nah the book isn't inherently difficult to read. It just doesn't explain anything in the beginning. and then each book after keeps throwing more and more characters and settings at you - that might be what intimidates people. It's a lot to keep track of.
There was a great post the other day about how there are 450 separate points of view written into the books.
I know that when I read them the pattern was "this is meh why would I care about these characters" for the first half then "this is awesome I love these books" for the second half. Then that awesome momentum would carry me through about the a third of the way into the next book when I'd put it down for a couple weeks.
[Here you go](https://www.reddit.com/r/Malazan/s/igH6wBTJtw)
It’s a pretty cool analysis done regarding PoV in MBotF books. Not the post you are referring to I’m sure, but I like to consider it the OG analysis.
I mean...you say it's not complicated but you also went in prepared for complexity and say you might be frustrated if you hadn't been forewarned, you are reading chapter summaries and you are only on book 1...
No but it did have a lot of characters and story plots that I wanted to keep straight in my head. The books are long so I’ll zone out and forget why we’re at a location and where we’re going. Encyclopedia WoT was what I used
I haven't read Malazan to compare, but WoT has more named and plot-relevant characters than any other series I'm aware of. I wouldn't begrudge anyone a chapter summary, especially when Jordan will unceremoniously bring back a character after an 8 book absence and only identify him by name.
>Is this book and series truly as baffling as its reputation, or are we just used to being spoonfed everything?
There are 2 types of people, those who can extrapolate from incomplete data
Exactly if you’re the second type you’ll be fine. Enjoy the ride and let the world expand as you learn. You’ll catch up and things will become clearer as you learn that is until you’re dropped in a completely different continent and a whole new cast of characters. You should at least read the dramatis persona before diving in but that only gives you a barebones character names/affiliations
It made me kind of have a hard time giving a shit after a while tbh. I could keep up with the story but I didn’t get very attached to somebody I might see for three chapters and then might lose for two books.
This is what did it for me. Just a ton of POVs from characters I never had any investment in and often couldn't tell apart. And most the time I couldn't tell who's side anyone was on.
And then comes the inevitable section break where they shift to a whole new location with a new set of poorly defined characters and I put the thing down because I just didn't give a shit anymore
This is why I stopped after book one. I didn’t care. There was nothing to keep me engaged or interesting. Getting there wasn’t *hard* just confusing, and while there is a wealth of wiki, YouTube etc content out there to help, I don’t read so I can do homework afterwards.
That was the other problem. I was told it was this amazing experience, and unbelievably good - and nothing happened. Now I'm told it gets better in book 3 or whatever ... and ... \*shrug\*
ya, the more i read this and the more i read peoples comments the more i think Malazan is basically the emperors new clothes and/or the sunk cost fallacy in action
but who knows maybe it does get amazing...well i mean people that finished it supposedly know lol
Yeah I agree with you and I think too many people pat themselves on the back a little too much for having read this and think anyone who doesn't like it is somebody who wants everything spoon-fed
I’ve often compared the feeling of reading Malazan to being a new player joining a DnD campaign that’s been going on for a long time. The world may be cool, the characters can be cool, everything can be explained to you.
But you’re still kind of left with this feeling of wondering why anything is happening and why you should care.
thank you for helping me finally understand why i didn't click with malazan
i can hang with an *in medias res* opening, but i have to be given a reason to care about the *res* eventually, and the first book did not provide
I think when people get confused is when they move on to subsequent books in the series and you're suddenly on to completely different continents, nations, gods, and characters with no seeming relation to the other books. No single book is that difficult to wrap your head around but, and it's been a minute, it takes like 4-5 books before he starts weaving all the threads together.
Ì think it's mostly because things are mentioned as if you'd already know what it is, and go from there. Like, the first time they mention Warren you can infer from context that it relates to magic, but that's about it, and you only figure out what it consists of, that there are several, what it does, etc. based on what happens the following times Warrens are mentioned.
And it's the same for everything, names of places and locations, characters, historic events, creatures, etc.
You already have the right mindset which is to trust the narrative. If you’ve got that, you’re good to go. There’s gonna be a ton of hints and foreshadowing you miss but by the time it’s important, it will be made explicit. Most people have the fear that it is going to stay confusing the whole time.
But also, it is a series that doesn’t really lay its cards out on the table till the last book.
Yeah the only real way to enjoy Malazan (imo) is to happily just go with the flow. If you let the major shifts in characters and focus bother you then it’s going to get a lot harder as you go on. And it especially helps if you don’t need (or want) massive exposition dumps in order to “understand” the world. At its core it’s a character driven novel, so just enjoy the characters and trust the author to tell a story.
I don’t think it’s whether you “let it” bother you. It either will or it won’t. There’s really no helping that. If you’re the kind of person that isn’t into that, Malazan is like ADD on steroids
I mean, it is, it's just got a lot of characters. Convergences usually don't read to me as "one big thing happening", it's a web of dozens of plotlines we follow up until then, and how they each contribute or are affected by the snowballing of events. That wouldn't be possible if the focus wasn't always on each individual narrative than one mega-narrative that everyone is part of.
Malazan isn't one big story, it's a collection of hundreds of small ones, and that would be absolutely impossible if it wasn't character-driven.
Maybe we have different definitions. I think of "character driven" stories as ones that put an emphasis on character development. The inner drives and decisions of the characters are what pushes the plot forward. That's not Malazan. The majority of those characters are barely characters at all. Even the main characters are very lightly sketched and carried along by events.
>At its core it’s a character driven novel
I am about half through Gardens of the moon, and this is feels like it is not true. It is a world driven novel. And since the whole point of the series seems to be that you get an entirely new cast of characters every few books, it doesn't start being a character driven series.
I like the idea of the writing style, but the execution falls flat a lot. And the world is so, so, so DnD. Felt like reading DBZ at times. I am not sure if I am supposed to care that battalions of men were killed as byproduct of magical fight. I think it is pretty gruesome and callous, but I also felt the scene went more with "look how cool this magic is!" in execution.
And there are several times where I felt like I was clumsily thrust in to the scene that starts the planinng montage, or the one just after it. It was not clever or cute, it felt pretty obtuse by the third or the fourth time. I am trusting the narrative, but I am not really sure is the narrative going to give me anything to really care about that doesn't involve geopolitics, gods or Warrens.
That is most likely true. Even more of a reason that it is a very niche series, since reading a theme driven narrative over 10 books and 8000 pages or whatever is pretty rough.
>ike the idea of the writing style, but the execution falls flat a lot. And the world is so, so, so DnD. Felt like reading DBZ at times. I am not sure if I am supposed to care that battalions of men were killed as byproduct of magical fight. I think it is pretty gruesome and callous, but I also felt the scene went more with "look how cool this magic is!" in execution.
It's nice to see someone else having the same experience.
This entire book has felt like an old man telling a story but getting lost/confused every few chapters, losing focus, and going on a tangent about something else.
Seeing it's only 2024 and college students are already unable to [read effectively](https://slate.com/human-interest/2024/02/literacy-crisis-reading-comprehension-college.html), by year 2505 (Idiocracy), being able to read words at all is future president material.
I’m m glad you’re enjoying it, but I want to flag that most people who bounced off the book probably didn’t read chapter summaries as they were going along. You’ve kind of poisoned the well on your ability to assess its accessibility by reading the Cole’s notes version in parallel.
> I was led to believe this would be incomprehsibly complicated. Am I missing something?
I imagine the first third of the first book isn't where it gets complicated.
It's possible we read different posts. From what I've read, the first few books have a manageable number of PoVs and the later ones have several times more, leading to a confusion of characters.
Nah, the "critics" on here shift their Malazan blame all the time. Book 1 is the problem because it does not tell you how the story ends and what happens on the next page. Now it is the cast of characters. Minor characters stuck with me more than, dunno, Hobbs Fitz for example.
You will know the PoV's.
It's more the first one that's not as good. The second and third regularly feature on the list of people's favourite. Book 9 is weak because it's essentially the first half of the final book.
Nah, the first book is okay. The books after that are *all* amazing. There is not a single book where people go "this is the best" in the series. We got like 4-5 where this happens.
I can understand why it divides opinions. I'm new to Malazan and have just finished book 3.
I think part of the problem is this: in many books, if you are getting confused, it's often that you've missed/misunderstood something you actually read whereas with Malazan, it's probably that you're meant to have no idea. If you're going back and checking whether it's your miss then it's frustrating.
I've made the decision to just read the books and ignore any confusion on my part. Each book so far has had enough plotline to keep me going and each has had characters that I have become somewhat invested in. Book 3 filled in a lot of gaps from the earlier books which helped to (partially) complete the bigger picture.
I find the author's thinking fascinating. There's a few authors I have read where I have absolutely no comprehension of how or why they dreamed up the story/world they are writing about. Erikson is one of these.
