties of plot, the Malazan series has two different main levels that represent the foundation of the whole thing: the first is the infinitesimal small, the (under)world within a single person, his perceptions, his feeling, his thoughts, his personal yourney; the second is the impossibly huge, the human condition, what embraces all of us.
Today I discovered a non-fiction letter/article by Erikson himself. After reading few lines I thought it was interesting, after reading some more I thought it was EXTRAORDINARY. He talks about his view on the whole series, then his experiences as archaeologist, and finally the perspectives of our world and our species. In the same way these themes have built the Malazan series, I think we can deduct some aspects of where the series will go with its conclusion.
His fiction is a way to elaborate his thoughts, and this article is like a deconstruction of the series itself, and the reason why it is extraordinary. We can see the core bared of all conceits.
Sometimes my series feels like a ten thousand page requiem for our species, or a long, drawn-out howl verging on utter despair; as I search in desperation for moral gestures of humanity, no matter how small, no matter how momentary, in the midst of self-inflicted carnage.
I write novels under the name of Steven Erikson. I am nearing completion of a ten book Fantasy series entitled ‘The Malazan Book of the Fallen.’ These novels are set on a fictitious world that is Homeric in nature—magic and meddling gods—but at a technological level somewhere around late Roman Empire. Progress has stalled, as magic has supplanted technological innovation. Unfortunately, magic is also highly destructive. While these epic novels seek to portray a history in an entertaining style, the underlying themes concern the life cycles of cultures and civilizations (including those of non-humans) against the backdrop of environmental degradation.
In the fourth novel in my series I introduced, rather brutally, a character emerging from an isolated tribal culture, who finds himself first a slave, then an escaped slave, within the far larger world of civilization of which he previously knew nothing. He ultimately concludes, after numerous travails, that civilization is an abomination, and so he vows to destroy it.
I recall standing on a pyramid in the Guatemalan jungle (back in ‘83), during the modern civil war (that had everything to do with land), and perversely feeling a strange optimism. After all, when the Mayan Priest-King stood where I was standing, only a few centuries ago, he could see the vast expanse of his demesne—planted fields out to every horizon. I’m sure he believed it would last forever (just as we believe our civilization will last forever, that we are somehow exempt from the rise and fall cycle that afflicted every previous civilization). He didn’t realize that his culture was unsustainable. That it was destined to collapse even before European contact. He believed as did the pre-Inca civilizations in Peru and Chile. Why did I feel optimistic? Because I was surrounded in jungle. The natural world had reclaimed everything. It had healed, and in a very short time.
Read on.
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Submitted by Abalieno on June 30, 2010 - 19:08.
 Official release is: 25th November 2010
The prologue is at Malazan forums.
Whoever picks the cover for Esslemont books must be fond of boats. The cover is "ok" but otherwise unimpressive (reads as: generic, relatively anonymous).
EDIT: I read the prologue even if I'm far from the position of the book in the series. Safely, since there's not spoilery stuff. I liked it enough but I still see the shadows of what I criticized in my review of "Night of Knives". The first potential problem is that the characters do too many flourishes and exaggeration (the portrayal of just standard-types), and when you try to draw from real themes exaggeration is the worst enemy of truth. The other problem is that again the story is built solely by what surfaces. Lacking subtlety and real depth. For example the arrival of the priest, the description of the occupation, the plan for recruiting. All ideas ripe for development, yet they seem to be played plainly and obviously. Too much polish, lack of conflict, lack of complexity. Characters playing their roles instead of coming out as real persons. Same for the second scene, that seems so biblical that one wonders why it should deserve to be remade (people climb the sacred mountain to go speak with their goddess). Goddess donates magically-heated chest to the population that keeps cold Stormriders away. We've seen this already in the first book and it was a concept that lead nowhere and meant basically nothing. Hopefully this time things play more unpredictably. Seems like a soup of stories I already know but without a novelty perspective, nothing new added or cleverly played.
Also, nitpicking, before the tsunami shouldn't the boat get sucked seaward as water recedes before rising and rushing in? The process is described, the water level goes down, yet there seem no currents affecting the boat.
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Submitted by Abalieno on June 21, 2010 - 01:40.
http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/.
Another obvious peril, it seems to me, would be exotericism, the gradual whittling down of the population communicated to. Defection doesn’t simply challenge readers, it alienates them. With every rule you choose to follow or not to follow you are either connecting or disconnecting yourself from certain populations of readers. Since humans have a hardwired appreciation of narrative conventionality, mucking with these norms is tantamount to turning your back on the greater human community, and appealing to those who happen to share your acquired tastes.
When I stand in front of crowds–even huge ones–my overriding desire is to argue and shock and unsettle. My whole life, I’ve had this perverse desire to prick bubbles wherever I go, and to make the babies blowing them cry-cry-cry.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 20, 2010 - 22:37.
 "Night of Knives" is the first novel(-la) written by Ian Cameron Esslemont set in the Malazan world co-created with Steven Erikson. It's a much leaner book, 300 pages in the american Tor edition, compared to Malazan standard, and chronologically set between the prologue and first chapter of "Gardens of the Moon", the first book in the series. Yet, the fans recommend to read the book only before the sixth because of some connections, while I decided to anticipate it right after the fourth, since "House of Chains" deals more directly with the matters of the Malazan empire and I wanted to approach "Night of Knives" when that strand of story was still fresh in my memory.
The content and purpose of the book fit as a retrospective: from one side we get to see what happened in the particular night Surly/Laseen claimed the throne of the Malazan empire while declaring the death of the previous ruler, Kellanved, who had been missing for quite some time giving Surly the opportunity to solidify her position. From the other, through flashbacks, we get a close-up of "The Sword", the six bodyguards/champions around Dassem Ultor, champion of the Malazan empire, and particularly Dassem's betrayal that was vaguely commented between Paran and Wiskeyjack in that GotM prologue.
