The Sword and Laser discussion

So I've spend the last year reading this series and I'm really starting to struggle. I'm on Toll The Hounds at the moment but it's been such a slog I'm seriously considering quitting the series.

I've thought about taking a break and reading something else but the books are so dense I know I'd forget a lot by the time I got back to it.

Is persevering for the last two books likely to be worth the payoff?

I confess I didn't make it through the first volume, thought it was awful.

My book philosophy is if you're not enjoying it, don't continue to read it. But I will say the Toll the Hounds has one hell of an explosive final act. I recommend finishing that one.

I read the series about 2 years ago and I would read 1 Malazan book then something light afterward before moving on to the next Malazan novel. It helped me stay motivated and not get too dragged down in the darkness of the story.

Maybe take a break after TTH? Dust of Dreams and The Crippled God are one story split into two. The last 3 books were a slog for me as well but I'm glad I finished it and enjoyed the series as a whole.

Dara wrote: "My book philosophy is if you're not enjoying it, don't continue to read it. But I will say the Toll the Hounds has one hell of an explosive final act. I recommend finishing that one.

I read the se..."

I'm 80% through Toll the Hounds so will likely finish that for sure. I've been listening to the Dresden Files as a lighter distraction...

Overall I've enjoyed all of the books though some have been a slog. My biggest problem is that I think he could have written the same story in about half the time, particularly Toll The Hounds! I just have this nagging feeling that if I get this far I'm going to be missing out on something.

I've never understood why people continue with a series where they acknowledge the individual books are "a slog." Whole greater than sum of its parts? Sunk costs fallacy? The first Malazan book didn't thrill me so I just... didn't read the others.

I've bailed on nearly every long series I ever read. The quality falls off or my interest wanes.

I read all ten books of Amber as I got them in one book and they were very short. I would have stopped half way otherwise.

(the first books were great)

I haven't done it with many book series, but I have done it with more TV series, and even had done it with a few anime DVD series in the more distant past. I call it becoming plot addicted. You know the individual episodes/books aren't very good, but you really want to know how it ends, and in context, not just a summary.

David wrote: "I'm 80% through Toll the Hounds so will likely finish that for sure. I've been listening to the Dresden Files as a lighter distraction..."

Why not just come back to it when you're ready? It's not like you need to binge read a series.

I'm currently doing House of Chains (book four) in the Malazan series. Its suprisingly not as difficult to get through as the first three books despite how annoying it is that Erikson decided to have numerous major characters change their names along with adding yet more characters. Hard enough to keep track of everybody but even worse with the name changes. That said though I'm not doing nearly as much "who is this and what did he do earlier in the book" as I did in Memories of Ice which was a chore.

Maybe part of it is that now four books in I no longer feel like I'm trying to do calculus without any prior knowledge of math like I did in the early books which made no attempt to explain anything that was going on.

Darren wrote: "David wrote: "I'm 80% through Toll the Hounds so will likely finish that for sure. I've been listening to the Dresden Files as a lighter distraction..."

Why not just come back to it when you're re..."

Pretty much what I do. One Malazan book followed by a bunch of easier to read and follow stuff before diving back in again. Though with Malazan it does make things a bit hard to remember, I'd be hard pressed to tell you who did what and why in the third book at this point (too many characters doing too many things).

So worth it! I picked up this series cheap on audible. The narrators are excellent. It took me over a year to finish and although I mostly didn't know what was going on I still enjoyed it and figured it out later. I read lighter books in between but I couldn't help thinking about Malazan all the time. I plan on diving in for a second read someday.

I'm with Brendan. It makes zero sense to me to force yourself to read a book that's not working for you and that goes triple for a series where the first book doesn't work for you. "It gets better with the Nth book..." Uh, I'm not reading hundreds or thousands of pages in hopes that I'll like it eventually. I'll give a book ~100 pages or so and if I don't like it by then, /byebye.

That's not necessarily a knock on the book or series, it just means that it's not for me.

Malazan is my favorite fantasy series

Lorie wrote: "So worth it! I picked up this series cheap on audible. The narrators are excellent. It took me over a year to finish and although I mostly didn't know what was going on I still enjoyed it and figur..."

Audible is how I'm doing it now. I actually physically read the first three books years ago but it took me forever because it was a chore and I found I was more lost reading than listening.

I agree the narrator is fine but I wish they were more obvious about scene changes. I can't even begin to count how many times I've been listening only to realize after a minute or two that the settings and characters have changed and I didn't realize it.

Rick wrote: "I'm with Brendan. It makes zero sense to me to force yourself to read a book that's not working for you and that goes triple for a series where the first book doesn't work for you. "It gets better ..."

