/lit/ - Literature

It's hit or miss. /lit/ will sperg out because it's genre fiction, though.

I don't know if you'd like it because you haven't provided anything to compare it to. I can tell you it's worth a shot.

>>5182171
Try it, it's well worth checking out.
If you're daunted by the size trey reading Glenn Cook's The Black Company first. Just books 1-3 is fine.

It's different from the Malazan but Erikson took a lot of inspiration from The Black Company.

I wasn't impressed. It put me off reading any more of the series.

>>5182215
Malazan and Black Company both have 10 books IIRC. It's well worth reading the latter through. I put off Malazan at book 5, but mostly because of neck problems.

>>5182171
I can't quite decide whether I like it or not.

The good
>Ridiculously complex world
>Plots can be involving as FUCK. Deadhouse Gates is worth reading for the Chain of Dogs ark alone.
>Good prose. Nothing to go crazy about, but better than most authors of the genre.
>Pace, for both narrative and exposition, is usually pretty good.
>Books are mostly self-contained. They always have their own story arcs and end in a catharsis.
>A select few characters are really well written.

The bad
>Rest of the characters are insipid, not believable. It's hard to give a fuck about most of them.
>It can be a frustrating read if you hate being kept in the dark.
>Dialogue, with some exceptions, is always written the exact same way. Everyone, save for one comical relief wizard, speaks the same be they a deities or gate guards.
>There is continuation and an overarching plot, but it's not linear. Prepare to get involved in a plot/group of characters only to know they won't reappear until 3 books later.
>Fanbase is obnoxious.

That's mostly it.

>>5182171
If you want recommendations check here >>5172945

>>5182258
>Malazan and Black Company both have 10 books IIRC
9 Black Company books I think. But they're a lot shorter. The Black Company was compiled into three books. each about the size of one Malazan.

is that why steven erikson is getting so popular lately?
because of GoT showfags?

>>5184573
Is it getting so popular that you are already starting to unlike it ?!

Brilliant series. The first book is the worst in the series, but it improves instantly with the 2nd and 3rd being absolute gold.

Also - Hood is best god. He was writing a never ending suicide note before he became god of death, and his followers are those that defy his power. Bro tier.

>>5182171
It's the best fantasy there is. People who don't like it are genuinely autistic.

>>5186023
Anomander is best god.

>>5186032
Anomander is an ascendant, but it's much of a muchness.

Really inconsistent series with certain parts (even books) that are amazing and some that are dull as hell.

I'd recommend it, but you can bet there will be times when you wish Erikson would cut the crap. Certain storylines stretching across several books could be dropped and the way he sometimes shoehorns stuff in to set up stories for Esslemont is really shit.

Black Company is way better and could easily be left satisfactorily at the end of the original trilogy if you don't want to read on.

>>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.

>>5186051
>Merging mother dark back into her children isn't godlike

>>5186026
As much as I love him, I think Erikson himself is genuinely autistic

>>5186177
>I'm a long-time Malzan reader, and all I can tell you is that with each book, Trust in Erikson™
>He WILL deliver.

Bullshit. Toll was full of needless crap.

Top tier: DG, MoI, MT

Good tier: RG, HoC

Mid tier: TCG, TTH

Bad tier: BH, DoD, GoTM

>>5186023

Gothos is the one with the suicide note m8

>>5186307

MoI >> BH >> MT >> GotM > RG > DG > DoD=TCG > TtH >HoC

>>5186315

Bonehunters is really bad, IDK how you hallucinated that it is good.

And Memories/Deadhouse are hands down the two best books in the series, no competition. Everything else declines in some form, even the also top tier Midnight Tides.

>>5186307

Also:

What the fuck tier: Forge of Darkness

Esslemont tier: all of the Malazan Empire books.

Can this just be a fantasy/fiction general?


I'm on book 5 of Wheel of Time and I am so sick of the way Robert Jordan writes his female characters. Everything involving Nynaeve and Elayne is so painful to read. The only inner dialogue they ever have is to comment on how men are blithering retards and how they don't know anything about anything. Not to mention Nynaeve is so obtusely angry about the littlest of things, it make her character so despicable and misaligned her actions and reactions make no sense in the context of her position in the story. They are placed in a position where Elayne is better suited to play a noblewoman, as a disguise, and Nynaeve is forced to play her handmaiden, so Nynaeve is furious. Why on earth are you fucking angry you dumb slut, you're fucking under cover and this other bitch has been literal royalty from noble blood and you're upset you have to pretend to be subservient? FUCK YOU

Should I keep reading this dog shit? Does it ever get better?

