Mikael, lol, dude, the whole conversation started when you said that Tolkien's world building was less complex than Malazan (and Song) and simplistic. That's what I've been responding to, that's what others have been responding to, so for you to announce that those first comments of yours that started the whole thing off are irrelevant to the discussion and I'm putting words in your mouth (that you originally spoke,) by bringing them up doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Here's how the conversation broke down:
1. Mikael says:
I don't think it's controversial to say that Tolkein's world building has been surpassed several times over. The Wheel of Time, A Song of Ice and Fire, and The Malazan Book of the Fallen, are a few series among many that have much larger and much more complex worlds.
And you said:
I just personally find the world building in the LOTR books to be a little too simplistic, and I can't think of single facet of its world building that comes close to the Malazan books or ASOIAF books (more so Malazan though).
2. To which I responded:
So you haven't read The Silmarillion then? Malazan is fun but it's basically game level world building (not surprising as it was for a game originally.)
And off we went. So it's not irrelevant -- it's what developed the issue.
You have now clarified that by simplistic, you didn't mean simplistic world-building at all, which explains why we had confusion. You meant that the
moral themes of Lord of the Rings didn't interest you as much as the moral themes of Malazan. You meant that you found the morality and aspects of the characters of Tolkien's world simplistic black and white, and Malazan's complicated, not the world-building. (Which is a whole other kettle of fish from what the OP was originally asking about, which was detailed world-building in the Tolkien and Potter vein.)
And this issue that you are bringing up is simply the light-dark issue and has nothing to do with complexity in world design. It has to do with author's writing style and tone for stories.
Tolkien is using deliberately a mythic structure -- Beowulf, Roland, Morte d'Arthur -- which focuses on the heroic, the hopeful, the ordinary man thrust into struggles of great power, but also on the corruption and lure of power, the betrayal of the trusted, the power of the heroic to actually cause damage, the loss and devastation that come from neglect and greed. While the characters are not trying to negotiate a trade pact with Sauron, there are significant political issues, from the past -- events that created and banished Sauron -- to the present. The rivalries and claims of the elves and the dwarfs, which they struggle to set aside facing the bigger threat. The effort to convince the trees to kick in with the rest of the armies instead of being isolationist. Boromir is corrupted by the ring into nearly killing Frodo because his country has been left to defend the border with Modor largely alone and he's got a big political negotiation chip on his shoulder about that. There is an entire feminist plotline about social change in there with Eowyn. There are probably more discussions of political issues in Lord of the Rings than there are actual battle scenes, and quite a bit of wrangling in The Hobbit.
Malazan's cast of equally conflicted, opportunistic, sometimes nasty characters are no more realistic or complex than Tolkien's more mythic warriors and folksy ordinary folk, and they are no less stereotypical. Noir is as old as the hills at this point in fantasy fiction. But the tone is different and it's alright to like that tone better, to be more immersed in a world that is largely without hope, comraderie and love than one that is.
But that doesn't mean the one with hope is less morally complex. Tolkien's work is mythic (including The Silmarillon,) and about loss and determination against the corruption of power, which is why it's resonated over the decades.
Malazan is an adventure battle story on acid built as a puzzle game. Which, oddly enough, is very common in secondary world fantasy fiction. But Erikson does it well, jumping around in time, playing one conflict off another. He and Tolkien actually not only share some of the same themes (war poisons everything, for instance,) but have some of the same takes on them that are not always so ambiguous.
For some, Malazan is not immersive because they don't find the characters interesting and just wait for them to die (mostly those people don't like the time jumps, I've found.) For others, it's very immersive, and they may have decided, at some point in their youths, that people doing helpful acts in fiction was boring. Others can go either way.
But cynicism and courage really don't get to one up each other in depth and are often related. I do think that the way Erikson set up his world system does have a lot of interest to it. But I think in terms of vivid landscapes, Tolkien does better there, although Erikson has his moments (I will always love the chained dogs.) Tolkien's style, which is again coming mainly from Edwardian sensibilities of the 1900's-1930's, is less modern and thus of less interest to some readers. But Erikson's time jumping, and less interest in individuals versus the grand sweep of war and the machinations of spy craft, is also of less interest to some readers.
But on either the landscape (world-building) front or the moral theme front, for me, I can't see Tolkien as being lacking in complexity.
