Steven Erikson completes the MALAZAN series

[Werthead]

Via Facebook:

"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."

Congratulations to Steven Erikson. Twenty years, well over three million words, ten huge novels, four novellas and more. Naturally, there are ten more books to come in the setting (six from Erikson, four from Esslemont), but this is still an impressive achievement

 

[Evil Agent]

Via Facebook:



Congratulations to Steven Erikson. Twenty years, well over three million words, ten huge novels, four novellas and more. Naturally, there are ten more books to come in the setting (six from Erikson, four from Esslemont), but this is still an impressive achievement

Awesome news! He must feel pretty good right now. Sounds like he plans on doing a little well-earned celebrating.

Was it really twenty years, though? I only noticed the series about 7 years ago, but I know he wrote the original draft for GOTM a long time ago (when it was supposed to be a film).

 

[Werthead]

He started writing Gardens of the Moon in 1990, finished it in 1991, was unable to get anyone interested in it, did a load of other things for six-seven years, doodled around with the sequel, Memories of Ice, sold the series to Bantam for a still-record advance for a new fantasy author, went back to writing Memories of Ice, lost the whole novel in a hard drive crash, wrote Deadhouse Gates instead, went back to MoI and rewrote all of from scratch and away he went

 

[End Of Disc One]

What a champ. Congrats Steve on an amazing series unlike anything else out there. I can't believe it's coming to an end.

 

[Garet Jax]

At least someone out there is driven to complete a major epic series. Can't say the same for others.

 

[ChrisW]

Guess he proved you wrong wert or you still going to argue MBotF isn't finished?

The Crippled God, so I'm not sure why it has been removed from the poll, unless you believe that TCG will be the final book in the sequence, which is pretty amusing.

 

[tpetty]

Ditto. I enjoy the series, but the single most impressive aspect at this time is simply reaching an ending.

 

[Loerwyn]

I've not read any of the series, but it's a grand achievement nonetheless.

I think Mr Erikson deserves the time off!

 

[Roland 85]

Yeah, it's a major accomplishment, no matter how one feels about the series.

 

[Werthead]

Guess he proved you wrong wert or you still going to argue MBotF isn't finished?

Wait until we read the book. I'm still about 75% certain this is going to be the literary equivalent of the Lost series finale, except there will be more material eventually coming down the pipe to end it properly.

At moment I'm simply repeating what SE has said, that as far as he's concerned he's finished the series.

We'll see exactly how true that is in February

 

[alcanalz]

Congrats to SE on finishing the series and hopefully addding yet another stellar chapter to the MBotF mythos. Really impressive how he cranks these out so fast. Some will argue they aren't as refined as they could be, and I do agree to an extent, but I'm still a huge Malazan fan and cannot wait for TCG.

 

[Alchemist]

So "over three million words" is less that The Wheel of Time, right? WoT is currently at 3.7M which, I assume, will expand to 4.2-4.4M.

A general question about Malazan: I read and loved the first three books and have been a bit hesitant to go forward as most opinions I have read say that the series drops a notch after the 3rd book, and then again after the 5th book. I will still eventually read them, but I was just wondering what people thought.

 

[Winter]

Well, my personal favorites of the series are Midnight Tides and The Bonehunters. I enjoyed the rest of books after three, as well, though I haven't finished Dust of Dreams yet.

 

[End Of Disc One]

A general question about Malazan: I read and loved the first three books and have been a bit hesitant to go forward as most opinions I have read say that the series drops a notch after the 3rd book, and then again after the 5th book. I will still eventually read them, but I was just wondering what people thought.

There's no real consensus on the ranking of the quality of the books, even though 2 and 3 seem to be the most popular. 1 is actually one of the least popular. In my opinion, the quality doesn't drop at all. Sure 8 had a bit of a chore-like quality, but it was an anomaly. I highly recommend continuing.

 

[Gustaf Hagel]

A general question about Malazan: I read and loved the first three books and have been a bit hesitant to go forward as most opinions I have read say that the series drops a notch after the 3rd book, and then again after the 5th book. I will still eventually read them, but I was just wondering what people thought.

As I´ve noticed, I might be an exception but I really think the series picks up after the first three. You get a bigger scope, more characters and more understanding of the world. I also liked 'Toll the Hounds', which seems to be against the popular opinion as well. It was fascinating to read about all the fates entwined within a single city.

If you liked the first three, you should definitely go on.



And I think my life just got a little bit easier—but I want TCG for Christmas!

 

[Aktunka]

I think that a lot of the folks that feel the books after the third dropped a notch is because of what happens involving many of the beloved characters at the end of the third book. I personally loved all of the books, sure, some more than others, but I feel they were all pretty great. Some of the best characters of the series come around in books that have absolutely nothing to do with anything in the first three books as well. At least that is my opinion

Anyhow, they are definitely worth reading. Good times

 

[Werthead]

So "over three million words" is less that The Wheel of Time, right? WoT is currently at 3.7M which, I assume, will expand to 4.2-4.4M.

Indeed. One of the oddest things about Malazan is that the books are 1,200-1,300 pages long in paperback but in terms of word count are shorter than the longest Wheel of Time books which only just scrape over 1,000. Must be some kind of weird font spacing thing going on. I believe the longest Malazan book has scraped 385,000 words, but that's still 7,000 or so words shorter than The Shadow Rising and Lord of Chaos, plus of course there's 14 WoT books to Malazan's ten (maybe, so far, etc).

A general question about Malazan: I read and loved the first three books and have been a bit hesitant to go forward as most opinions I have read say that the series drops a notch after the 3rd book, and then again after the 5th book. I will still eventually read them, but I was just wondering what people thought.

I think Erikson's biggest problem in the later books is that the characters who emerge later in the series aren't particularly as interesting as those who came before. Up until #5 he's still cranking out really interesting characters, but after Midnight Tides they seem to dry up. The new characters who emerge after that are generally dull and uninspiring, especially the approximately 14,000 individually named Bonehunter POVs we get to spend time completely pointlessly in Books 6-7 and 9.

The story development remains interesting, but the later books do suffer in comparison to the earlier ones.

 

[Michigan]

So "over three million words" is less that The Wheel of Time, right? WoT is currently at 3.7M which, I assume, will expand to 4.2-4.4M.

A general question about Malazan: I read and loved the first three books and have been a bit hesitant to go forward as most opinions I have read say that the series drops a notch after the 3rd book, and then again after the 5th book. I will still eventually read them, but I was just wondering what people thought.

Seeing as how most people consider either the 2nd or 3rd to be the best I suppose there can't help but be a dropoff. We aren't talking about a dropoff of WOT epic proportions though. Still good books. I eagerly await the MMP release of Dust of Dreams.

 

[ssoutrs]

I miss Apsalar

I hope she is in the last book.

 

[Zeratul]

Congrats to Erikson, impressive achievement indeed. Though it remains to be seen how much of a real ending it would be, given all the news of additional books by him and Esselmont and the way DoD was.

Anyway, I am one of those who think books 6-9 are way below the quality of the first 5, especially the masterpieces DHG and MoI. After I finished DoD recently, I went back to rereading parts of those two to compare the style, and they are so much better.

But this isn't really the place for this, maybe I should start a new "The decline of the Malazan series" thread.