>>5186318

Nope. To me Bonehunters felt properly epic, like the series was getting back to MoI territory.

Deadhouse was a great idea but it's ruined by Erikson wanting to cram too much shit into his novels (and how accomplishes that failing with 1000 pages, I don't know). The Chain of Dogs just never breathed and felt like a real experience. Ending was good but it could have been a lot more.

>>5186322

Don't get me started on Esslemont. Dude is so shit-tier. Really wanted to throw ROTCG out the window it was just so crap; he really did his best to trash everything we knew about the Empire up to that point.

It's my understanding that Malazan involves a lot of magic, deities, non-human races, etc.

If one were looking for something soft on the supernatural, like ASOIAF, i guess that wouldn't be Malazan then.

Any hard sci-fi, spec fic, or fantasy that doesn't require heavy machinery with which to suspend one's disbelief? Isn't Gormenghast no bullshit or minimal bullshit?

>>5186370
You think that was bad? Have you read the excerpt of his newest release, Assail? Fuck me, the first sentence was too dense to even be a sentence in the first place.
How he gets published, I do not know.
Link to the excerpt: http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/07/assail-excerpt-ian-c-esslemont-malazan

>>5186381
I was talking about I.C.E btw

>>5186370

What the hell is supposed to be wrong with Chain of Dogs. Everyone acknowledges that storyline as

A.) Probably the most moving part of the entire series
B.) The thing that redeems how ultimately shitty GoTM is, to the point where skipping Gardens is perfectly acceptable.

>>5186373

Book of the New Sun.

Conan.

Lankhmar

Elric of Melnibone

>>5186393

I found it tedious because it's just "move->fight->move again->another fight->better move again->fighting again"

You don't really get to FEEL what life is like on the march. It just moves too quickly for you to gain an appreciation of it.

And Erikson spends way too much time dicking around with the broken warrens in this one, as I recollect. It's like Dragnipur - largely a massive waste of time that a better editor would have slapped down.

>>5186381
>Kyle

Stopping right there.

>>5186419
Who the absolute fuck calls their main character Kyle in the Malazan world of all fantasy settings? Disgusting.

>>5186396
starting with robert e. howard's conan. will investigate these others further. thx anon.

>>5186308
Welp. I still like Hood.

>>5186381
Frankly I'm just waiting out for the Karsa Orlong trilogy. I'll be pretty pissed if he ruins that or gives it to Esslemont.

About halfway through Bonehunters and I just hate Apsalar so much I want to find Steven Erikson and fucking just punch him or something.

What do you all recommend as far as very current fantasy goes? Any really great new stuff in the last couple years?

>>5185835
NEVER
Gardens of the Moon starring Shiah LeBouf could be doing iron man numbers and I would still like it

>>5188252

I don't think there's anything special from the last couple of years that's not from an established author.

Though I liked Abercrombie's latest, which just came out, a lot more than he previous couple of books. I know it's marketed as YA, but Half A King feels like it cut a lot of the crap that had began to infest his recent novels.

I'm on the seventh book right now. I personally think it's dope as shit. Of all the big epic genre series out there, this is the one where the payoff is proportional to the investment you need to put in.

It's ten thousand pages long and not one of them is filler.

It has a great mystery element. It's kinda like what LOST would be like if it weren't written by hacks.

>>5187277
Why? She only shows up once every hundred pages in that one lol.

Idunno I can only reflect on the whole book fondly because the ending's a zinger.

>>5186373
Malazan might be the closest thing ever to Hard Fantasy in regards to its worldbuilding. Races have anthropological histories that are intertwined and you can bet that most of the gods were originally mortal.

>>5186393
Yeah I didn't enjoy the Chain of Dogs. It's like he herded all his flat characters into one story arc for that book.

>>5191085

Erikson is so shit at writing Malazan marine characters. They almost all sound the same. Hellian is the only one I can think of who really stands out.

>>5191068

Spoilers: the last 3 books are shit.

FoD is meh, but the ending is god-tier. Can't wait for Fall of Light.