Here comparisons between writers are impossible to avoid since we have two of them writing the same material and aiming for complementarity. So the big question is if Esslemont can match Erikson or at least stay relevant and add something worthwhile, with expectations being very high and not playing in Esslemont's favor since it's complicate to debut when the main series is already established and halfway through. That was also my main concern: trying to weigh Esslemont potential not just for this book, but also for the upcoming contributions. The first 50 pages were quite revelatory for me. Esslemont is a rather competent writer, the beginning of the book is well handled, solid prose, written and paced perfectly. There wasn't anything suggesting it was a debut instead of the work of an established writer. I also thought the style was distinctive and not clashing or conforming to Erikson. Especially, I think Esslemont did a wonderful work on Malaz itself, the city. The place comes to life, the shadowy atmosphere rendered perfectly with its narrow, twisted alleys, the very quiet and suspicious people on the brink of insanity. From Mock's Hold perched on the cliff (and the inevitable wink to Mock's Vane), down to the sprawling ramshackle houses. It gives a sense of real place and I still now consider this the biggest quality of the novel. The town being the true real protagonist, interpreting perfectly the understatement of the conflict it gets tangled in. The true heart of the empire, yet far from the celebration of triumph or glory of a capital. It's a haunted town everyone would get away from, sullying and miserable. So weak and vulnerable, yet caught in the eye of the storm and holding desperately. Reminds me of a place that would fit perfectly in a Lovecraft story, madness stalking behind every corner.
Speaking of tones and atmosphere, I think that, more than Erikson, Esslemont draws plenty and openly from Glen Cook. The whole novel echoes with the first chapter of The Black Company and even more with the whole second book, "Shadows Linger". Lots of elements in common, the first chapter of The Black Company was similar to an horror story, with the company caught in an unusual situation and slowly drifting toward dread, discovering corpses everywhere while the town they were stuck in descended into chaos, the Hounds of Shadow in "Night of Knives" filling perfectly the role of the "forvalaka". Same for "Shadows Linger", also set in a gloomy small town, inside filthy inns and nearby mysterious places. Townsfolk involved in ominous practices that slowly escalate to a disaster. Inspiration here is not a flaw, since Esslemont uses all this competently and functional to the story he writes, without giving the impression of a diminished copy.
There are problems, though. Everything is set perfectly in those initial pages, but as the story progresses it also loses its strength. Instead of escalating it kind of folds without delivering its potential. From my point of view the problem is that Esslemont fails to switch gear when needed. There's a moment in the story when the spooky "fairy tales" and legends descend, truly, on the real world. Kiska fits well as a POV there, because we have a naive perspective on a situation that is quickly transforming. But when hell breaks loose the story is stuck in the preceding naive tone and the dramatic intensity is underachieved or lost. Esslemont stays too much on one fantastic, dreamy level that is excused when the story is still in the build-up phase and what is to come has to feel distant, the menace being remote. But when it closes it lacks realism and the characters are still lulled by the writer, never at risk, never exposed outside their own cliche. They stay put, characters as devices, their perimeter containing them, and them carefully stepping to never dare becoming real characters. This is the kind of babysitting that never lets the story run wild and deliver. Somewhat like a cheat.
Kiska fails to become a real character, ideally she should be hammered out of her fancy fantasies (echoing Paran's own "I want to be a soldier. A hero.") and crushing on reality. She starts wishing to be the heroine, admirably skilled in her dreamy land, but she stays there even after. She glides over everything, undamaged, in truth, beside a few minor bruises. The kid outskills everyone else, she lives her dream in reality WITHOUT EVEN PERCEIVING THE TRANSITION. She enters and exits the novel with the exact same mindset, nothing learned. She's lulled in her dream as the world comes to coincide with it, instead of her coming to grips with reality. She starts naive, and ends up with all her dreams fulfilled without even once confronting reality. Her role, as cliche, fits perfectly, if only at some point the cliche would be used to spring her (and the escalation of the plot toward dramatic intensity) to a whole new level. Instead the whole structure folds. We have these two levels. The low-ground perception of townsfolk, with all their superstitions, and then the crushing of the convergence, the Shadow Realm that descends on the city itself, becoming very real and tangible. The townsfolk barred in their own houses, praying the dream to end soon, the storm outside. Yet, on the level of the novel, it's the "reality" that is lifted up to "fairy" level, with magic becoming magic, old wizened and long-bearded guys becoming wise wizards, the heroine being tested through riddles. Lots of blood, corpses everywhere, but it's just tomato juice on redshirts, come the morning the bad guys are dead, the roads relatively filthy as usual, some fallen bricks and crumpled walls, heroes survived heroically, the heroine got her alluring, mysterious boyfriend. When do I wake up?
Erikson's work on the series can be summarized as: "Nothing is as it seems". Here it's the opposite: everything is as it seems. No subtlety, no tricks on perceptions, no layers. Leading to another consideration. Esslemont's characterization is actually well done, at least in presenting the characters if not in their development. His overall style of prose, narration and characterization is traditional compared to Erikson, but "traditional" doesn't mean "bad". The introspection here is "full-on" and helps leading the narrative. You get into the characters' thoughts in a way that you never find in Erikson. This meaning that this book can be more readable and accessible, even enjoyable. Erikson's style, being infinitely layered, prompts you to put down the book and think about implications, Esslemont is more like the page-turner, pushing the story onward, curiosity taking the lead and the reader more involved in the destiny of characters. A more emotive/empathic approach of a character-driven story. The book can be read quickly and is quite fun but it stays on that level.
