/lit/ - Literature

>>6773840
>and man, it's slow going
The thing with Eriskon, is that in every single instalment of the Malazan series, he introduces characters (such as >>6776607 points out) waaaay too early on. I think I get why he does this, but the choice is bot at all his strong point. His strong point is brining together all the boring, irrelevant characters and plots to suddenly combine them into the most satisfying, mind-blowing endings out there, making the 1000+ page swamp sludge of introductions entirely worth it, somehow.

That's Eriskon's problem: He's great at writing tragedy, but for some reason decides to draw out all the 'setting up of the stage' until it's just bloated and boring. I have stockholm-syndrome, so I read every novel from the series, putting up with the boring 1000+ page beginning just to read the last 200+ pages of endings which somehow make it all worth it.

>I've heard good stuff about Deadhouse Gates though
DG was the only one I remember being actually good throughout the first half. It wasn't like his others, where they are mind-numbingly slow and bloated in the first half, then great in the last half; instead, DH was great all the way through as far as I remember (it was a long time ago). And the ending was by far the most tragically emotional of the lot. There's a reason why that book sticks with everyone one who reads Malazan.

>>6776607
Bad news. He pulls this shit all throughout the entire series. I explained it to the guy above, in this post.

>>6503638
>very good prose

No. No it's not. I agree with what you said, but not the prose. No. Erikson's writing style is so half assed first-draft grade it makes the series a grind to read, let alone there's ten fucking tomes. No author should ever sign a ten book deal with a publisher, ever.

>>6406360
Steven Erikson could have actually done something decent with Malazan. the first book was something different/edgy, he went for something in the second one and it peaked there, and then by the time he got to 3, he fell back to relying on "le kill ur darlingz" (because apparently that's good writing) and "epic convergences", which basically ran the whole series to shit. It doesn't help he signed a fucking ten book deal, as well. So much fluff. So much shit. He really did fuck the potential up.

>>5888945
During my time reading the books I never actually stopped to read those poems. For one, poetry has never really worked with me for some reason, and two, I just wanted to get on with what happens next. Oh well.

>>5861034
I'm just waiting for the series to catch onto the mainstream.

I'm calling it first: just before it goes big, people will start to see it's literary merit, and then as soon as it gets the exposure it always should have had and HBO takes it up, it'll suddenly be blasphemy to utter even the first syllable of Steven Erikson's name here on /lit/

>>5182171
OP, one thing that hasn't been mentioned here is what the ride is like. Here's how I see it.

Erikson dumps you, the reader, into an absolute shit-house of a beginning, and it'll feel like it's not going to going anywhere, and you'll want to put it down. But I can say this for every single one of his works: It ends like an orgasm.

It's like he's dropped you in a muddy swamp, and there's an island in the middle with a box of candy on it. He then tells you that if you churn your way through the swamp, you'll get to the island and he'll give you that box of candy. Then you have one and realize that eating it makes you, in that moment, euphoric.

I'm a long-time Malzan reader, and all I can tell you is that with each book, Trust in Erikson™

He WILL deliver.

What does /lit/ think of Steven Erikson? I think he's the JS Bach of literature.

Reddit loves him