Malazan works for me, I do enjoy the characters and story. Its just that its soooooo much detail and depth. The first book literally just throws you into the middle of an ongoing saga with all new races, magic, gods, etc from typical fantasy which makes it hard to grasp early on.

Even four books on now (the first three of which I've read / listened to twice now) I'm still not sure I understand completely how magic works.

I finished the series and I'm not entirely sure myself...

Paul wrote: "I confess I didn't make it through the first volume, thought it was awful."

Ditto.

What are you, a quitter? FINISH IT!

...just kidding. Life's too short to force yourself to read books you aren't into. I bounced off the first one myself.

Reading Malazan is like climbing a mountain, While doing it you complain and swear never to do it again. Then you get to the top and the view gets to you and you forget about the effort to get there. I did the listen to the audio while reading the book plus using the Tor.com Malazan re-read section. It all helped.

Stephen wrote: "Reading Malazan is like climbing a mountain, While doing it you complain and swear never to do it again. Then you get to the top and the view gets to you and you forget about the effort to get ther..."

Good analogy. Most of the way through the 4th book now I find myself at times wondering why I'm doing this while at the same time looking forward to in about 5 years doing the whole thing over again and truly getting it this time because knowing whats coming will make understanding whats currently happening so much easier.

I should also add that I started Gardens of the Moon about 3 times. first time about 100 pages . quit. 2nd time about 200 pages, I just was not ready for it. 3rd time it took and I finished it and hungered for more. Started Deadhouse Gates and WTF. all new characters !! I was not ready for that. But those last 150 pages blew me away. by then I was hooked .

Yeah, I have Gardens on the iPad. Doubt I'll ever finish it - I just can't get into books that are mostly a chore. I don't mind complexity and I don't mind being dropped into a world, but the storyteller's job is to tell me a story, not to impress me with how detailed their world is or the knottiness of their mythology.

On top of that, things like "...Erikson decided to have numerous major characters change their names along with adding yet more characters..." would make me throw the book at the wall. There's asking the reader to deal with a lot, then there's being a dick about it.

I wonder - some people love fantasy for what I think of as alternate world tourism, i.e. they love 'visiting' the world that the author has created and having plot progress is actually not as important to those folks. Is that part or much of the appeal of this series for those of you who like it?

Well when I said they change their names its a bit more nuanced than that in that its not the author being a dick so much as creating depth to the soldiery. One of the traditions of the Malazan soldiers is to get a nickname. So in book four a character who was in books one and two suddenly starts going by a nickname. Some other Malazan soldiers are basically reinlisting but doing so covertly so as to hide their prior ties, thus they end up with new names. Then many characters are alternatively referred to be name or title. There is a major new character in book four named Karsa Orlong who without warning sometimes starts being known as Toblekai which is some sort of honorific (For the print readers, I'm doing this by audio so I'm spelling as it sounds).

Rik wrote: "Well when I said they change their names its a bit more nuanced than that in that its not the author being a dick so much as creating depth to the soldiery. One of the traditions of the Malazan sol..."

All of that is (in my view of course) the author exercising his world-building skills at the reader's expense. Yeah, I get Erickson has this super deep history behind this fiction... but I don't really care except to the degree that it helps the story. To use a classic example, Tolkien had a very deep mythology and history behind LotR including a worked out language for elves but he used it judiciously in the books to hint at events of the past and give the world context. But Frodo didn't take on a new name in book 2 or start being called by some honorific later.

"There is a major new character in book four named Karsa Orlong who without warning sometimes starts being known as Toblekai..."

To me, unless the confusion on the part of the reader is outweighed by something else, that kind of thing simply isn't worth it. It's indulgent wallowing.

I have to admit that all the recent activity on this thread has re-ignited my interest in the series. I'd given it up and moved on and yesterday decided to finish the last two books by way of summaries on a wiki... I got as far as chapter two of Book Nine and decided to pick them up and finish them in the new year!

ps.
I'm not starting them now or I'd never finish my reading challenge!

Rik wrote: "Good analogy. Most of the way through the 4th book now I find myself at times wondering why I'm doing this while at the same time looking forward to in about 5 years doing the whole thing over again and truly getting it this time because knowing whats coming will make understanding whats currently happening so much easier."

And you can read the Wiki without fear of spoilers when you forget things.

I've listened to the audiobooks a while back, and I think it's worth pushing through the sluggish books to finish the series. As for the situation of Karsa and the fact that he's referred to as Toblakai later, well, that was not an issue for me, especially since he was the only Toblakai around in most if not all of those scenes :) But the number of characters is indeed sometimes hard to keep up with. I've had to go to the wiki to figure out what a character was doing 2 books ago when it was last mentioned.

I believe it is worthy endeavor.