Thinking of "purpose", the story is aimed to shed some light on a crucial point of the history of the empire. The book is filled with juicy details that can please the fans of the series. Lots of "fanservice", which is a good thing. Yet, this is not a necessary read, nor a recommended one. Concretely, it adds nothing worthwhile. It uses and consumes without creating. We see lots of details about what went on, but they all seem disposable and none really clarifying. The real deep motives stay deep and unrevealed, deliberately untouched in this book. The betrayal of Dassem Ultor is a pivot of the novel, yet absolutely nothing is added to what we knew. We see it happen, but what we see explains nothing about what happened. Another instance of "everything is as it seems", or there's nothing more than what meets the eyes. Another big flaw being that the more is revealed, the weaker the story. Instead of enhancing and realizing complexity, it kills it. No surprises, no revelations that open new interpretations and scenarios. The few answers that come only close some dead-ends of the overall plot without producing anything. Lots of potential when it comes to Laseen, but the character is flat and hiding absolutely nothing. She's merely there and passive, with the lack of active presence hiding absolutely nothing: she's really doing nothing if not what is plain. Mystery that hides nothing. Same for the confrontation between Claws and Talons, reduced to a confused ninja battle between caped figures. Shadowy capes hiding nothing. Conspirators whose conspiracy is held on plain sight.
From this perspective the book is immature. Not again in the competency of Esslemont as a writer, but in failing to cross that line between adolescence and maturity and everything it represents. The falling of myths and naive dreams, the facing of failure or helplessness. The same done by some "fantasy" (as genre) trying to come out of its stereotype as "young-adult" escapist entertainment, whether it is George Martin or Erikson or whoever else, trying to open up the genre to a more mature type of narration, more complex, layered and unbound from strict conventions and types. "Maturity" or even modernity: no more absolutes, but points of view, layers, perspectives. This book fails to cross that border. The characters are caged into themselves, being plainly what they seem to be and within their narrow stereotype or functional role in the plot. In various occasions the story directly reminds of "young-adult" tropes (here straight from "Neverending Story"):
If she did succeed in returning, Kiska vowed she would head straight to Agayla's. If anyone knew what was going on - and what to do - it would be her. Never mind all this insane mumbling of the Return, the Deadhouse, and Shadow. What a tale she had for her aunt!
And ending with:
'Yes, I will. Thank you, Auntie. Thank you for everything.'
Agayla took her in her arms and hugged her, kissed her brow. 'Send word soon or I swear I will send you a curse.'
'I will.'
'Good. Now run. Don't keep Artan waiting.'
"Don't keep your boyfriend waiting". It's then hard to lift the plot to dramatic intensity when this distance of perception never closes. Brutal fights are witnessed, but so alien and detached (or described through morbid badassness) that they never come real. Threat never getting close if not in a fake way. Kiska never falters, no matter how unbelievable is that behavior even for a prodigious child. Every impossible action or behavior excused by mere exceptionality. Temper, the other POV, is not different. Even here the character is initially very solid and well presented. A paranoid veteran hiding from his past. But all plot points are fortuitous and convenient, and even the flashbacks recount battles between invulnerable champions with a lot of useless redshirts around them. Halfway through the character moves from a well realized one, to click into his functional stereotype. When he exits the story he's the hero who saved the day whose deeds remain unknown. Close your eyes and shadows become monsters crawling out from under the bed. You wake up, it was a dream. Esslemont fails to play properly with this and switch tone. Everything stays up there, suspended into adolescent mythology. The mythical story described exactly as the cleaned-up myth wants. Nothing being ever threatened or compromised.
The series is not powerful for its mythology and form, but because Erikson, as a writer, instilled meaningfulness into it. Made it relevant for what it has to say and the way it challenges perceptions. But Esslemont doesn't seem to add something of his own. He delivers the story without delivering a purpose. If Erikson writes to reach far outside mere "escapism", Esslemont stays strongly rooted into it. The story sits on the surface level, which I guess explains why the fans of Esslemont himself are often those who judge Erikson's book as overlong and slow. Erikson digs deep on the level of meaning, is concerned about the reason to say something, is tormented for reaching out to the reader and shake him. Esslemont fails to have a drive in this novel. There's no "necessity" of the narrative intent. Outside the entertainment value, being said or unsaid is the same. Why reading this book? Because it's still a good read and if you are a Malazan fan you'd want to know more and enjoy the story, but I thought that the mysteries revealed would stay better mysterious and ambiguous. Instead of being revealed so plain. It's a fun and well executed roller coaster if you enjoy Malazan mythology, but it's still a roller coaster.
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Submitted by Abalieno on June 11, 2010 - 01:27.
 House of Chains is the fourth in the 10-books Malazan series. These days, these hours, Erikson is intensely busy writing the last chapters of the last book and bring to a close a journey of staggering ambition. Reading this fourth felt like standing on the shoulder of a very tall (jade-colored) giant. As with similar(?) long series it's interesting to see the power-game, the ebb and flow of the single book compared to the others. When I was at page 700 or so (on a total of 1000) it dawned on me that this would become, with certainty, my favorite. 100 pages from the end the story proceeded resolute with a sense of finality and inevitability. Like the dramatic ending a movie whose sound is deafened, muted, so that the intensity of what you see comes out unadulterated and with all its power. But it is immediately past this apex, in the very slight and calmer descent that follows, the remaining 30-40 pages, that the more meaningful and stronger revelations are delivered, and the characters reached down for my soul. The book had already gauged his way as my true favorite and was set for a foreshadowed ending. I only expected closure and rest, yet the book still had PLENTY to deliver, and surprise me, and offer emotions to share.
