My own self

A year and a month and a week ago, I was fifty pages into Steven Erikson's The Bonehunters. A week ago today, I finished reading it. This should give you some vague comprehension of how true it is every time I moan about how little fiction I read these days.

Of course, it's not all me. The long, at times almost tedious build-ups are what I expect from Erikson, he's never not done them. Still, when you have little go-read-spirit to summon, they don't help. I must say, though, Bonehunters was, in a way, better than others, despite my insanely slow read of it. This because it had a very grand convergence at the middle of the book (the siege of Y'Ghatan) as well as the traditional one at the end. This did mean that the end was less overwhelmingly awesome than some of the other books' endings, sure, but I felt it was still far sufficient to make it worth getting there.

The build-up before Y'Ghatan was the slow part, for me (it took me ten months - that's right, compared to a month and a half for the remaining 60% of the book), but it was not nearly as confusing, slow-paced or verging on uninteresting as, say, the first 20% of books one or two of the series. It was just Erikson being Erikson, and I kind of feel like anyone reading this series should expect that form of slow build-up by now. I certainly did.

Reading an online review the comment I wrote to which this post is largely based on, I realised that wow, yeah, there's a lot of philosophy and musings in this series. Unlike that reviewer, I barely noticed it in this particular book. Mostly, probably, because I find it interesting and appealing. I clearly remember noticing this stuff far more in Midnight Tides. The characters who do these musings are the clearly intelligent, far-sighted individuals (of which there are a lot, we get - thankfully - a vast over-representation of the skilled and intelligent in our POVs of the books) and to me, them having such thoughts when faced with this much pain and destruction seems logical or even inevitable. The few trinkets of wisdom or insight handed out by the less impressive or clever people are dependent on just that - being said by someone with a particular, narrow but often specialized view of the world. So I don't mind those either.

I kind of liked Bottle, the main new character of the book, though I tired a little of him by the end. Ganoes Paran kept growing more interesting in this one, though, which is very good, and we got more insight into Tavore and Laseen both, which is also awesome. Fiddler really shone in this one, and while Quick Ben has had better books, he's always a welcome addition. Kalam has had better books too, but he made up for it by the end. Finally, Shadowthrone and Cotillion really come to the foreground now, clearing up a lot of things, and generally being fun.

An issue with the series is how the exponential pathos that is Erikson's trademark is starting to undermine itself. Heboric's pain in this one, for instance, felt a little bit like it rehashed the fate of the Shield Anvil of Memories of Ice, only bigger and worse. Still, the tendency is still one that's infrequent enough that it doesn't bother me thoroughly.

A very welcome choice in Bonehunters was to bring the action and narrative back to the areas and people we're the most familiar with, after the trip to Lether in Midnight Tides. It also brilliantly sewed the plots of Midnight Tides together with the rest of the series, so that the upcoming volume taking place back on Lether seems less of a break from the ongoing story than it could have done.

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed and I daresay even loved the book, and I'm looking as much forward to Reaper's Gale as ever. I'm also really wanting to get my hands on The Lees of Laughter's End, the only novella set in the universe I still haven't read, and starting to look a lot forward to Esslemont's Return of the Crimson Guard. In short, my Malazan-enthusiasm is once again rekindled to a big, roaring flame. I hope it'll last so that my next venture into the universe will last less than a year.

I am currently, fiction-wise, reading "Jimmy the Hand" by Raymond E. Feist and "The Bonehunters" by Steven Erikson. After I finish these - and I will try to speed up the reading-process once I get back to Norway, the ambition is to have read at least one chapter of a book for every episode of a tv-show I watch - I will catch up on Feist (I'm one novella and two novels behind, but he's a very quick read, so shouldn't take too long) and read "Anansi Boys" by Neil Gaiman (likely to take a bit longer). Then, I'm finally ajour with the most immediate parts of my to-read-list.

I have promised to read Robin Hobb once I get to the end of that, and I will, at least one book. However, I wish to check the terrain on what you people reading this think I should try out of the following, regardless of this fact. This list only contains authors I as of yet haven't read anything mentionable of. It's all fantasy (so that when I list, say, Stephen King, I mean his Darktower series and nothing else), but please specify which books you're talking about in your comments.

Robin Hobb
Stephen King
Orson Scott Cards
Tad Williams
Ursula Le Guin
Gene Wolfe
R. Scott Bakker
Jack Vance
T.H. White
Michael Moorcock
Tim Powers
Scott Lynch

Please make your cases. And please bring up all the ones of these that you have read, even the ones you don't recommend. All information is good information, right? And feel free to mention others. Only looking for fantasy, though, not even science fiction at this point, I've no time for it. (Even if it involves time-travels, yes, ironic, I know)

Oh, and authors I am considering reading more of rather soon, so that you can take that these will compete with your recommendations into consideration in your replies:
Katherine Kerr (the rest of the Deverry-stuff)
Terry Goodkind (Phantom)
C.S. Lewis (his other fantasy-series, not Narnia, can't remember the name right now)
Neil Gaiman (most notably Neverwhere, I guess)

So! Finally read it! (I could say that for virtually every book I read...)

It was good, too! I do suspect that for any reader unfamiliar with the Malazan world, it'd be horribly confusing and, well, kinda uninteresting, but I'd say the same for Eriksons's first book in this world, so...


For those uninitiated into the intricacies of the Malazan world, here's the Reader's Digest: Two guys made the world, planning a movie there. The movie never happened, but years later, one of them got the screenplay rewritten and published as the first book of a fantasy-series since having gone on to be a major hit in the genre at present (it's still on-going) holding seven (I think) books and two smaller novella-spin offs. The other guy, Esslemont, has just recently started publishing his own work set in the same world - equally canon as Erikson's. His first book set there is "Night of Knives", a stand-alone novella, which I've just read.


