Re: Need help from Erikson Fans - The Malazan Book of the Fallen Info - Edit 1
Before modification by DomA at 14/03/2011 03:53:35 PM
I found the first one extremely hard to get into. Erikson pushed the 'in media res' approach really far for a series opener, and in this first one in particular I thought he didn't master yet so well the "converging" structure that would become his trademark later (very slow build ups, followed by a sudden awesome final rush, sometimes lasting for the full last third of a book etc. ) From book 2 onward this is excellently done, in GoTM I lost interest before it started happening, and when it did I just didn't really care anymore. It got better on re read, as GoTM is one of those books that don't make much sense early on but you discover later in the series were full of things that escaped you).
It may help to know that GotM was originally written as a screenplay before being adapted into a novel. To me, that helped explain the structure a great deal.
Hmmm... I'm not sure it helps! Which part(s) was the focus of the original screenplay - the Darujhistan story?
What helped more for me was to know this was originally developped as a role playing setting. It definitely has the feel of that. For the better, as from the get go it is extremely well realised, detailed and rich, and for the worse as at times as it makes you feel thrown into a very advanced game and its players just won't be bothered to help you get up to speed on much of anything. The book ends up with this feeling that Erikson knows his characters and settings too well, and wasn't always so good at judging how much a "newcomer" would need to know to keep interest in what is going on. GotM felt very self-indulgent in places (the Daru story is the easiest to get into, though it's plagued a bit by its cliché characters). That impression gets largely corrected later when you understand more what Erikson is doing and what the tone and focus of the series will be, but even though I appreciated GotM a lot more in a re read many books later, I still think it's not a fully succesful intro to the series. Erikson pushed the 'in media res' perspective just a little too far for an opener. I don't think I would have read the others, and given how much I loved those that would have been to my loss, if people had not convinced me to go on with books 2-3 and decide then to stop or continue. GOtM as such didn't do its job with me of drawing me into the series, not on its own. DGH did that.
That said, I have a problem with "beginnings" in general and I'm terribly hard to satisfy when it comes to those. I lose patience with LOTR's pastoral beginning, and I hated WOT's all too conventional and simplistic opener and lost patience with how the characters get behind you at some point, and yet Erikson spares you that but goes a bit too far for my taste in the other direction. Of the "big works" of Fantasy out there, I think the most satisfying and balanced series opener I've read would probably be Martin's.