These weeks I spent reading House of Chains were also the weeks of Lost ending season (the TV series), which lead me to draw certain parallels, both thematic and about the plot. Similarities are evident even on the superficial level, and on the forums I was explaining that I was watching Lost for some of the reasons I was reading this series of books. The staggering ambition, the exponential layering, the subversion and reversals in the plot, the continuous challenge to perceptions. The difference, as I already discussed, is that Lost always left me (and many others) unsatisfied. Even the very end left the plot unresolved. With the Malazan series instead it's a whole different deal. Reading this book, at various points, I thought that if it was to end right there, in the middle of the narrative, it would still feel completely satisfying and accomplished. Erikson as an author is far more generous and I feel that what he does is always honest. I never once felt cheated. Which also leads to the broad theme of "truthfulness", that Erikson fulfills for me. Reading this series is not an easy task for anyone, but I know that it largely rewarded my effort. It delivers all it promises, then more, far beyond expectations that continue to rise as the story goes and branches out to embrace what you don't think can be embraced. I am humbled because I know that this is one rare effort that won't likely be matched anytime soon, if ever. I'm glad that I find it so close to things that matter for me, at the core, and that I seek in a book. It completes what I think and I follow devotedly because it already proved aplenty that this journey is worth all the dedication I can give to it. This to say: Erikson, especially in this book, doesn't lull and drag you along with vane promises. He delivers, page after page. The physical shape of the book, right there, weighting far more than you think. Worlds that the written word can open, and worlds that, deep down, feed on something true.
This, for me, has nothing to do with the notion of escapism. At least if you don't consider escapism the illusion of the discovery of something meaningful, that matters. And so the thematic aspects. I guess that this couldn't be more misleading. "Themes" make me think of very boring books that have nowhere to go and preach on banalities or feast on rhetoric. Or the celebration of some sort of morale. I have a natural tendency to oppose and refuse these things because I always find them trite or partial. Erikson instead makes these aspects very real and makes surface their contradictions. The narrative is driven by purpose, a lucid intent, that doesn't lead recursively to itself, going nowhere. Turning a wheel that turns and turns but goes nowhere. Those themes, taken as abstraction, are always brought back to the ground. They don't wander on a detached level, different from the plot. They are intricately woven and matter on a concrete one. The biggest revelations can please a reader just for what they are, the fun of following an engaging story filled with unexpected twists. The last 70 pages of this book are a frenzy of plot threads that get tied and resolved one after the other. And each, if not to be carried away by this surging tide, turning the pages, would make you look back with unprecedented clarity. The thematic aspects here bind the narrative.
'The stigma of meaning ever comes later, like a brushing away of dust to reveal shapes in stone.'
The structure of this book is slightly different from the preceding ones. It starts with about 250 pages from a single point of view instead of jumping all over the place. I think this choice is perfectly placed. It's not easy to have the story move again after the ending of 'Memories of Ice'. Starting from a blank point, apparently unrelated, offers the narrative the possibility to gain momentum. Especially because all we learned through three books here becomes the cipher of what is going on behind the curtain of deception. An higher level of awareness that you have, as a reader, above the level of the narrow point of view. An second-level of observation that reveals a bigger truth, as you are yourself, as reader, deceived in turn, when you thought your position let you see clearly where the deception actually was. A clever trick indeed. But again, done to understand the story on a deeper level, and bring the reader right into it, with an active role. Not so many books do this. You may think this is some 'mental' stuff I imagined, but no. This is why I said the book is generous. It has not the esotericism and bloated pretentiousness of Pynchon, this book BEGS you to understand it. It doesn't hide for the simple pleasure of obfuscation, nor it lulls lathering in redundancy.
'In any case, to speak plainly is a true talent; to bury beneath obfuscation is a poet's calling these days.'
Now this review is coming out rather abstract and vague, yet I've pages of notes about specific aspects but I don't think I can go anywhere with them. This book offers a myriad of suggestions that you can taste and elaborate any way you want. Take for example the book of Dryjhna. It's a story that starts in book 2. This is Erikson doing his typical play on some established fantasy conventions (and in book 2 he resolves it delivering a spectacular surprise). In this case the 'book of prophecies'. We've had these plot devices dealt in every possible way in the fantasy genre. Here the running joke is that prophecies are left vague because through this very quality they can be pragmatically adapted to the changes of time. A way to keep them relevant and useful for those who actually wield that power for their own secular purposes. In the end prophecies are nothing more than excuses to exploit a population. But it's the real revelation of the truth (or better, the deceit) behind the book that makes it ultimately worth saving. The book is revealed as a fraud, but this revelation makes the book valuable for what it actually is, which consequently infuses it of the power it lost. A full circle, but, as it closes, the power of the book goes from misplaced and false, to something true and valid. It got somewhat cleansed in the process. This I've just explained is a very minor plot thread, almost invisible. Maybe two pages in total name it, yet, by ways of Erikson, what this book (of prophecies) represents echoes with everything else that goes on the major level. Everything intricately woven together at different levels.
There are certain plot threads, on a second inspection, after the tide of the last 100 pages passed, that seem somewhat spurious. Though this is typical of Erikson as the plot branches out to previous and following books. They are the most obvious links. But the reason why they are there is because they are part of larger loops. They are meaningful in the single book, have an impact and purpose, but the story arc isn't brought to conclusion right there. When I finished book 3, I thought that Erikson was at his maximum possible reach. Controlling so many characters and plot threads while delivering a so huge conclusion was absolutely spectacular. House of Chains is on a somewhat smaller scale and more personal. It continues directly from book 2 and draws from the qualities found there. Yet, this smaller scale was only apparent and Erikson shows here a stronger control of plot. He still improves. Book 3 had from my point of view a more uneven quality compared to the 2nd, even if as a whole it came out far above just because of its impact and staggering ambition. House of Chains shows a tight control and a clear intent. It is lucid in a way no previous book was. More effective and straight to the point. Every aspect I can consider is overall improved. The prose itself stays terse as is typical of Erikson, and gains efficacy. No wasted words, no lingering, yet also not as wasteful as it happened in Memories of Ice. On some of my notes I wrote how in books 1-3 we saw an expansion of the plot. An exponential multiplications of different factions and factions within factions. House of Chains instead represents a kind of contraption that doesn't reduce the reach of ambition of the plot, but that actually leads to an absorption of the various branches into an unitarian mythology. The nature and truth of many things is revealed, and this revelation draws everything together. It all makes sense and even sheds more light on previous books in a way that makes them shine even more. Following books improve the previous in retrospective, add significance. Especially in this case for book 2, that was already excellent. House of Chains is an open celebration of Deadhouse Gates, yet this doesn't put it in its shadow in any way. They just contribute to each other.