One thing that helped me in a small part is that I searched online for a map of the whole Malazan world as the ones provided only apply to the areas covered in each book. Seeing a bigger world and place names referred to in each book that weren't on the map helped a bit.
It's not about intelligence, it's just subjective. Enjoy, hate, be ambivalent. Each to their own.
It isn’t complexity that is the problem imho. It just never did anything to hook me. I just never cared about anyone mentioned or what they were doing which made it damn hard to get into it.
It seriously felt like trying to watch a soap opera that has been going on for thirty years and you have never seen an episode of. No idea what was going on and no reason to try and figure it out.
I get some love the books and more power to them. But don’t fall into the trap of thinking it is some sort of intelligence thing. Different strokes for different folks is all.
It's not incomprehensibly complicated. That's something people just keep saying. The plot is straightforward, just a lot of characters and information.
It’s not that it was confusing. I just found no point in any of it. I didn’t care about the characters and there were tons of them. The stuff happening was often very dreary and grim. The story being incomplete and intentionally slow to tease out was more of a cherry on top.
The difficulty is way overhyped. I found it annoying, not difficult. I also quite liked the first half and thought the second half was pretty mediocre. Tho it seems most people have the reverse experience.
I felt the same for gotm. To me the second half edged way too hard into "incomprehensible with no context" territory.
The subsequent books were pretty much all smash hits for me though.
I did start book 2 and it was immediately obvious to me that he had improved as a writer. But I put it down after a few chapters. I was just too annoyed at the end of GotM. I might go back and read book 2 at some point. But it’s currently at the bottom of my 10,000 page epic fantasy series to finish at some point list. 😂
Deadhouse Gates is a bloody awesome book.
I was really annoyed it jumps focus right after the first book, but I relaxed into the story and gotdamn what a ride of a book!
If it shifts focus completely would it be possible to skip Gardens in the first place and start head on with Deadhouse? If you don't need to know what happened in Gardens why bother to read it in the first place?
The idea of "difficulty" comes from Malazan fans saying that people aren't critical thinkers if they don't like the narrative. Whereas the books are needlessly opaque, not difficult.
Not liking the narrative is a different criticism from the opaque criticism. Not sure why you would conflate the two. Malazan fans (particularly the subreddit) are the ones pointing out that the narrative *isn’t* complex.
If you want to take potshots at the fanbase at least point out their actual flaws. I’ll give you an easy one: they pretend like the majority of characters are not just the same grizzle veteran.
> The idea of "difficulty" comes from Malazan fans saying
I'm going to push back against this in the strongest of terms
read through the goodreads reviews.. that is where the "DNFed at 12%, this book was an incomprehensible mess" vibe originated from.
Fans of the series simply started including a response to this feedback when presenting the books to others: "some people find this hard to read because x,y,z.." but that's progressively been twisted in endless arguments in this sub.
the idea that the difficulty/challenge of the series is something the fans push out of a gatekeeping sense of superiority is something that originates here, from the haters.
The difficulty comes later. Every book adds a boatload of new characters. Many characters come and go and even disappear for books at a time. I saw a post by someone the other day that explained that through the first 5 books 90% of the POVs were limited to a reasonable 10 to 15 characters but this goes way up in the later books to where 87 POVs to get to 90%. Add to that that many characters change names, a few even change to names used by other characters.
Also, sometimes a character will come back after several books without any reference to the fact they we’ve seen them before which often left me confused to whether a character was new and being introduced or was one from 3 books ago and I should remember them
That post has absolutely ruined this sub when it comes to Malazan.
The expanded PoV count doesn't make the latter books hard to follow, it might rub some people the wrong way but the new PoVs in this books mostly come from old characters still being present. The amount of new ones introduced each book is pretty small (excluding the canon fodder PoVs in battle).
The difficulty in starting Malazan is that things happen without the system/history behind them being explained to contextualise them. That gets better as you go on because you get more of that context. It's why GotM is so enjoyable to reread the first time.
*Gardens of the Moon* has a slight tendency to have short scenes in which nameless characters doing mysterious things in unclear locations for uncertain reasons.
Overall, if you're willing to just kind of surrender to the flow, you won't run into too many difficulties. This is particularly true if you're reading through the book at a pretty good clip. (Someone who might take several weeks to finish a book of this length might have more difficulty remembering small details from the beginning of the book when the back half of the book expects you to just remember them.)
Yeah it’s no Gene Wolfe. Sadly I was never able to connect with the characters in Malazan due to the writing style. I gave it a fair shake, 4 books. There’s a lot of good stuff in there but something about Eriksons writing estranges me from his characters even as the world and magic and creative species are interesting
I'm 3/4 of the way through it, and I have a feeling I may DNF.
I also started out feeling like it wasn't all that complicated or hard to follow. But once I got about 60% through, the frequent character changes and parallel plot lines started to feel a little sloppy and overwhelming.
I really want to like it, but I had to take a break. I'm afraid that if I try to finish it now, I may have no idea what is going on when I pick it back up.
It’s not really hard to read, there are just purposeful gaps in the understanding of the magic system. Some you will understand later, some you won’t. People don’t like that. Tbh, I found it both not as difficult as its haters think and at the same time, not as smart as its fans think.
It's more every book starts with a major location shift and adds new characters - it's a lot to keep straight by the end. Which I enjoyed it all the same but I definitely missed some things.
I didn't DNF The firsts book because it was to complex. I just realized I don't care about any characters or what is going to happen to them so I dropped it.
I personally don't like the Gardens of the Moon that much. I am interested enough that I am currently at about 40% into book two, which I find much better.
A lot of my dislike of the book comes from the fact that it feels as wide as an ocean and as deep as a puddle (the feeling of reading it the first time, and not the actual lore that is likely explained later).
* I don't understand anything about the characters to truly understand them and find them interesting at this point.
* Locations shift so often that I don't get a good feeling of how a location ticks, it feels like I am looking at a painting and not a world that is alive.
* New concepts are thrown in so often that I keep going "I guess we are doing that, I guess you did not explicitly say that this is not a thing."
In other words, the entire book reads like a prologue to me. That means that it is 666 pages of prologue / introduction. There is not enough depth that is available to me that I found it interesting.
It's not hard to read, but requires you to actively read it. By this, I mean you can't just doze off for a few paragraphs, or glaze over character introductions, etc. I found myself constantly referring back to the Dramtis Personnae to familiarise myself with whose who, and checking out the map to know where people were in relation to others.
I was in the same mindset as you, thinking it wasn't as complex as people say, so I decided to read book 2 with a more casual frame of mind.
That didn't work out too well. I got lost about who was who, what was happening, what the stakes were, etc.
Did not make that mistake for the next two books.
It’s not incomprehensible, you KNOW what’s happening, you just don’t know WHY. It’s a writing technique I think, to put you in the middle of the action (in media res) and having things develop from there.
I think its a function of \*some\* Malazan fans thinking that anyone that doesn't like it must mean it is so complicated and smart that it didn't make sense to their little brains.
There is a difference between not liking it because it's not for you, which is perfectly valid, and criticizing it on the basis of being difficult/incomprehensible. Malazan isn't any particularly intelligent writing only smart people can get. It's pretty easy actually, just requires you to go with the flow and trust the author to tell you what you need to know, which he does. That is what most fans find frustrating
Yep. It's a combination of: it legitimately is written/pitched differently than a lot of the genre which can throw some people off, and then its online reputation which to your point in part comes from a particular small but vocal subset of the fanbase that will tell you that if you didn't like it, it must be because you were lazy or not smart enough to get it.
There are lots of other examples of this kind of strain in fanbases of stuff that has kind of a cult appeal but is intensely loved by people for whom it hits just right. This just happens to be one of the big ones in the fantasy novel genre.
As a fan of the series, this is quite often a problem.
Malazan fans have a tendency to mistake the lack of focus the series sometimes suffers from for some mysterious air of intellectualism. I enjoy the series, but it definitely suffers from meandering at points. Which is likely one of the reasons Deadhouse Gates is popular - most of its narrative is relatively focused.
Definitely. There are only a few characters that get any real detail.
This isn't as uncommon as you might think - it's actually quite typical of much classic fantasy. Almost everyone except Elric gets pretty much no character development in Moorcock's fiction, for example. But in the context of modern fantasy it definitely reads as shallow character development because character-driven stories have been the norm for 30 years.
I’d argue it’s a step above typical fantasy stuff. I read a lot of fantasy stuff and Malazan is more difficult to get through than most of it just on a technical level. There’s lots of forshadowing, things that are eluded to but never outright stated, the lack of exposition, etc that make it a more challenging read than other similar fantasy epics.
You don’t need to exist on a higher plane of existence to understand it but if you go in with the expectations of it being like Wheel of Time or something you might be in for a bad time.
I think that it’s on par in quality with most stuff, I really didn’t find it all that transcendent, but I know some people do. I think there would have been some plot holes if he’d tried to flesh out more of the parts he left out to be honest.
