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"The Malazan Book of the Fallen" series was one I had not heard of before joining reddit's r/fantasy, but have seen mentioned there several times. Usually in pretty good company--like, "I enjoyed Wheel of Time and Malazan, I want another epic worldbuilding series with lots of characters and locations and magic." As someone who loves Wheel of Time, I considered this a pretty good recommendation! But unfortunately, it didn't really live up to the hype for me.
This is not because it had "too many" characters, as some criticism has put it. Yeah, I'm not going to keep every name 100% straight, but the overall plot arc was relatively straightforward to follow. Malazan is an empire rapidly trying to expand, conquer other lands, and bring their leaders under the empire's authority. Seven-ish years before our story begins, the Empress assassinated the former Emperor and took power; there was a purge of many of the leaders close to the late emperor, and those who survived are still watching their backs. So the Malazan troops are worried about infighting and friendly fire that might be trying to take out some of the old-timers. There are two large cities named Pale and Darujhistan that the Malazan armies are now trying to conquer. Darujhistan is interesting because it's a "city of blue fire" and "built on a rumor"--generations ago, legend had it that there was some powerful magic buried deep in the hills. People went searching for it and dug deep, but all they found were gas mines; it turns out you can control the gas to produce blue-green light and have gaslamps in the city, so it's beautiful as well as technologically advanced. This is also going to come up later when it comes to "what's buried in the hills" and "what are the dangers of attacking this kind of city," so good work there, I liked this part, thumbs up.
The problem is that the characters don't really make interesting decisions so much as get jerked around by deities. In the first couple chapters, one character has their mind overridden and controlled by magic not once but twice, and people spend most of the book going "hmm, that person is creepy and weird, are they really human?" Another character finds themselves in possession of an object linked to the gods of chance, so weird things happen around them, and lots of factions send secret agents to protect that person/keep the object safe. There's magic, but we don't get a good sense of how it works, just that characters can tap into "warrens" that let them do magical stuff and teleport. (If a mage is in the presence of a warren that's different than theirs, they might get a migraine, which, relatable.) And some characters wield a magical tarot deck to see what the influence of the gods is on things, but I don't really know or care about the difference between Darkness, Shadows, or Chaos when it comes to suits in the deck. I guess I wanted a magic system that was a little "harder" in the Sandersonian sense, and this isn't it.
Here's a wizard doing a ritual to communicate with a living marionette, this is the kind of description I liked and wanted more of:
-in-universe poetry/prophecy/literature at the beginning of each chapter, which I understand is supposed to give us some sense of the themes/magic/worldbuilding, but didn't really work for me as poetry. (I realize I could be a poetry snob.)
-a character who has prophetic dreams and always talks about himself in the third person, which was more annoying than funny
-mages and nonhuman characters who have lifespans much longer than typical humans, there are occasional glimpses of "what would your mind be like after that long"? but it didn't engage as much as I'd hoped.
-I don't have a great sense of what the nonhuman characters really look like, there's one guy who's like "seven feet tall with silver hair and magical color-changing eyes and an enormous sword and sometimes he turns into a dragon!" so I'm mentally parsing him as "...elf??" but I'm not sure if that's what I'm supposed to do.
-names with Superflu'Ous A'Postrophes
[Edit because I forgot this part and it's funny: there's a great "can we agree that duels are dumb and immature?" moment from a second in a duel towards the end:]
Bingo: Cool Weapon, Shapeshifters, Award Finalist but Non-Winner?
This is not because it had "too many" characters, as some criticism has put it. Yeah, I'm not going to keep every name 100% straight, but the overall plot arc was relatively straightforward to follow. Malazan is an empire rapidly trying to expand, conquer other lands, and bring their leaders under the empire's authority. Seven-ish years before our story begins, the Empress assassinated the former Emperor and took power; there was a purge of many of the leaders close to the late emperor, and those who survived are still watching their backs. So the Malazan troops are worried about infighting and friendly fire that might be trying to take out some of the old-timers. There are two large cities named Pale and Darujhistan that the Malazan armies are now trying to conquer. Darujhistan is interesting because it's a "city of blue fire" and "built on a rumor"--generations ago, legend had it that there was some powerful magic buried deep in the hills. People went searching for it and dug deep, but all they found were gas mines; it turns out you can control the gas to produce blue-green light and have gaslamps in the city, so it's beautiful as well as technologically advanced. This is also going to come up later when it comes to "what's buried in the hills" and "what are the dangers of attacking this kind of city," so good work there, I liked this part, thumbs up.
The problem is that the characters don't really make interesting decisions so much as get jerked around by deities. In the first couple chapters, one character has their mind overridden and controlled by magic not once but twice, and people spend most of the book going "hmm, that person is creepy and weird, are they really human?" Another character finds themselves in possession of an object linked to the gods of chance, so weird things happen around them, and lots of factions send secret agents to protect that person/keep the object safe. There's magic, but we don't get a good sense of how it works, just that characters can tap into "warrens" that let them do magical stuff and teleport. (If a mage is in the presence of a warren that's different than theirs, they might get a migraine, which, relatable.) And some characters wield a magical tarot deck to see what the influence of the gods is on things, but I don't really know or care about the difference between Darkness, Shadows, or Chaos when it comes to suits in the deck. I guess I wanted a magic system that was a little "harder" in the Sandersonian sense, and this isn't it.
Here's a wizard doing a ritual to communicate with a living marionette, this is the kind of description I liked and wanted more of:
In a secluded glade in the forest, Quick Ben poured white sand in a circle and sat down in its center. He took five sharpened sticks and set them in a row before him, pushing them to various depths in the loam. The center stick, the highest, rose about three feet; the ones on either side stood at two feet and the outer ones at a foot.
Some other gimmicks include:-in-universe poetry/prophecy/literature at the beginning of each chapter, which I understand is supposed to give us some sense of the themes/magic/worldbuilding, but didn't really work for me as poetry. (I realize I could be a poetry snob.)
-a character who has prophetic dreams and always talks about himself in the third person, which was more annoying than funny
-mages and nonhuman characters who have lifespans much longer than typical humans, there are occasional glimpses of "what would your mind be like after that long"? but it didn't engage as much as I'd hoped.
-I don't have a great sense of what the nonhuman characters really look like, there's one guy who's like "seven feet tall with silver hair and magical color-changing eyes and an enormous sword and sometimes he turns into a dragon!" so I'm mentally parsing him as "...elf??" but I'm not sure if that's what I'm supposed to do.
-names with Superflu'Ous A'Postrophes
[Edit because I forgot this part and it's funny: there's a great "can we agree that duels are dumb and immature?" moment from a second in a duel towards the end:]
“I hereby make it known that I oppose this duel as facile and trite.” He stared at Turban Orr. “I find the councilman’s life irrelevant in the best of times. Should he die,” the tall man looked over to Rallick, “there will be no vengeance pact from the House of D’Arle. You, sir, are freed of that.”
I understand that war is hell, and the decisions made by officers and magicians at the top mostly wind up screwing with the lives of the little people on the ground who don't have much of a say in the matter. So maybe that's the impression I'm supposed to get from the Elder and younger gods. But it turned the book into a slog, and I need something more than "war is hell but individual soldiers and leaders can still have heartwarming, honorable, loyalty, d'aww!" to care about the characters. On the plus side, it moved another book with weird tarot magic up my TBR list, because at least it'll be shorter... >.>Bingo: Cool Weapon, Shapeshifters, Award Finalist but Non-Winner?