Want one flaw? Named characters lead the story. Yes, there are A LOT of them in that "named" list, but the terse style of Erikson lacks some naturalness if you care for it in a book. I've pointed this out in the past. There are no slices of life scenes here. No getting used to the characters or lingering with them for the mundane. This story has momentum and moves on. We don't get to see what isn't strictly relevant. Yet, this also means that these plots are sometimes too neatly wrapped up. Too coincidental and convenient. Everything pivots exactly where it should, and no matter how HUGE is the landmass itself, characters that travel seem to ineluctably constantly bump into each other. Sometimes it feels as if the "real world" is missing. As if the plot was eradicated from its natural place and made an example of. I doubt you could tell such story in a different way, though.
I loved this book. Not just because it has an excellent execution, but because I loved it also on a more personal level. The biggest mystery is how Erikson is able to gather the strength and will to start again from a blank page after such a huge showdown. I'm merely a reader, yet this was exhausting in a positive way. So much was brought to a satisfying closure. No idea where this will bring me next, but I have trust in the writer that it will be more than worth it.
The last few lines of the epilogue, in italics, are probably the biggest and more powerful revelation ever. Sustaining the whole series. (hopefully enough to keep Erikson himself afloat)
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Submitted by Abalieno on June 10, 2010 - 21:03.
Few more spurious quotes from the very end of House of Chains. Relatively spoiler-free.
The proportions had begun wrong. From the very start. Leading her to suspect that the proclivity for madness had already existed, dark flaws marring the soul that would one day claw its way into ascendancy.
I have walked into the Abyss.
I am as mad as that goddess. And this is why she chose me, for we are kindred souls...
This is another good example that illustrates what Ascendancy truly is and how it is regulated. Even if it's a theme of the book making the process more blurred and defying categories, since at the core "Ascendancy" is strictly linked to the ambiguous production of meaning. Dancing on a edge to keep a fine balance.
He did the best he could - with such honour as to draw, upon his sad death, the attention of Hood himself. Oh, the Lord of Death will look into a mortal's soul, given the right circumstances. The, uh, the proper incentive. Thus, that man is now the Knight of Death—'
Even here Ascendancy is the result of both convenience and kinship. A wicked sort of reward. The honor of failure. There's no salvation in Ascendancy. There's no glory.
This is why Ascendancy is symbolized by T'lan Imass. Immortality made into failure.
T'lan imass / glory & ghosts
'The glory of battle, Koryk, dwells only in the bard's voice, in the teller's woven words. Glory belongs to ghosts and poets. What you hear and dream isn't the same as what you live - blur the distinction at your own peril, lad.'
Karsa's expression soured. 'When I began this journey, I was young. I believed in one thing. I believed in glory. I know now, Siballe, that glory is nothing. Nothing. This is what I now understand.'
'What else do you now understand, Karsa Orlong?'
'Not much. Just one other thing. The same cannot be said for mercy.'
'The heart is neither given nor stolen. The heart surrenders.'
The bonecaster did not turn round. 'That is a word without power to the T'lan Imass, Onrack the Broken.'
'You are wrong, Monok Ochem. We simply changed the word to make it not only more palatable, but also to empower it. With such eminence that it devoured our souls.'
The very last few words that conclude the book, in italics, deliver not only the answer to all this, but also a huge revelation that hit with all its power. Neither of the three preceding books ended on a so high note.
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Submitted by Abalieno on June 10, 2010 - 18:09.
It seems there's some stir today as Tor begins to promote Sanderson's latest and most ambitious epic. I'm enjoying the atmosphere, honestly. In spite of all the seemingly negative things I've written about Sanderson I still said I plan to buy the book on day 1 and read it. I also expect at the very least to enjoy it. But if it doesn't offer something that stands apart the next volumes will probably sit back on the reading pile.
Anyway, part of the promotion are the first 50 pages or so of the book, right now. Or at least Prologue and Prelude, the rest requires some sort of registration.
I haven't read that, and I will likely wait for the full book before commenting, but that first word is a very bad way to start a book, especially for something that is going to span 10 books.
This isn't really criticism to Sanderson, it's just that I always thought it's awful to open a book with a first name. "Kakak rounded a rocky stone ridge". Why should I care? First names are something you acquire. They are meaningful when they define someone you know. But throwing the name before everything else is like an unnatural thrust into a character that expects you to know him already. It's like forcing familiarity to the reader without earning that familiarity.
Let's make examples. I have recently written about Pynchon, so take Gravity's Rainbow:
- A screaming comes across the sky.
That's a hell of way to start a book. It sets the tone and definitely lacerates the curtain to let the reader in. (I appreciate the present tense)
Another of Pynchon I have here:
- "Now single up all lines!"
Yeah! Let's fly!
Philip Roth:
- She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise.
I guess literary guys know how to begin their books.
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake.
- A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
No comment.
Gene Wolfe's New Sun:
- "It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future."
It couldn't have set the tone and eccentricity any better.
David Copperfield:
- Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
Well yes, I'm unfair. You can't beat that.
R. Scott Bakker:
- One cannot rise walls against what has been forgotten.
That's Bakker. It's him telling it's him. "Hey, it's me."
Glen Cook:
- There were prodigies and portents enough, One-Eye says.
This gets a first name, but as you see the precedence is given to what is being said, which fits.
Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead:
- Howard Roark laughed.
OK. First name. BUT IT IS AYN RAND. If she isn't allowed to open a book with a first name than no one else can.
Which naturally leads to Terry Goodkind:
- It was an odd-looking vine.
...Huh?
Submitted by Abalieno on June 8, 2010 - 03:05.
 
I am onto something.
I was supposed to write this more than a week ago but never did it. Nothing really relevant, just something I enjoy. I already said I like to follow links between the most disparate things, find correspondences. I also said that in literature I look for "truthfulness" which I consider the most (if not only) relevant quality. I was actually struggling finding a definition because I was absolutely sure I found something I wanted the moment I found it, but couldn't pinpoint what it was that some books gave to me and some other didn't. Something more visceral like a deeper form of accord. I agreed to define it "truthfulness" since it's strictly related to the use of language and has a well defined opposite that is "rhetoric". Or: tell me something that is true.
It's on the same line of a comment I wrote to Erikson's blog:
I’ll just say that it’s also one significant strength of your series if it’s not just ambitious, staggering and broad in scope, but also personal, and so not a safe or steady, unfailing journey. Without that, its echoes would be echoes of emptiness.
It’s the reason why while reading “Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace, a completely different book, I arrived to similar conclusions and similar feelings coming out of it. In the end the purpose of fiction, and other forms of art, is to say something truthful. Nothing else matters. So you’re right in what you imply: your crisis feeds this narrative, and your lack of definite(-ive) answers is itself a more important truth. Lots of writers had to come to terms with their craft (or at least those who explore uncharted lands). Some didn’t survive, some other found their hands empty and just felt helpless. It’s a kind of obsession.
It’s also why “magic”, even if it makes a significant impact, never comes ahead of the narrative. In the end it is all “fluff” if it’s not somewhere and somehow deeply rooted into something “true”. Creating fictional worlds gives that type of conceit and delusion, you think you are creating something other and independent, but it would be all truly meaningless if whatever level of abstraction wouldn’t come back on the ground to feed on something true.
At some point I was convinced that "feeding on something true" means that things are ultimately linked, because if something is true, then it should also be universal in a way or another. So you dig and enjoy the discovery.
Sometimes links are fun if relatively harmless. For example this. I ordered two books. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon and its companion since I read it's good and I always enjoy to tap on more insight and have more ways to understand a text. For me, the more the better. If I enjoy a book I could as well read about the book forever, especially if it allows for this depth.
Gravity's Rainbow is a book that should do that. Being much more staggering than its physical shape. Like Erikson or DF Wallace. Books that aren't simply contained in this world, but that actually seem themselves to contain the world. The display of the omnipotence of literature. Actually, I don't know if GR does this. I bought the book because I hope it does.
GR is also itself made of links. Which makes it challenge definitions and boundaries. Defy whatever limit you put in front of it. It's "just" 776 pages, but they can sure bite your ass.
Anyway, the harmless links are to "Lost" (the TV series). This was still happening a few days after Lost finale, so everything echoed nicely. The very first page that starts with a quote:
"Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death." -Werner von Braun
Quite fitting since we were dealing with the afterlife after Lost finale. From the companion:
"I believe... that the soul of a Man is immortal and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this." -Benjamin Franklin
Even more fitting, don't you agree?
Pynchon's depictions of technological, psychological, and paranormal research all demonstrate how modern culture secularizes that redemptive hope.
I'm actually convinced that "culture" is our true redemptive hope. And the book in question is so defined:
American Pop and material culture, the occult, varieties of pseudoscience, real science, vernacular geography
Or:
Perhaps if you smashed together the dozen best novels of Philip K. Dick you would have something that approaches it - a pulpy low-culture version of Gravity's Rainbow, it's tempting to say, except that not the least of Pynchon's revolutions is how he obliterated the distinction of low and high culture, at least for anyone paying attention.
Lots of stuff, apparently un-linked. Good stuff. Coherent with what I wrote here and before. Don't let genres and boundaries limit your perception. Reach out and enjoy something true, no matter how outrageous or absurd it appears. You are your own limit.
This should be fun.
P.S.
No idea if there's some truth, but my first thought about the rocket on the cover was that it symbolizes a... pen. The writing seen as the ultimate truly subversive or catastrophic activity.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 8, 2010 - 00:47.
So, blogger I overall admire writes about "myopic" points of view, and to illustrate his theory he shows how myopic is himself. I can't comment in detail because I've not read most of that stuff, but:
R. Scott Bakker, The Prince of Nothing and The Aspect-Emperor series - Bakker is a friend of mine, and while I do enjoy his erudite take on epic fantasy, his is not (as he'll readily admit) a story that's going to have mass appeal outside of certain gender/age demographics and online forums.
I haven't read Bakker in detail, and while it's obvious that his series doesn't have a "mass appeal", it's the qualification to be rather hypocrite. "certain gender/age demographics and online forums" shows some serious generalization and prejudice. Why the need to build these sharp boundaries and categories? There are surely more useful considerations to make instead of deciding in advance who could or couldn't enjoy a particular book or writer.
Steven Erikson and Ian Cameron Esslemont, Malazan books - Although each has some interesting anthropological perspectives that enrich their shared-world setting, I wouldn't think of these books as being anything more than just continuations from what Glen Cook, Jack Vance, or Michael Moorcock has done with their epic fantasy/sword and sorcery tales.
Huh? No really. I've read Erikson. Saying that his books have the same intent of Glen Cook or Moorcock (haven't read Vance enough to say) is some silly claim. Glen Cook inspired Erikson directly, he took and played with certain aspects of those books and the terse prose, and of Moorcock there's only a vague similarity of mood. But that would be the same as every writer out there who read and was inspired by someone else. Is David Foster Wallace irrelevant or lessened because of William Gaddis or Thomas Pynchon? Really? So we can roll all those writers into a generalized "Don DeLillo"? They all do the same stuff and so are not relevant to be considered on their own terms? They write a genre and are limited by it?