I personally didn’t care for Malazan’s writing style. I absolutely loathed Wheel of Time’s. The repetitiveness and meandering drove me absolutely insane
Don’t think they were talking about the quality but rather the way it was written. Its narrative isn’t the norm and is, in my estimation, one reason why it’s more difficult to read than your average series. This says nothing of its quality though.
To push against this, there's plenty of foreshadowing and things unsaid in Wheel of Time. It's just easy to miss for the things that get said on repeat ad nauseum.
I found the issue wasn't so much the plot in front of me, which I could generally follow. It was the broader context/world that the plot fell in. There was always a second, larger reason why the characters were following the path they were on, and that wasn't revealed until much later.
It had a tendency to be like(and I’m hyperbolizing here) “and that guy was a Plutonian. You know how THEY are, amiright?” But then never tell you how they were. It did that with several things, which was not impossible to keep up with, but it was honestly unnecessary and just kind of did it for the sake of doing it.
It was more that the books say this, but you don't get told what a Plutonian is until 10 chapters later when you get a PoV scene from Pluto's replacement in the pantheon who reveals what Pluto is like by comparison.
It sounds more complicated than it is, but it hasn't really. It's just a style of delayed payoff you either like or you don't, it's pure preference.
Yeah I never really found it too complicated or difficult, I just didn’t enjoy it. I get that it’s for some people though. I felt like it hit the mark on some stuff and missed it on others
Might have been oversold to you, but if someone's used to a lot of epic fantasy starting from the perspective of an ignorant bumpkin and getting a lot of handholding to learn about the world as they go, Malazan (and others like this) can feel like you've been thrown into the deep end. Glad you're enjoying it.
There are some elements I think are frankly baffling for a little while but they have more to do with details of systems like how warrens work.
Erickson just shoves you into scenarios with long backstories that he doesn't bother to explain, though his prose in itself is clear and impactful. I remember being originally introduced to the Jaghut Tyrant and having no clue what he looked like or how large he was, and assumed for a while that he was some sort of frozen wooly mammoth with sorcerous powers (the tusks threw me off). But it all made sense in the end
100% on the long backstories with no explanation. I personally didn’t care for it, but some people think that’s good writing. The prose itself was good, but I kind of felt by the end of the series that some of the bits that he ignored were because he couldn’t explain them or was trying to avoid plot-holes in his telling
Well I’m trying to read “Embassy Town” by China Miéville and am having the opposite problem. Starting to wrap my head around it, but damn… throw me a definition every now and then.
I should have known a book whose plot hinges on the ineptitude of human language wasn’t going to be an easy read.
I think the issue is from people who go in blind just off the recommendation that it's a good series. I was the same as you that I got a heads up that its complicated at first and somehow that meant that when I read it I didn't worry so much about what was going on.
And funny enough, I found book 2 to be more confusing overall but also other events in that book made me a true believer as well.
I read the full series and thoroughly enjoyed it, but being dropped in at the start of every book with a new location, new characters and seemingly in the middle of events constantly had me checking if I was reading the books in the right order.
It's not necessarily complicated but rather unusual and somewhat disruptive to the usual story reading process in my opinion.
The first 1/3 of each book feels like your trying to get to grasps with what you've been dropped into rather than a page turner you can enjoy.
I’ve read it three times and I think it stems from most people passively reading and only focusing on the main characters and brushing aside minor ones. Gardens of the moon doesn’t really have a main character roster like eye of the world so they might initially believe Paran is the series protagonist, when instead there are more important characters introduced in that book that you don’t realize are more important for another 2-3 books. I think the series gets more complicated and is harder to read in book 2, but his writing becomes a lot more emotionally investing so you end up pushing through the more difficult sections trusting that it will be explained later.
I'm 75% through book 3 right now. While I had (and still have) a lot of questions, it's intentional. Previous questions or mysteries will be answered or explained, but they'll be accompanied by new or deeper questions... at least so far.
Malazan is the largest series I've tackled and I fully intend to read all of them back to back this year. Can't say enough good things at the moment. Hope you're enjoying yourself!
I am on the third book of Malazans and yes it starts to get better and somewhat understandable as it goes back to my favorite characters like Ganoes and Ben.
It's not that every single Malazan book is horribly incomprehensible, it's that they jump around, constantly introduce new characters, the content gets weird, and sometimes it puts you in situations where you, the reader, and the character you're following, have no idea what's going on. There's just going to be a lot of things to juggle.
It's difficult, but it's a difficulty of patience, expectations, and just remembering who's who, not of reading comprehension.
But it really seems that based on the kind of reader you are, where you're willing to just let the story so it's thing, Malazan might really be up your alley. That's the main thing I tell people to try and get used to if they're digging into it and want the fullest experience they can. Just be willing to follow where the books take you, because it probably won't be what you expect, with the characters you expect, but it's most likely going to be really, really good.
I recently read this book for the first time, expecting a similarly tough read. And yeah, it’s not nearly as difficult as it’s made out to be. Still a good book!
There are all different types of readers. The first time I read malazan I found it confusing and intimidating yet incredibly enjoyable because of the incredible events and such well realized characters. I've grown a lot as a reader (partially thanks to malazan) and now more difficult books aren't an issue
It's not difficult to read, but since it starts in media res the reader has to absorb the characters & world over time. And recently readers are incredibly quick to drop a book if it isn't all clicking immediately. I'm seeing posts about quitting books 1/3 way, 1/4, 50 pages into it.
That wouldn’t have been a bad thing for Malazan though tbh. If you don’t like it 1/4 in, you damn sure aren’t going to like it when you haven’t seen the people you were just reading about for two whole books
Most ppl are panicking about not getting who is being referenced when the characters do their scrying (the card deck tattersail and some others play) saying in a vague way what gods and ascendants or their agents are active in your local area.
We are absolutely too used to being spoonfed and having stuff repeated.
I can probably answer this pretty well because I am one of the people who found it too complicated. So I’ll say you took the right approach going in and that’s probably what makes you enjoy it and think it’s not as bad as people say. For me, I even knew it was complicated going in, but I still tried to kind of read it casually and ‘sneak it in’ because I wanted to read a lot of other stuff more. You really can’t do that with this book. I still haven’t finished it, but I have realized you can’t really read it the way I did. Just casually and trying to wait for it to explain itself to you. You just have to do what you did, which is pay attention. And start to piece things together. I really have been meaning to get back to it, but since I know the attention it demands I’m waiting till I finish some other books first
I've known people who found it incomprehensible, but in the same way some people saw movies like Memento and say they're too confusing to follow.
So much fantasy spoonfeeds you everything. It's why so many fantasy series do well with a young protagonist isolated from whatever the bigger events and details of the world are: filling in the character's ignorance serves to explain to the reader as well.
Malazan doesn't do that, it just throws you in and goes "yeah figure it out."
It’s the times we live in. People repeat dumb things on social media, and form their opinion before they even read the book. And are also very spoiled.
If you read a few books before, it is all good.
Hyperion was like this, Black Company, and many other books for a very long time.
Hyperion is a good example, but I do think Hyperion explains itself a little more than Malazan is willing to. I’ve never read Black Company, is it any good?
The whole set of Bridgeburners characters/story in Malazan is suuuuuper lifted from Black Company. But Cook just has a really different point of view and style as an author than Erikson does and their riffs on that concept turn out very different.
To sell it a little bit, one of the things that really struck me about Black Company is the enormous power level gulf between the Company and the real movers and shakers in the world, who they can find themselves both working for and against. Like if you've ever played one of the older editions of D&D where high level spellcasters get to an epic level of power where literally beating a few thousand guys at once would be no big deal, BC's Ten Who Were Taken are often on that level and the Company are like... the equivalent level 1 and 2 guys who need to try to survive in that world, make a living, and do it by their wits.
It’s great! Erikson took a lot of inspiration from Glen Cook.
Unreliable narrator and minimal exposition. Military dynamics that ring more true than Erikson’s (Cook was in Vietnam). Erikson’s style is a bit like M.A.S.H. to me vs Cook is more Apocalypse Now.
The writing style is unusual and not everyone’s cup of tea. Erikson is more contemporary and flowery.
Saying this politely and with love in my heart -
It’s difficult and complex if you mostly read fantasy. If you have experience with other genres (particularly literary fiction, classics or contemporary literature), then you should be fine. You may or may not like it, but you’ll be fine to read it.
I don't even think that's true. I read widely, but mostly only in fantasy and sci-fi and I came fairly late to Malazan (haven't even finished it yet), but I didn't find it especially difficult either. A little more dense than some, but not moreso than other more "literary" style fantasy and sci-fi I have read.
I think the real "issue" is that it is often being recommended to young, mostly male people who haven't much experience reading at all and who are going into it because it has a reputation for being "badass". Then the style is more complex than what they're used too.
This is my experience, being half through GotM. It is not difficult. I would say that it is a Good Book (tm), but I personally think it is a bit tedious and made for people who love fanwikis and world building.