>>5182258

this analysis of the pros and cons is basically perfect

if you really like fantasy, it would be stupid to not read this series because its definitely a prominent entry, but it's also weirdly overrated and suffers from the fact that it gets both its strength and it's weaknesses from the incessant grimdark language

there's a few too many bitter quips, if you know what i mean, its tiring

i still enjoyed as far as ive gotten (book 4), but i read them very slowly, they dont draw me in and force me to keep reading like other fantasy has

I really enjoyed ASOIF, but if you didn't, don't let that color your feelings on this recommendation, because the two series are very very different

the Riftwar Saga by Raymond Feist is amazing to me, specifically the first two books, Magician Apprentice and Magician Master. It's a lot lighter than Malazan or ASOIF, not so much rape and gore, it's a coming of age tale.

But it's an excellent series that doesn't overreach itself, the author doesn't come off superfluously satisfied with his prose like i sometimes feel happens in Malazan and in general with "respected" literature. It comes across like "are you impressed with my language skills yet?"

But Feist really just wants you to hear the story he's come up with, not an ounce of pretention in him, many will find the series too nerdy, too magical

I'm going to bump this because i just finished the last book a few days ago and i don't want to create a new thread.

Goddamn the ending was unsatisfying as fuck. More than half the plot lines are left completely up in the air, some of them having not even been mentioned since halfway through the series. Still good, but it has a lot of flaws, and the navel-gazing monologues start to get really repetitive towards the end of the series.
I liked the first book almost as much as the three that followed it, but i can understand why others might not. It really takes an appreciation for some old school D&D to get into it. That said, everything after the Pannion Wars, with a few exceptions, seemed to be kind of down hill. How is it that Ganoes becoming a Soletaken Hound of goddamn Shadow is never even once relevant to the plot? It's not even mentioned after the third or fourth book. And what the fuck was up with Quick Ben? He was some kind of shape shifting demon from Kurald Galain right?

That said, pretty much everything focusing on Karsa, Toc and Fiddler was great. Unfortunately it seemed to me like Erikson started trying to emulate the tone of ASoIaF after around book 6 or so, and i didn't think it worked very well

Other than that, probably one of the most interesting Magic systems you'll find in Fantasy. bretty good read, 7/10.

So should I read The Black Company or The Malazan?

What are the differences?

>>5182171
Started this yday
hoping it will be a good read. only read 1-2 chapters trying to figure out characters etc. seems to be alright might be good

>it was this series or black company and a lot more people recommended this book series

>read the first book
Didn't really like it, but it felt like an intro to Malazan so whatever
>get like halfway through the second book, drop it for whatever reason
It started getting better, stopped reading due to reasons and just didn't go back. Now I've forgotten enough to have to reread the first book and I can't bring myself to do it.

Oh well

>>5194302
bump this

>>5192571
>Unfortunately it seemed to me like Erikson started trying to emulate the tone of ASoIaF after around book 6 or so
how so?
I have only read the first 4 in the series

>>5192571
Quickben himself was the Magi of house Dark, as in it was his title before getting all those other souls in him. He basically used it to do a soul transfer and get the entire cabal of souls and their power into him.

In short, he is strong as hell, with the intelligence and manipulative personality to match it. Just go along with whatever is written about him.


I expect more will be written about Ganoes and the whole hound thing when Shadow Fox's story picks back up. In the scheme of things, it was a weak power compared to his others, but obviously symbolised a connection with Shadow Fox.

I'm at book 4 but can't continue. The guy that did the three previous audiobooks stopped, and they are using the guy who voiced the Locke Lamora series. i can't enjoy the books with his voice it doesn't match at all.

As much as I have enjoyed this series, I kinda wish it would have been the story GotM originally set it up to be.

>>5195212

What was it "originally set up to be"?

Though I sort of know what you mean. I've read up to DoD and I thought we were in for some hardcore awesome shit after MoI, but then Erikson goes all "LOL NO".

Hell, we finally get to the villain after 3000 pages and it looks like shit is going down, only for the Crippled God to do fuck all for the rest of the series. I know he has basically sets up the Edur, and while that's a great storyline it never feels as threatening as what he's pulling in MoI with Burn.

But at least I gave up expecting Erikson to tidy up all his plot lines. The way he started writing storylines that went no where so that ICE could detail them was pure bullshit.

>>5195535
I think the point is that unlike normal fantasy there is no singular evil. It's just the broken, greedy, selfish or the misguided that already exists in people and the Crippled God is basically the god of it. The Crippled god isn't evil, but the things people do in his name is. Similar to the atrocities the priests of D'rek (?) did while claiming it was in her name. She killed them all for it.