You really think literature is that powerless and strictly bound? You really think that those writers merely stand in someone else's shoes? That's ungrateful for every name I made, the same as with Erikson and those other names. For them it would probably be the biggest offense you can make.
Then there's the link to Werthead's article. Which is pretentious fluff:
THE STATE OF MODERN EPIC/SECONDARY WORLD FANTASY
The 'new fantasy' is much harder to pin down. Broadly it refers to fantasy which is either grittier and more realistic than previous 'safe' authors, or to traditional epic fantasy which has taken on some of the ideas and tropes of steampunk and the New Weird (a fantasy movement sparked off in 2000 with China Mieville's PERDIDO STREET STATION but which has now more or less merged with fantasy in general). Or indeed, both.
"It refers"? You mean you stumbled on a piece of paper that had "new fantasy" written on it and you started to wonder what it may be about? Nothing refers to anything, especially "made up" words. It refers to whatever you want it to mean, and as long you persuade enough people to agree on that definition.
Here you make it sound like you gawked at the sky to discover some kind of truth pertinent to a category of books.
a number of more 'old-school' authors who reject some of these new ideas in favour of a solid story, well-told, are also incorporated into the movement, leading to the conclusion that 'the new fantasy' is nothing more than fantasy works simply published in the last few years.
The mind boggles. So you're saying that "solid story, well-told" is antithetic to "New Fantasy". This new fantasy must really suck if it's qualified by a weak story badly told.
But, HEY, it seems there are also good writers that found themselves into this new genre, so I guess it's not possible anymore to claim: New Fantasy = CRAP.
So, basically, here we learn: Beware, not all New Fantasy is crap.
The following is a list of authors who may be said to work in this movement:
"May be said". By who we'll never know. It must be some mythical creature who tells the writers in which "movement" they are supposed to work. And don't dare contradicting the Beowulf, or it swallows you whole.
Follows a list of relatively well known writers and his overall opinion about them. I wouldn't criticize this all that much because it's supposed to just give a general idea so that a reader may then look further if there's something that gets the attention. I could argue endlessly about what he says, for example calling Abercrombie's first novel "very traditional" gives a very wrong idea of it. If it was "very traditional" the book would've never ended in my reading pile and I wouldn't have read it and considered it excellent. Daniel Abraham gets the benefit of the longest description and a summary, probably because he's his current "protege" that needs promotion since the first series didn't sell enough and the last book didn't get the mass market edition. He defines Bakker as "adventurous", which is really perplexing. Martin is "Martin's A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE remains the dominant work of epic fantasy in the genre". Dominant of what or who? Sales? Aren't sales consistently lower than, say, Jordan or Goodkind? I'm really asking. I know the series sold a lot, but I don't think it "dominated" the sales of the whole genre. Or maybe those are too old? But wasn't "New Fantasy" the fantasy released in "the last few years"? Martin released one book in the last 10 years. I doubt he "dominated" anything at all. But in general I wouldn't mess or argue too much with opinions. Everyone is entitled to his own and they are good for a more specific discussion. It's when they are set as absolute canons that they are dangerous.
But the discussions on genres and classifications are ALWAYS stupid for the simple reason that it's implied that a "genre" is a strict definition that corresponds to an objective "Truth". So the need to define absolute canons and even a neatly organized ladder from "most relevant" writer to the least. With the illusion that this is actually something more than a very personal opinion.
We have from a side one who claims he can define objectively "The state of modern epic/secondary world fantasy". The supreme judge. And on the other side one who criticized the first for being myopic because his view of the genre is too narrow in scope. This is not a problem of scope, this thing is stupid because these are irrelevant generalizations that have no place in reality. They represent your, and only your, limit and consequent necessity of simplification and generalization.
Hint: "genres" do not exist. They are created and used to simplify things. They are tools, not canons, to reduce the world out there to a manageable state. Like words in general, "genres" are arbitrary categories where you put whatever you want. It means that what you put in there is decided by you, not by any objective rule. There are no sharp boundaries if not those you arbitrarily make, so there's no correct or better definition of a genre. Debating whether a book is in or out a certain genre is like debating in which bookcase of your bedroom this or that book goes. It's the same of someone who argues aloud with himself. So if you are the one who makes the choice have at least the courage to take the responsibility of it. It's not "THE STATE OF", it's "my opinion on some stuff I read recently".
Define the market if you want, since the market follows certain concrete rules, facts and categories, but do not try to categorize and define culture. The boundaries and limits only exist in your head.
You want to make a blog about "fantasy", or whatever definition of fantasy that is so broad that includes everything, go on. The god of Language won't come to take its toll. I titled my own blog "Cesspit". You can be sure that everything can fit in.
Submitted by Abalieno on May 28, 2010 - 02:02.
See my eyes rolling in consternation again.
I enjoy reading Larry's reviews, no matter what he reviews. Then he links a forum I've never seen and I check there from time to time to read other points of view on his reviews of Erikson's books. Guess who's posting also in that place? Werthead. There's no place on the internet even vaguely related to fantasy and SF where you don't see him strutting about.
Which is actually a good thing. He spends quite a bit of time everywhere evangelizing about the genre, and you can't have enough of that. We should be grateful. There's nothing negative about answering questions and making people aware of this or that less known writer or book. Nothing negative at least till what he's spreading is somewhat accurate and honest, but there are certain instances that are not, and so he goes on spreading some twisted and inaccurate interpretations that can't be in any way useful.