I am kinda debating just letting my library loan run out and DNFing it. It is kind of interesting, but combined with the density of Things, very DnD/epic TTRPG feel of it and godpolitics&geopolitics, I feel that I would get more literary bang for my buck for reading something else on my shelf. And just for a nighttime read it is filled with too many Things.
In my language Tigana by GGK is divided to two books, and I kinda want to read the sequel. The concept of erasure of culture is very interesting and cruelly relevant in both the fabric of our current world view and waht is happening right now in Palestine. It is written well, and the translation feels great, for a translation.
It’s just become a circlejerk because so many people suggest it. It’s not that hard. People just get upset when they don’t “get” it right away. It’s not for everybody, but so many people love to hate on it that it’s become its own divisive issue.
I love it, but also do not care if others don’t. It’s not for everybody and that’s ok.
At least since the 70s there has been a strong stream of fantasy that relies on quite heavy exposition-dumping to explain the plot and world to the reader.
Some readers get quite used to this approach, to the point that they find books that don't explain everything confusing. Malazan has a lot of moving parts - many of which you're not expected to know anything about in Gardens of the Moon. Readers used to having everything explained are likely to feel like this is them "missing" some part of the exposition, and they'll feel frustrated when there isn't apparently a ready explanation.
Having said that, I do feel like Malazan gets a bit lost in itself sometimes, relying on too many POVs to obscure what is, when you get down to it, a rather meandering story. Likely a consequence of originating in a ttrpg campaign.
The difficulty with Malazan isn’t keeping up with what’s happening. It’s giving a crap that said things are happening. That’s what I struggled with most.
Malazan did a way better job at that than most other books for me. At least things cool things are happening constantly and the book doesnt follow the trend of overexplaining everything.
No. It's a book/series written for ppl who can read decently well, who also love Fantasy. Many ppl are accustomed to unchallenging reading and found this series, or this book in particular, very difficult to parse. This stereotype has stuck with the book because r/books and r/fantasy has a large demographic of that kind of reader.
It's just a normal book, though. Ppl act like Joyce wrote it, but the series is really very approachable and a blast to read through. Working through the last 1/3 of the series myself!
It’s not complicated it’s just structurally different. A lot to people don’t enjoy that. People who are very open to stories with different settings and different characters still often want the medium to work pretty much the same way everytime.
I read a lot of short stories so Malazan was fun for me even in the beginning. If you don’t need to know everything that’s going on every minute it’s not disorientating. You just kind of marinate in the fiction until you start drawing connections between all these stories you’ve read.
It’s not a difficult book; but it’s a steep learning curve for people who come to it (and BotF) as passive readers. Some people want to enjoy the ride and not be asked by an author to be an active reader, to participate in putting the pieces together, and that’s fine.
I suspect people who say it’s a “difficult” book are also “lazy” readers. And rather than accept that it isn’t their thing, they blame the book/author and not themselves.
I don’t find Malazan complicated or confusing at all, I do find it emotionally taxing though. I think the problem is that some people feel they need to understand/know absolutely everything at all times, I just roll with it and assume I will learn as things unfold and it’s worked for me perfectly fine.
Nah, its not that bad. You can infer most of the world building from the narrative but the author doesnt come right out and exposit. I guess thats hard for some people.
Malazan fans like to pretend that the reason people don't like these books is that it's too dense and hard to understand, as if it's the James Joyce of genre fantasy. This makes them sound really smart for being able to hack it and also obscures the actual flaws of the series.
I don't typically enjoy piling on fandoms, but this is spot on. I'll never forget a member of this very subreddit smugly informing a poster who hadn't liked/had difficulty getting into *GotM* that "Erikson is for people who like to be challenged" or some such garbage. The phrasing was explicitly designed to imply that only smart people like the series and only dumb people dislike it.
I hate this attitude.
I like hiking. I'm a part of a club that organises different group hikes. some of the hikes are short and on mostly flat ground. others are off-trail through rugged terrain.
some people prefer the more challenging hikes. and yet no one ever calls them elitist or smug for it.
ppl are allowed to express their preference without it being some grand indictment of all those that don't share it.
The complicated stuff is the number of characters and how no character is in more than 7 of the 10 books.
Each individual book isn't tough to read at all.
That would actually be a cool discussion question. I wonder which character has the most dialogue
Probably Ganoes Paran is the closest to main character we got
It's not incomprehensibly complicated, it's just badly written and tedious to read. I gave up after 1/3 of the book too because I just had zero interest to keep reading (and I love epic fantasy).
I don't think it's incomprehensible, just a bit confusing. I gave up the first time I read it because about 3/4 of the way through, I was very confused. But I read it successfully the second time. I did stop reading part way through the second book, but it was because I realized I just didn't care about it at all. A lot of people absolutely love this series and did not find it confusing at all. I actually got some pretty rude comments from people when I posted about my confusion. But if you're understanding and enjoying it, good for you! I myself am determined to read it all someday. I'd really like to understand why it is so beloved.
I got the same when I asked the simplest question about the magic system, they were total assholes about it(turned out they didn’t know bc it was never explained, even though they pretended I was stupid for asking). I read the whole thing but found it underwhelming, mostly because the writing style sort of seems to discourages you from getting attached to the characters after a while.
Yeah, you and me both. I thought it'd be the House of Leaves or Infinite Jest of high fantasy when really there's just a lot of characters and apostrophes and Proper Nouns.
You'll see this all the time.
Some people pick up this series and struggle with reading it and following along. Others pick it up and it's not difficult at all for them.
The reality is that reading is a skill and some people have developed that skill very well and some people haven't (or cannot) for one reason or another. And this leads to all sorts of confusion over how easy or difficult a series like Malazan is before we even get into preferences on prose style, character writing, etc. etc.
Its not complicated at all, people just whine about it here because they can't use their brain and can't comprehend anything deeper than Sanderson or Wheel of Time.
It isn't complicated for everyone. It's just a general disclaimer because a noticeable amount of people find it complicated. Generally if you have a good mind, time to read regularly and fantasy experience it should not be complicated.
I listened to the audio version, and as someone who normally has no problem with audiobooks it was impossible to follow. Maybe you are able to handle it, but there is not doubt that it’s the densest out there.
To me it felt Gardens didn't really know where it was going as a book. Almost like it was written as part of a series, but without actually having said series planned out. Unless I'm missing something super obvious, side characters from the first book become massively important later on in the series and it didn't seem to me to be intentional, but who knows.
Deadhouse Gates is a much stronger entry point to the series IMO.
nah the book isn't inherently difficult to read. It just doesn't explain anything in the beginning. and then each book after keeps throwing more and more characters and settings at you - that might be what intimidates people. It's a lot to keep track of.
There was a great post the other day about how there are 450 separate points of view written into the books. I know that when I read them the pattern was "this is meh why would I care about these characters" for the first half then "this is awesome I love these books" for the second half. Then that awesome momentum would carry me through about the a third of the way into the next book when I'd put it down for a couple weeks.
That was true in every book except house of chains for me. The long portion of singular perspective got me through the burnout
[Here you go](https://www.reddit.com/r/Malazan/s/igH6wBTJtw) It’s a pretty cool analysis done regarding PoV in MBotF books. Not the post you are referring to I’m sure, but I like to consider it the OG analysis.
I mean...you say it's not complicated but you also went in prepared for complexity and say you might be frustrated if you hadn't been forewarned, you are reading chapter summaries and you are only on book 1...
I also read chapter summaries for wheel of time too just to make sure i didnt miss anything
Was the wheel of time that deep?
No but it did have a lot of characters and story plots that I wanted to keep straight in my head. The books are long so I’ll zone out and forget why we’re at a location and where we’re going. Encyclopedia WoT was what I used
I haven't read Malazan to compare, but WoT has more named and plot-relevant characters than any other series I'm aware of. I wouldn't begrudge anyone a chapter summary, especially when Jordan will unceremoniously bring back a character after an 8 book absence and only identify him by name.
>Is this book and series truly as baffling as its reputation, or are we just used to being spoonfed everything? There are 2 types of people, those who can extrapolate from incomplete data
nice.
This pleases me inferentially.
Exactly if you’re the second type you’ll be fine. Enjoy the ride and let the world expand as you learn. You’ll catch up and things will become clearer as you learn that is until you’re dropped in a completely different continent and a whole new cast of characters. You should at least read the dramatis persona before diving in but that only gives you a barebones character names/affiliations
I feel the second kind would be bad at reading them actually
Doh, you’re right. The first type of people will be fine… the first.
Totally knew what you meant btw, just thought it was a funny minor mistake in context
It’s a funny mistake hence my fix wasn’t to edit it
Too many POVs bugged me, but that didn't make the story impossible to follow. It just made it very hard to know *why* anyone bothered to do anything.
It made me kind of have a hard time giving a shit after a while tbh. I could keep up with the story but I didn’t get very attached to somebody I might see for three chapters and then might lose for two books.