On top of that, you have all the usual misunderstandings that completely blow up where one side isn't wrong but not completely blameless.


My point is - It takes so long to build up the Crippled god as the big bad because he isn't.. He's instead trying to paint evil in the series as a murky grey, and 'justice' as a bias means some use to achieve personal goals.

>>5196170

I dunno. I would say the Crippled God is evil. I know it's not his fault for being summoned and ending up in the state he's in, but in being an activator for evil I think it's fair to say is basically a traditional bad guy.

But anyway.... I know Erikson does try to play shades of grey, but I don't think he always does it very well. I think Laseen is a prime example of this. I'm not sure what the hell I'm supposed to make of her character since she is often presented in one extreme or the other.

For me Abercrombie does grey better. The conclusion to the First Law trilogy was a "Damn!" moment.

>>5196223
He's definitely the bad guy, but I just wouldn't say evil. As you said, he was basically summoned into the world, where he is constantly tortured. His mere existence is enough for everyone else to seal/kill/etc him multiple times over, he only wants it to all stop. Unlike every human/god/entity he had a single ally, friend or simple stranger offer assistance for hundreds of thousands of years. He gets sick of it and wants to be the god for those broken like him..

I agree he doesn't really go grey as well as other authors though. However at least he is reasonably consistent with it. My pet hate is when a themes or character is set-up throughout a series/book but the author has changed their mind about it at least dozen times. The Dark Tower is a pretty good example of it.

>>5190002

Implying Shiah wouldn't be god tier Crokus

>>5191582

Riftwar is actually very good

It's inferior to Malazan in characters, emotional aspects, and the pure action, but is far superior in scope and world-building, suprisingly. It even reaches, in some scenes, a sort of parity in weight that Malazan does.

>>5196223
The whole point of the Crippled God getting into the Deck of Dragons was that it was legitimized, no longer seen as evil because it was an outsider, just another player in a massive game

>>5196313
Magician, Empire Trilogy (joint effort) and Serpentwar are my favourite Feist works. It's a pity he's got a terrible memory and his editors are complete shit, because he keeps forgetting powers/feats/who lives where/did what. I've finally got into the last trilogy years after leaving the series, and it's horseshit compared to earlier work.

>>5196329

Darkwar was good IMO.

Malazan is obviously the superior series by a large margin, but Feist actually handled his world in a far more satisfactory manner. It's just that his characters are sort of boring and he doesn't write great action. See Forge of Darness for Erikson mangling his setting.

>>5196260
>The Dark Tower
Fucking this. I devoured that series when i was younger, but when I reread it recently, I was so disappointed. It's an inconsistent mess.

Can any of you /rec/ a fantasy book/series that is really REALLY light on the magic and fantastical races, except for dramatic punctuation?
ASOIAF, which I have read, kinda fits (if GRRM completely cut out Daeny and the dragons shit, that is), but I'm thinking more along the lines of the manga Berserk.
>Eclipse never 4get

>>5196338
I've been waiting for the full trilogy to come out before jumpin on FoD.

Feist just annoys me now. It's all "Pug is over 100 years old, he's so good" and he's completely ineffective in each new book, yet faces the same problems over and over. On the flip side "Jimmy the Hand is so awesome and such a good spymaster" yet everyone knows he is, but can't capitalize on that. There's a lot of repetitions like this, and it's just bad writing.

>>5196344
Joe Abercrombie's stuff would be perfect.

>>5196344
Try KJ Parker's books, they have no magic or other races at all.

Guy Gavriel Kay's The Lions of Al-Rassan had only one character with very light magic that I can remember and only had human races. Haven't read his other books yet, but they generally seem to be well rated.

>>5197636
>Try KJ Parker's books, they have no magic

Yup. No Magic. Just natural philosophical metaphysical constructions that the Natural Philosophers really don't know how actually works.

>>5196365
>>5197636
I will read them all, thanks

>>5199205
If you're still around, OP, I'd recommend Sanderson's books and the Kingkiller chronicle series by Rothfuss. Both very easy to read.

>>5200379
>Sanderson
>Kingkiller
>low magic

Reading comprehension you do lack.

>>5196344
Use the Brown Arrows for your "muh low magic" fantasy.

>>5202661
Jesus Christ. You're a chick, right? All that urban fantasy and several seriers by Trudi Canavan... you have some good stuff in there but it's buried in shite.