This is a recurring habit of him with Erikson in particular, it seems he can't write a comment without putting some venom or spite in it. It just can't be helped. I point your attention in particular to this reply he writes. Someone asks some specific questions about Malazan and he's kind enough to answer. The reply he writes is actually good and to the point, helpful. Only he had to let some of that venom of him seep through, and so we get this:
People 'Ascend' when they become unstoppably badass. That's about the only criteria that can be found. When they become powerful enough they will ascend to become Ascendants, who are effectively demigods.
That's exactly the moment when my eyes went rolling, especially because this is a recurring bad habit of those who try to diminish Erikson as a writer by drawing a parallel between his series and role-playing games. I don't need to discuss the association because I've done it already in the past, the point here is that, no matter how you see it or personal opinion about Erikson as a writer, what he says there is simply inaccurate and WRONG. Yes, there's always this argument that says I don't qualify to comment since I haven't read the whole series yet, but now I've read some 3400 pages, I guess I should have an idea about how this thing works.
In those pages I read there are plenty of cases of individuals becoming ascendants. We see the process in various instances. Yet I can't remember A SINGLE ONE that went in the way Werthead described it. Not only there's not a pattern like the one he described, but there's not even a single case that went like that.
If one has to define a pattern (and a pattern is not easy to find here for deliberate reasons), it's one that is the exact opposite of "becoming badass". In most cases people in the books "ascend" after they went through some extreme suffering, or suffering that can be interpreted in some symbolic way. Saying this would still be imprecise and limited, but THIS is the only generalized criteria that one could honestly deduct.
When I think about this I remember these words by Erikson that I quoted recently for something entirely different: "the flaw is one of sequence." Indeed. People become badass AFTER they become ascendants, as a consequence. They do not become ascendants BECAUSE they are badass. This happens because ascendancy is in general the process of creation of myth in the malazan world. This process includes different typologies because it's here that Erikson deals with the entire spectrum of myth, from pragmatic and concrete gods, to religious beliefs. What in the beginning seems to have the most disparate origin is then shown to have a shared one. And this is a rather broad and deep theme that is already expanded and explored from various perspectives in each book.
This process draws directly not from the fantasy genre and its canon (even if these are used to play some tricks), but from REALITY. The process of creation of myths and gods is, in the Malazan world as in our real one, entirely symbolic. The meaning as a sign. Or a sign that evokes meaning. This is why it's possible in the Malazan world that gods appear disguised or take the place of other gods to deceive and twist followers. This kind of "game of thrones" is a game of ambivalence of meaning. It's a disguise of power, through meaning. Take for example this revelatory part with Heboric from House of Chains:
Then another voice spoke, louder, more imperious: 'What god now owns your
hands, old man? Tell me! Even their ghosts are not here -who is holding on to you? Tell
me!'
'There are no gods,' a third voice cut in, this one female.
'So you say!' came yet another, filled with spite. 'In your empty, barren, miserable
world!'
'Gods are born of belief, and belief is dead. We murdered it, with our vast
intelligence. You were too primitive—'
'Killing gods is not hard. The easiest murder of all. Nor is it a measure of intelligence.
Not even of civilization. Indeed, the indifference with which such death-blows are
delivered is its own form of ignorance.'
'More like forgetfulness. After all, it's not the gods that are important, it is the
stepping outside of oneself that gifts a mortal with virtue—'
'Kneel before Order? You blind fool—'
'Order? I was speaking of compassion—'
The only gap between the Malazan world and ours is that Erikson makes the process concrete and tangible. In the same way, for example, in Lost the players make the rules (and make them real) as they go, here the representation of a god makes it real. "Meaning" that dresses itself as tangible power. Meaning that transforms itself into magic. Accepting and embracing meaning makes it real and part of the factual world.
'It is believed,' he said slowly, 'by the bonecasters, that to create an
icon of a spirit or a god is to capture its essence within that icon. Even the laying of
stones prescribes confinement. Just as a hut can measure out the limits of power for a
mortal, so too are spirits and gods sealed into a chosen place of earth or stone or
wood… or an object. In this way power is chained, and so becomes manageable.'
'Do your bonecasters also believe that power begins as a thing devoid of shape, and thus
beyond control? And that to carve out an icon - or make a circle of stones - actually
forces order upon that power?'
Understanding this leads to understanding how ascendancy works, and define a pattern if we really want one. In most cases, people don't become ascendants, but they get picked by a god. In most cases (all) without their consent. The relationship is not a simple one, because it's reciprocate influence, and in order to use powers, the gods are subject to influence from the outside.
How does a god choose an ascendant? Through symbols and convenience. Again I say that "combat proficiency" never came to play in the choice in all the examples I've seen. What comes to play and defines the choice is "likeness", "kinship". Gods pick their ascendants through symbolic analogies. Through some kind of reflection between themselves and those they choose. Some kind of abstract link. This is why for example the Crippled God (Chained One) picks his followers among those who suffered and were chained in ways similar to his (in the same way in Lost the black smoke tries to find allies by exploiting some affinity with them). Gods make ascendants through affinity of spirit, or in some twisted interpretation of it. And this is why Heboric himself, cripple and blind, also is chosen. A man who only felt miserable and whose only escape from suffering was through drug. Are you telling me that his transition to ascendancy happens through badassness? Come on.
I don't think Erikson would have any interest in creating a magic system or a pantheon established on arbitrary assumptions. What Erikson puts in his books is definitely "fantasy", but always grounded on something real and true. The fantastic element is purely of transformation. Metaphoric. But in the end, it needs to connect back to something true and real in order to be relevant and meaningful. Which all makes me think about Brandon Sanderson "bragging" for his The Stormlight Archive series how "there are thirty magic systems in this world, depending on how you count them". Which is cool, but just "fluff" (as Dan Abnett would define it) if these magic systems are not used as narrative devices with some purpose. Thirty magic systems, or sixty, or one, or zero. Who cares? It's what you do with them and why, to matter. What they represent, what is the message. It's a book that you're writing, not a role-playing gaming system.
Which is the point.
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