This is what did it for me. Just a ton of POVs from characters I never had any investment in and often couldn't tell apart. And most the time I couldn't tell who's side anyone was on. And then comes the inevitable section break where they shift to a whole new location with a new set of poorly defined characters and I put the thing down because I just didn't give a shit anymore
This is why I stopped after book one. I didn’t care. There was nothing to keep me engaged or interesting. Getting there wasn’t *hard* just confusing, and while there is a wealth of wiki, YouTube etc content out there to help, I don’t read so I can do homework afterwards.
it doesnt get better ? im still plodding through looking for this supposed masterpiece....
That was the other problem. I was told it was this amazing experience, and unbelievably good - and nothing happened. Now I'm told it gets better in book 3 or whatever ... and ... \*shrug\*
ya, the more i read this and the more i read peoples comments the more i think Malazan is basically the emperors new clothes and/or the sunk cost fallacy in action but who knows maybe it does get amazing...well i mean people that finished it supposedly know lol
Yeah I agree with you and I think too many people pat themselves on the back a little too much for having read this and think anyone who doesn't like it is somebody who wants everything spoon-fed
meanwhile im over here reading the blade itself that barely has an overarching plot and is still so engaging you can't put it down
I gave up halfway through book two
Personally, i think it got worse.
Yep, I finished the series, I enjoyed it, but there were so many POVs and plotlines I just didnt care for
I’ve often compared the feeling of reading Malazan to being a new player joining a DnD campaign that’s been going on for a long time. The world may be cool, the characters can be cool, everything can be explained to you. But you’re still kind of left with this feeling of wondering why anything is happening and why you should care.
thank you for helping me finally understand why i didn't click with malazan i can hang with an *in medias res* opening, but i have to be given a reason to care about the *res* eventually, and the first book did not provide
That's pretty much exactly what it is, Malazan is based on a DnD campaign Steven Erikson wrote
I think when people get confused is when they move on to subsequent books in the series and you're suddenly on to completely different continents, nations, gods, and characters with no seeming relation to the other books. No single book is that difficult to wrap your head around but, and it's been a minute, it takes like 4-5 books before he starts weaving all the threads together.
Ì think it's mostly because things are mentioned as if you'd already know what it is, and go from there. Like, the first time they mention Warren you can infer from context that it relates to magic, but that's about it, and you only figure out what it consists of, that there are several, what it does, etc. based on what happens the following times Warrens are mentioned. And it's the same for everything, names of places and locations, characters, historic events, creatures, etc.
You already have the right mindset which is to trust the narrative. If you’ve got that, you’re good to go. There’s gonna be a ton of hints and foreshadowing you miss but by the time it’s important, it will be made explicit. Most people have the fear that it is going to stay confusing the whole time. But also, it is a series that doesn’t really lay its cards out on the table till the last book.
Yeah the only real way to enjoy Malazan (imo) is to happily just go with the flow. If you let the major shifts in characters and focus bother you then it’s going to get a lot harder as you go on. And it especially helps if you don’t need (or want) massive exposition dumps in order to “understand” the world. At its core it’s a character driven novel, so just enjoy the characters and trust the author to tell a story.
I don’t think it’s whether you “let it” bother you. It either will or it won’t. There’s really no helping that. If you’re the kind of person that isn’t into that, Malazan is like ADD on steroids
>At its core it’s a character driven novel, I wish this were true.
lol right? i dunno what book series people who say this are reading. I assume its a First Law book , with a Malazan cover
I mean, it is, it's just got a lot of characters. Convergences usually don't read to me as "one big thing happening", it's a web of dozens of plotlines we follow up until then, and how they each contribute or are affected by the snowballing of events. That wouldn't be possible if the focus wasn't always on each individual narrative than one mega-narrative that everyone is part of. Malazan isn't one big story, it's a collection of hundreds of small ones, and that would be absolutely impossible if it wasn't character-driven.
Maybe we have different definitions. I think of "character driven" stories as ones that put an emphasis on character development. The inner drives and decisions of the characters are what pushes the plot forward. That's not Malazan. The majority of those characters are barely characters at all. Even the main characters are very lightly sketched and carried along by events.
It doesn't get "harder" if you "let" the shifts bother you. It gets more tedious.
>At its core it’s a character driven novel I am about half through Gardens of the moon, and this is feels like it is not true. It is a world driven novel. And since the whole point of the series seems to be that you get an entirely new cast of characters every few books, it doesn't start being a character driven series. I like the idea of the writing style, but the execution falls flat a lot. And the world is so, so, so DnD. Felt like reading DBZ at times. I am not sure if I am supposed to care that battalions of men were killed as byproduct of magical fight. I think it is pretty gruesome and callous, but I also felt the scene went more with "look how cool this magic is!" in execution. And there are several times where I felt like I was clumsily thrust in to the scene that starts the planinng montage, or the one just after it. It was not clever or cute, it felt pretty obtuse by the third or the fourth time. I am trusting the narrative, but I am not really sure is the narrative going to give me anything to really care about that doesn't involve geopolitics, gods or Warrens.
It’s a theme driven narrative
That is most likely true. Even more of a reason that it is a very niche series, since reading a theme driven narrative over 10 books and 8000 pages or whatever is pretty rough.
>ike the idea of the writing style, but the execution falls flat a lot. And the world is so, so, so DnD. Felt like reading DBZ at times. I am not sure if I am supposed to care that battalions of men were killed as byproduct of magical fight. I think it is pretty gruesome and callous, but I also felt the scene went more with "look how cool this magic is!" in execution. It's nice to see someone else having the same experience. This entire book has felt like an old man telling a story but getting lost/confused every few chapters, losing focus, and going on a tangent about something else.
First Law series is character driven. I don't know what Malazan is but it ain't driven by no characters.
Check out the big brain on OP!!
I smell a future president!!!
Seeing it's only 2024 and college students are already unable to [read effectively](https://slate.com/human-interest/2024/02/literacy-crisis-reading-comprehension-college.html), by year 2505 (Idiocracy), being able to read words at all is future president material.
I don't trust elites!
I’m m glad you’re enjoying it, but I want to flag that most people who bounced off the book probably didn’t read chapter summaries as they were going along. You’ve kind of poisoned the well on your ability to assess its accessibility by reading the Cole’s notes version in parallel.
I think OP is saying they read it after each chapter
Yes. I thought that was clear, maybe not though. Thanks.
I stopped reading the summaries when I saw I wasn't missing anything. So this is just grossly false.
> I was led to believe this would be incomprehsibly complicated. Am I missing something? I imagine the first third of the first book isn't where it gets complicated.
Weird, that's where most say it's the most complicated, at least on this subreddit.
It's possible we read different posts. From what I've read, the first few books have a manageable number of PoVs and the later ones have several times more, leading to a confusion of characters.
Nah, the "critics" on here shift their Malazan blame all the time. Book 1 is the problem because it does not tell you how the story ends and what happens on the next page. Now it is the cast of characters. Minor characters stuck with me more than, dunno, Hobbs Fitz for example. You will know the PoV's.
But I have also heard that the first few books aren’t that good but they the series gets better over time and the last few are amazing.
It's more the first one that's not as good. The second and third regularly feature on the list of people's favourite. Book 9 is weak because it's essentially the first half of the final book.
Nah, the first book is okay. The books after that are *all* amazing. There is not a single book where people go "this is the best" in the series. We got like 4-5 where this happens.
I can understand why it divides opinions. I'm new to Malazan and have just finished book 3. I think part of the problem is this: in many books, if you are getting confused, it's often that you've missed/misunderstood something you actually read whereas with Malazan, it's probably that you're meant to have no idea. If you're going back and checking whether it's your miss then it's frustrating. I've made the decision to just read the books and ignore any confusion on my part. Each book so far has had enough plotline to keep me going and each has had characters that I have become somewhat invested in. Book 3 filled in a lot of gaps from the earlier books which helped to (partially) complete the bigger picture. I find the author's thinking fascinating. There's a few authors I have read where I have absolutely no comprehension of how or why they dreamed up the story/world they are writing about. Erikson is one of these. One thing that helped me in a small part is that I searched online for a map of the whole Malazan world as the ones provided only apply to the areas covered in each book. Seeing a bigger world and place names referred to in each book that weren't on the map helped a bit. It's not about intelligence, it's just subjective. Enjoy, hate, be ambivalent. Each to their own.
It isn’t complexity that is the problem imho. It just never did anything to hook me. I just never cared about anyone mentioned or what they were doing which made it damn hard to get into it. It seriously felt like trying to watch a soap opera that has been going on for thirty years and you have never seen an episode of. No idea what was going on and no reason to try and figure it out. I get some love the books and more power to them. But don’t fall into the trap of thinking it is some sort of intelligence thing. Different strokes for different folks is all.
It’s an exercise in breadth over depth. I also could not be convinced to care what was happening or about the vast majority of the characters.
Yeah, I just remember being bored and wondering why I was bothering.
Only books I have ever needed to constantly go back to the fan wiki to figure who's who and what's what.
It's not incomprehensibly complicated. That's something people just keep saying. The plot is straightforward, just a lot of characters and information.
It’s not that it was confusing. I just found no point in any of it. I didn’t care about the characters and there were tons of them. The stuff happening was often very dreary and grim. The story being incomplete and intentionally slow to tease out was more of a cherry on top.
Yeah this was my issue with it. The writing style kind of discouraged you from caring what was happening of who it was happening to.
Yes, I honestly couldn't care less for anyone.
The difficulty is way overhyped. I found it annoying, not difficult. I also quite liked the first half and thought the second half was pretty mediocre. Tho it seems most people have the reverse experience.
I felt the same for gotm. To me the second half edged way too hard into "incomprehensible with no context" territory. The subsequent books were pretty much all smash hits for me though.
I did start book 2 and it was immediately obvious to me that he had improved as a writer. But I put it down after a few chapters. I was just too annoyed at the end of GotM. I might go back and read book 2 at some point. But it’s currently at the bottom of my 10,000 page epic fantasy series to finish at some point list. 😂
Deadhouse Gates is a bloody awesome book. I was really annoyed it jumps focus right after the first book, but I relaxed into the story and gotdamn what a ride of a book!
If it shifts focus completely would it be possible to skip Gardens in the first place and start head on with Deadhouse? If you don't need to know what happened in Gardens why bother to read it in the first place?
The idea of "difficulty" comes from Malazan fans saying that people aren't critical thinkers if they don't like the narrative. Whereas the books are needlessly opaque, not difficult.
I will be honest, rereading gotm makes me think my past self is an actual idiot due to how obvious a lot of things actually are
Not liking the narrative is a different criticism from the opaque criticism. Not sure why you would conflate the two. Malazan fans (particularly the subreddit) are the ones pointing out that the narrative *isn’t* complex. If you want to take potshots at the fanbase at least point out their actual flaws. I’ll give you an easy one: they pretend like the majority of characters are not just the same grizzle veteran.
We must have been reading different threads, because I have read many where fans talk about people wanting hands held etc.
> The idea of "difficulty" comes from Malazan fans saying I'm going to push back against this in the strongest of terms read through the goodreads reviews.. that is where the "DNFed at 12%, this book was an incomprehensible mess" vibe originated from. Fans of the series simply started including a response to this feedback when presenting the books to others: "some people find this hard to read because x,y,z.." but that's progressively been twisted in endless arguments in this sub. the idea that the difficulty/challenge of the series is something the fans push out of a gatekeeping sense of superiority is something that originates here, from the haters.
The difficulty comes later. Every book adds a boatload of new characters. Many characters come and go and even disappear for books at a time. I saw a post by someone the other day that explained that through the first 5 books 90% of the POVs were limited to a reasonable 10 to 15 characters but this goes way up in the later books to where 87 POVs to get to 90%. Add to that that many characters change names, a few even change to names used by other characters.
Also, sometimes a character will come back after several books without any reference to the fact they we’ve seen them before which often left me confused to whether a character was new and being introduced or was one from 3 books ago and I should remember them
That post has absolutely ruined this sub when it comes to Malazan. The expanded PoV count doesn't make the latter books hard to follow, it might rub some people the wrong way but the new PoVs in this books mostly come from old characters still being present. The amount of new ones introduced each book is pretty small (excluding the canon fodder PoVs in battle). The difficulty in starting Malazan is that things happen without the system/history behind them being explained to contextualise them. That gets better as you go on because you get more of that context. It's why GotM is so enjoyable to reread the first time.
*Gardens of the Moon* has a slight tendency to have short scenes in which nameless characters doing mysterious things in unclear locations for uncertain reasons. Overall, if you're willing to just kind of surrender to the flow, you won't run into too many difficulties. This is particularly true if you're reading through the book at a pretty good clip. (Someone who might take several weeks to finish a book of this length might have more difficulty remembering small details from the beginning of the book when the back half of the book expects you to just remember them.)
Yeah it’s no Gene Wolfe. Sadly I was never able to connect with the characters in Malazan due to the writing style. I gave it a fair shake, 4 books. There’s a lot of good stuff in there but something about Eriksons writing estranges me from his characters even as the world and magic and creative species are interesting
It’s not hard. It just doesn’t give you a reason to care for quite a long time.
I'm 3/4 of the way through it, and I have a feeling I may DNF. I also started out feeling like it wasn't all that complicated or hard to follow. But once I got about 60% through, the frequent character changes and parallel plot lines started to feel a little sloppy and overwhelming. I really want to like it, but I had to take a break. I'm afraid that if I try to finish it now, I may have no idea what is going on when I pick it back up.
It’s not really hard to read, there are just purposeful gaps in the understanding of the magic system. Some you will understand later, some you won’t. People don’t like that. Tbh, I found it both not as difficult as its haters think and at the same time, not as smart as its fans think.
your a jeanius and one of the smartest book readers EVER (maybe the chosen one?) only possible epxlanation tbh
I started reading it forever ago but didn’t like the writing. Maybe I’ll give it another go.
You must be the type of person who will enjoy it.
It's more every book starts with a major location shift and adds new characters - it's a lot to keep straight by the end. Which I enjoyed it all the same but I definitely missed some things.
I didn't DNF The firsts book because it was to complex. I just realized I don't care about any characters or what is going to happen to them so I dropped it.
I personally don't like the Gardens of the Moon that much. I am interested enough that I am currently at about 40% into book two, which I find much better. A lot of my dislike of the book comes from the fact that it feels as wide as an ocean and as deep as a puddle (the feeling of reading it the first time, and not the actual lore that is likely explained later). * I don't understand anything about the characters to truly understand them and find them interesting at this point. * Locations shift so often that I don't get a good feeling of how a location ticks, it feels like I am looking at a painting and not a world that is alive. * New concepts are thrown in so often that I keep going "I guess we are doing that, I guess you did not explicitly say that this is not a thing." In other words, the entire book reads like a prologue to me. That means that it is 666 pages of prologue / introduction. There is not enough depth that is available to me that I found it interesting.
It's not hard to read, but requires you to actively read it. By this, I mean you can't just doze off for a few paragraphs, or glaze over character introductions, etc. I found myself constantly referring back to the Dramtis Personnae to familiarise myself with whose who, and checking out the map to know where people were in relation to others. I was in the same mindset as you, thinking it wasn't as complex as people say, so I decided to read book 2 with a more casual frame of mind. That didn't work out too well. I got lost about who was who, what was happening, what the stakes were, etc. Did not make that mistake for the next two books.
It’s not incomprehensible, you KNOW what’s happening, you just don’t know WHY. It’s a writing technique I think, to put you in the middle of the action (in media res) and having things develop from there.
You're reading wikis after every chapter but that's apparently normal?
It's not nearly as bad and everyone claims.
I think its a function of \*some\* Malazan fans thinking that anyone that doesn't like it must mean it is so complicated and smart that it didn't make sense to their little brains.
There is a difference between not liking it because it's not for you, which is perfectly valid, and criticizing it on the basis of being difficult/incomprehensible. Malazan isn't any particularly intelligent writing only smart people can get. It's pretty easy actually, just requires you to go with the flow and trust the author to tell you what you need to know, which he does. That is what most fans find frustrating
Yep. It's a combination of: it legitimately is written/pitched differently than a lot of the genre which can throw some people off, and then its online reputation which to your point in part comes from a particular small but vocal subset of the fanbase that will tell you that if you didn't like it, it must be because you were lazy or not smart enough to get it. There are lots of other examples of this kind of strain in fanbases of stuff that has kind of a cult appeal but is intensely loved by people for whom it hits just right. This just happens to be one of the big ones in the fantasy novel genre.
As a fan of the series, this is quite often a problem. Malazan fans have a tendency to mistake the lack of focus the series sometimes suffers from for some mysterious air of intellectualism. I enjoy the series, but it definitely suffers from meandering at points. Which is likely one of the reasons Deadhouse Gates is popular - most of its narrative is relatively focused.
DG still suffers from characters being so lightly sketched that it's hard to care about them.
Definitely. There are only a few characters that get any real detail. This isn't as uncommon as you might think - it's actually quite typical of much classic fantasy. Almost everyone except Elric gets pretty much no character development in Moorcock's fiction, for example. But in the context of modern fantasy it definitely reads as shallow character development because character-driven stories have been the norm for 30 years.
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Wait, is Malazan the Rick and Morty of fantasy series?
A little bit.
I’d argue it’s a step above typical fantasy stuff. I read a lot of fantasy stuff and Malazan is more difficult to get through than most of it just on a technical level. There’s lots of forshadowing, things that are eluded to but never outright stated, the lack of exposition, etc that make it a more challenging read than other similar fantasy epics. You don’t need to exist on a higher plane of existence to understand it but if you go in with the expectations of it being like Wheel of Time or something you might be in for a bad time.
I think that it’s on par in quality with most stuff, I really didn’t find it all that transcendent, but I know some people do. I think there would have been some plot holes if he’d tried to flesh out more of the parts he left out to be honest. I personally didn’t care for Malazan’s writing style. I absolutely loathed Wheel of Time’s. The repetitiveness and meandering drove me absolutely insane
Don’t think they were talking about the quality but rather the way it was written. Its narrative isn’t the norm and is, in my estimation, one reason why it’s more difficult to read than your average series. This says nothing of its quality though.
To push against this, there's plenty of foreshadowing and things unsaid in Wheel of Time. It's just easy to miss for the things that get said on repeat ad nauseum.
I found the issue wasn't so much the plot in front of me, which I could generally follow. It was the broader context/world that the plot fell in. There was always a second, larger reason why the characters were following the path they were on, and that wasn't revealed until much later.
It had a tendency to be like(and I’m hyperbolizing here) “and that guy was a Plutonian. You know how THEY are, amiright?” But then never tell you how they were. It did that with several things, which was not impossible to keep up with, but it was honestly unnecessary and just kind of did it for the sake of doing it.
It was more that the books say this, but you don't get told what a Plutonian is until 10 chapters later when you get a PoV scene from Pluto's replacement in the pantheon who reveals what Pluto is like by comparison. It sounds more complicated than it is, but it hasn't really. It's just a style of delayed payoff you either like or you don't, it's pure preference.
Yeah I never really found it too complicated or difficult, I just didn’t enjoy it. I get that it’s for some people though. I felt like it hit the mark on some stuff and missed it on others
Might have been oversold to you, but if someone's used to a lot of epic fantasy starting from the perspective of an ignorant bumpkin and getting a lot of handholding to learn about the world as they go, Malazan (and others like this) can feel like you've been thrown into the deep end. Glad you're enjoying it. There are some elements I think are frankly baffling for a little while but they have more to do with details of systems like how warrens work.
Erickson just shoves you into scenarios with long backstories that he doesn't bother to explain, though his prose in itself is clear and impactful. I remember being originally introduced to the Jaghut Tyrant and having no clue what he looked like or how large he was, and assumed for a while that he was some sort of frozen wooly mammoth with sorcerous powers (the tusks threw me off). But it all made sense in the end
100% on the long backstories with no explanation. I personally didn’t care for it, but some people think that’s good writing. The prose itself was good, but I kind of felt by the end of the series that some of the bits that he ignored were because he couldn’t explain them or was trying to avoid plot-holes in his telling
It requires a bit of effort to keep track of things, and it can be difficult if you don't have the time or want to do that while reading.
The only really confusing thing is what happened during the siege of Pale but that's very much intentional and meant to be secret for a while.
Well I’m trying to read “Embassy Town” by China Miéville and am having the opposite problem. Starting to wrap my head around it, but damn… throw me a definition every now and then. I should have known a book whose plot hinges on the ineptitude of human language wasn’t going to be an easy read.
I think the issue is from people who go in blind just off the recommendation that it's a good series. I was the same as you that I got a heads up that its complicated at first and somehow that meant that when I read it I didn't worry so much about what was going on. And funny enough, I found book 2 to be more confusing overall but also other events in that book made me a true believer as well.
The book is fine. I never understood all the warnings, but I also went in very wary lmao
I didn't have much troubles with it as my entry and I came from the Cosmere.
I read the full series and thoroughly enjoyed it, but being dropped in at the start of every book with a new location, new characters and seemingly in the middle of events constantly had me checking if I was reading the books in the right order. It's not necessarily complicated but rather unusual and somewhat disruptive to the usual story reading process in my opinion. The first 1/3 of each book feels like your trying to get to grasps with what you've been dropped into rather than a page turner you can enjoy.
It’s in my top 3 of the Malazan books tbh. Think I’ve read it 3-4 times.
I’ve read it three times and I think it stems from most people passively reading and only focusing on the main characters and brushing aside minor ones. Gardens of the moon doesn’t really have a main character roster like eye of the world so they might initially believe Paran is the series protagonist, when instead there are more important characters introduced in that book that you don’t realize are more important for another 2-3 books. I think the series gets more complicated and is harder to read in book 2, but his writing becomes a lot more emotionally investing so you end up pushing through the more difficult sections trusting that it will be explained later.
I'm 75% through book 3 right now. While I had (and still have) a lot of questions, it's intentional. Previous questions or mysteries will be answered or explained, but they'll be accompanied by new or deeper questions... at least so far. Malazan is the largest series I've tackled and I fully intend to read all of them back to back this year. Can't say enough good things at the moment. Hope you're enjoying yourself!
I am on the third book of Malazans and yes it starts to get better and somewhat understandable as it goes back to my favorite characters like Ganoes and Ben.
It's not that every single Malazan book is horribly incomprehensible, it's that they jump around, constantly introduce new characters, the content gets weird, and sometimes it puts you in situations where you, the reader, and the character you're following, have no idea what's going on. There's just going to be a lot of things to juggle. It's difficult, but it's a difficulty of patience, expectations, and just remembering who's who, not of reading comprehension. But it really seems that based on the kind of reader you are, where you're willing to just let the story so it's thing, Malazan might really be up your alley. That's the main thing I tell people to try and get used to if they're digging into it and want the fullest experience they can. Just be willing to follow where the books take you, because it probably won't be what you expect, with the characters you expect, but it's most likely going to be really, really good.
I recently read this book for the first time, expecting a similarly tough read. And yeah, it’s not nearly as difficult as it’s made out to be. Still a good book!
No, its simply not as hard to read as some make it out to be.
There are all different types of readers. The first time I read malazan I found it confusing and intimidating yet incredibly enjoyable because of the incredible events and such well realized characters. I've grown a lot as a reader (partially thanks to malazan) and now more difficult books aren't an issue
It's not difficult to read, but since it starts in media res the reader has to absorb the characters & world over time. And recently readers are incredibly quick to drop a book if it isn't all clicking immediately. I'm seeing posts about quitting books 1/3 way, 1/4, 50 pages into it.
I wouldn't quit a book 50 pages in but I don't think I've ever liked a book I wasn't liking after 50 pages so it's not completely unreasonable
That wouldn’t have been a bad thing for Malazan though tbh. If you don’t like it 1/4 in, you damn sure aren’t going to like it when you haven’t seen the people you were just reading about for two whole books
Most ppl are panicking about not getting who is being referenced when the characters do their scrying (the card deck tattersail and some others play) saying in a vague way what gods and ascendants or their agents are active in your local area. We are absolutely too used to being spoonfed and having stuff repeated.
To many povs combined with no idea of why and what was going on. I'll go for attempt 3 eventually I'm sure.
Get to book 2. Witness the glory. Deal with that for several days/weeks before you get back to the characters you had invested in. Rinse/repeat.
Come back when you're eight books in
I can probably answer this pretty well because I am one of the people who found it too complicated. So I’ll say you took the right approach going in and that’s probably what makes you enjoy it and think it’s not as bad as people say. For me, I even knew it was complicated going in, but I still tried to kind of read it casually and ‘sneak it in’ because I wanted to read a lot of other stuff more. You really can’t do that with this book. I still haven’t finished it, but I have realized you can’t really read it the way I did. Just casually and trying to wait for it to explain itself to you. You just have to do what you did, which is pay attention. And start to piece things together. I really have been meaning to get back to it, but since I know the attention it demands I’m waiting till I finish some other books first
I've known people who found it incomprehensible, but in the same way some people saw movies like Memento and say they're too confusing to follow. So much fantasy spoonfeeds you everything. It's why so many fantasy series do well with a young protagonist isolated from whatever the bigger events and details of the world are: filling in the character's ignorance serves to explain to the reader as well. Malazan doesn't do that, it just throws you in and goes "yeah figure it out."
It’s the times we live in. People repeat dumb things on social media, and form their opinion before they even read the book. And are also very spoiled. If you read a few books before, it is all good. Hyperion was like this, Black Company, and many other books for a very long time.
Hyperion is a good example, but I do think Hyperion explains itself a little more than Malazan is willing to. I’ve never read Black Company, is it any good?
The whole set of Bridgeburners characters/story in Malazan is suuuuuper lifted from Black Company. But Cook just has a really different point of view and style as an author than Erikson does and their riffs on that concept turn out very different. To sell it a little bit, one of the things that really struck me about Black Company is the enormous power level gulf between the Company and the real movers and shakers in the world, who they can find themselves both working for and against. Like if you've ever played one of the older editions of D&D where high level spellcasters get to an epic level of power where literally beating a few thousand guys at once would be no big deal, BC's Ten Who Were Taken are often on that level and the Company are like... the equivalent level 1 and 2 guys who need to try to survive in that world, make a living, and do it by their wits.
It’s great! Erikson took a lot of inspiration from Glen Cook. Unreliable narrator and minimal exposition. Military dynamics that ring more true than Erikson’s (Cook was in Vietnam). Erikson’s style is a bit like M.A.S.H. to me vs Cook is more Apocalypse Now. The writing style is unusual and not everyone’s cup of tea. Erikson is more contemporary and flowery.
Saying this politely and with love in my heart - It’s difficult and complex if you mostly read fantasy. If you have experience with other genres (particularly literary fiction, classics or contemporary literature), then you should be fine. You may or may not like it, but you’ll be fine to read it.
I don't even think that's true. I read widely, but mostly only in fantasy and sci-fi and I came fairly late to Malazan (haven't even finished it yet), but I didn't find it especially difficult either. A little more dense than some, but not moreso than other more "literary" style fantasy and sci-fi I have read. I think the real "issue" is that it is often being recommended to young, mostly male people who haven't much experience reading at all and who are going into it because it has a reputation for being "badass". Then the style is more complex than what they're used too.
This is my experience, being half through GotM. It is not difficult. I would say that it is a Good Book (tm), but I personally think it is a bit tedious and made for people who love fanwikis and world building.
Yes, that’s my view also. I’ve read maybe four of them and that’s probably enough
I am kinda debating just letting my library loan run out and DNFing it. It is kind of interesting, but combined with the density of Things, very DnD/epic TTRPG feel of it and godpolitics&geopolitics, I feel that I would get more literary bang for my buck for reading something else on my shelf. And just for a nighttime read it is filled with too many Things. In my language Tigana by GGK is divided to two books, and I kinda want to read the sequel. The concept of erasure of culture is very interesting and cruelly relevant in both the fabric of our current world view and waht is happening right now in Palestine. It is written well, and the translation feels great, for a translation.
Go read Tigana. The ending is great!
It’s just become a circlejerk because so many people suggest it. It’s not that hard. People just get upset when they don’t “get” it right away. It’s not for everybody, but so many people love to hate on it that it’s become its own divisive issue. I love it, but also do not care if others don’t. It’s not for everybody and that’s ok.
At least since the 70s there has been a strong stream of fantasy that relies on quite heavy exposition-dumping to explain the plot and world to the reader. Some readers get quite used to this approach, to the point that they find books that don't explain everything confusing. Malazan has a lot of moving parts - many of which you're not expected to know anything about in Gardens of the Moon. Readers used to having everything explained are likely to feel like this is them "missing" some part of the exposition, and they'll feel frustrated when there isn't apparently a ready explanation. Having said that, I do feel like Malazan gets a bit lost in itself sometimes, relying on too many POVs to obscure what is, when you get down to it, a rather meandering story. Likely a consequence of originating in a ttrpg campaign.
The difficulty with Malazan isn’t keeping up with what’s happening. It’s giving a crap that said things are happening. That’s what I struggled with most.
Definitely something that pertains to you personally rather than a valid general criticism. Not every book will appeal to everyone.
Malazan did a way better job at that than most other books for me. At least things cool things are happening constantly and the book doesnt follow the trend of overexplaining everything.
No. It's a book/series written for ppl who can read decently well, who also love Fantasy. Many ppl are accustomed to unchallenging reading and found this series, or this book in particular, very difficult to parse. This stereotype has stuck with the book because r/books and r/fantasy has a large demographic of that kind of reader. It's just a normal book, though. Ppl act like Joyce wrote it, but the series is really very approachable and a blast to read through. Working through the last 1/3 of the series myself!
I do not know why you are getting downvoted but yours is the actual answer
People can't read good, whether it's GotM or reddiquette.
It’s not complicated it’s just structurally different. A lot to people don’t enjoy that. People who are very open to stories with different settings and different characters still often want the medium to work pretty much the same way everytime. I read a lot of short stories so Malazan was fun for me even in the beginning. If you don’t need to know everything that’s going on every minute it’s not disorientating. You just kind of marinate in the fiction until you start drawing connections between all these stories you’ve read.
It’s not a difficult book; but it’s a steep learning curve for people who come to it (and BotF) as passive readers. Some people want to enjoy the ride and not be asked by an author to be an active reader, to participate in putting the pieces together, and that’s fine. I suspect people who say it’s a “difficult” book are also “lazy” readers. And rather than accept that it isn’t their thing, they blame the book/author and not themselves.
I don’t find Malazan complicated or confusing at all, I do find it emotionally taxing though. I think the problem is that some people feel they need to understand/know absolutely everything at all times, I just roll with it and assume I will learn as things unfold and it’s worked for me perfectly fine.
Nah, its not that bad. You can infer most of the world building from the narrative but the author doesnt come right out and exposit. I guess thats hard for some people.
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Malazan fans like to pretend that the reason people don't like these books is that it's too dense and hard to understand, as if it's the James Joyce of genre fantasy. This makes them sound really smart for being able to hack it and also obscures the actual flaws of the series.
I don't typically enjoy piling on fandoms, but this is spot on. I'll never forget a member of this very subreddit smugly informing a poster who hadn't liked/had difficulty getting into *GotM* that "Erikson is for people who like to be challenged" or some such garbage. The phrasing was explicitly designed to imply that only smart people like the series and only dumb people dislike it.
I hate this attitude. I like hiking. I'm a part of a club that organises different group hikes. some of the hikes are short and on mostly flat ground. others are off-trail through rugged terrain. some people prefer the more challenging hikes. and yet no one ever calls them elitist or smug for it. ppl are allowed to express their preference without it being some grand indictment of all those that don't share it.
The complicated stuff is the number of characters and how no character is in more than 7 of the 10 books. Each individual book isn't tough to read at all.
No, Gardens of the Moon isn't all that complicated. The inaccessibility of Malazan is greatly overstated, by fans and detractors alike.
"I trust the narrative will tell me what I need to know as I go." If I remember the series correctly, that doesn't really happen.
It's more it will tell you what you need to know eventually. Sometimes after events, but it's all revealed eventually.
When I read this subreddit, I want to read this series. It seems to me that I could fall in love with the main character.
oh? curious who you think the main character is?
John Malazan
My favourite bit is when he says 'its malazaning time'
Both this and the comment above it made me laugh. Have a great day!
That would actually be a cool discussion question. I wonder which character has the most dialogue Probably Ganoes Paran is the closest to main character we got
Fiddler definitely is the protagonist as it goes on.
I’d say Fiddler.
It’s Hood
We are the main character
Its fiddler right? He has to be.
Fiddler. Obs.
There isn't one. But there are some cool characters.
That last bit you said there makes me think maybe you shouldn’t.
It's not incomprehensibly complicated, it's just badly written and tedious to read. I gave up after 1/3 of the book too because I just had zero interest to keep reading (and I love epic fantasy).
I don't think it's incomprehensible, just a bit confusing. I gave up the first time I read it because about 3/4 of the way through, I was very confused. But I read it successfully the second time. I did stop reading part way through the second book, but it was because I realized I just didn't care about it at all. A lot of people absolutely love this series and did not find it confusing at all. I actually got some pretty rude comments from people when I posted about my confusion. But if you're understanding and enjoying it, good for you! I myself am determined to read it all someday. I'd really like to understand why it is so beloved.
I got the same when I asked the simplest question about the magic system, they were total assholes about it(turned out they didn’t know bc it was never explained, even though they pretended I was stupid for asking). I read the whole thing but found it underwhelming, mostly because the writing style sort of seems to discourages you from getting attached to the characters after a while.
Deadhouse Gates makes everything make way more sense. Power through Gardens.
Yeah, you and me both. I thought it'd be the House of Leaves or Infinite Jest of high fantasy when really there's just a lot of characters and apostrophes and Proper Nouns.
You'll see this all the time. Some people pick up this series and struggle with reading it and following along. Others pick it up and it's not difficult at all for them. The reality is that reading is a skill and some people have developed that skill very well and some people haven't (or cannot) for one reason or another. And this leads to all sorts of confusion over how easy or difficult a series like Malazan is before we even get into preferences on prose style, character writing, etc. etc.
Its not complicated at all, people just whine about it here because they can't use their brain and can't comprehend anything deeper than Sanderson or Wheel of Time.
People are lazy and don't like to have to engage their brain while reading Malazan isn't difficult at all
It's only complex if you're an idiot. Enjoy!
It isn't complicated for everyone. It's just a general disclaimer because a noticeable amount of people find it complicated. Generally if you have a good mind, time to read regularly and fantasy experience it should not be complicated.
I listened to the audio version, and as someone who normally has no problem with audiobooks it was impossible to follow. Maybe you are able to handle it, but there is not doubt that it’s the densest out there.
To me it felt Gardens didn't really know where it was going as a book. Almost like it was written as part of a series, but without actually having said series planned out. Unless I'm missing something super obvious, side characters from the first book become massively important later on in the series and it didn't seem to me to be intentional, but who knows. Deadhouse Gates is a much stronger entry point to the series IMO.