"NoK" is set during one single night, as the title implies, in the city of Malaz, on the eve of Kellanved and Dancer's ascensions and Surly's coup d'etat, if you can call you that. You do, however, get rather extensive flashbacks to a point in time well before this, which is Surly's "other" coup d'etat in getting rid of Dassem Ultor - The First Sword of the Empire and High Fist - less than two years earlier. My favourite part of the story, these flashbacks.

I liked it. I didn't quite love it, but I liked it. And like Erikson's books, it all came together in a huge finale in the end, which was, of course, awesome.

The book is infamous for its typos and misspellings and general bad proof-reading, and yes, those are noticable, but not all that bothersome to me, really, the language otherwise was good. There's also rumoured to be a big plot-hole in the story, but if there is, I didn't notice it...

The story was good, I thought. The characters were a little stereotypical and over-the-top, but that's okay, Erikson too has those tendencies, if better disguised. I loved the insight this added to a lot of the political background in Erikson's series, where a lot of key players are still shrouded in mystery. I'm not saying they're not after this book - they still are - but a lot of new, cool tidbits did arrive.

All in all, a good, entertaining read, and the book I've read the quickest by far in, well, months, if not years. Not great literature, but if you like "Malazan Book of the Fallen" (which IS great literature, if maybe rather unaccessibly written, especially the first book) you should love the enrichening of the world and story this brings to it. But I don't think I'd recommend it as strongly to someone who hadn't read Erikson's series first.

Trull walked to a nearby boulder and sat down on it. He lowered his head into his hands and began to weep.
After a time the demon moved to stand beside him. Then a heavy hand settled on his shoulder.


I might be taken an embarrasing amount of time with this book, and I'm still not finished. But that doesn't mean I'm not loving it... dear lords, sometimes it's so good it's scary.

Okay, so I didn't start readin Watchmen yesterday, but I've read Blood Follows instead. (Yeah, it was that quick a read) Quite funny, reminded me of the city-watch-novels of Discworld quite a bit. More, simple insight to the Malazan world, and Bauchelain is as awesome as ever.
I'm going to read The Healthy Dead before I continue on with the main series, too.

As for Watchmen, the plan is to begin tonight, and I hope I'll keep that promise this time.

I've been so busy, I've somehow forgotten to post about this book.

It. Was. Awesome.


Though it lacked the immensely powerful central plotline "Deadhouse Gates" had in the Chain of Dogs, it made up for it by being far more enticing overall. With the slight exception of the Mhybe, not ONE plotline bored me even slightly in this book. That's rare, even in the best of books. And like with the two earlier books, Erikson somehow manages to double or even triple the excitement and the raw emotion in the last few hundred pages. It's astonishing - just when you thought it couldn't get better, he puts the finale into action.

I'm amazed.

So, "House of Chains" is commenced, but it will go slowly, very slowly, as I'm suddenly finding myself being more socially active than I've ever been, and having more curriculum than I've ever had. And also, my subscriptions to a handful of American comics had heaped up at the shop I subscribe through throughout summer, so I've plenty non-Erikson to read, too.


Speaking of, "Civil War" is making good on its promises this far. Yay!

I've now recieved four more Erikson-books and the "Jimmy the Hand"-book by Feist I mentioned, so it is once again time to put Sherlock Holmes back on the shelf.

"Deadhouse Gates" is among them, luckily, but I've recived an e-mail saying I will have to wait a while for some of the others, including the third one (whose name escapes me at the moment), so hopefully, the delay will be over before I'm finished with DG. Judging from the size of it, though, I'll say I've got good odds.

While I've never been in love with anyone, I've certainly been in love. It seems as though my romantic sides are attracted, though, to books. Not very constructive for the survival of the species, to be sure, but I'm not physically attracted to them. That'd be sick. No, I'm romantically attracted to them.


I have my childhood sweetheart - "The Jungle Book" - which still has a dear place in my heart. I had my long dating-history with Robin Hood and Davy Crockett-books, and my first serious relationship - "The Lord of the Rings". There have been others - just when I thought there could be no world after Tolkien, Eddings and Goodkind came along. And just in case anyone wondered: At the time, my heart lies in Westeros.

But most of those were loves that, though faded in some aspects, stays around. There have also been loves at first sight, crushes, quickly and violently thrusting me into obsession. "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", Lawhead's "Pendragon"-cycle... There have been many. Common to them all is that I seem to obsess with all their good qualities to such an extent that when I finally get over the initial crush, all their bad sides hit me in the face with tremendous momentum. Which is fine. A little bit of the rational, cynical viewpoint is never amiss, methinks.

So, I've fallen in love again. It took it a good two hundred pages, but now I'm there. The first "Malazean Book of the Fallen" is read. I don't quite know what kind of love this is yet, but I'm hoping it's the staying kind.

With the exception for the revelation of who the Eel was, which I'd seen coming ever since I sorted out that the Eel wasn't a synonyme for the Master of the Guild of Assassins - a misunderstanding I suffered beneath for some twenty pages or so - and was anything but surprising, this was a very unpredictable and interesting book. And even the "who is the Eel"-thing, well, the execution of it was cool enough, I supppose, so it wasn't a total loss.

People were right indeed when they said that this book doesn't give you anything for free. You have to fight for every little piece of understanding, but after two hundred pages of fighting, you're rewarded.

Circle Breaker, surprisingly, is my favourite character of the piece, and I didn't realize this until the Epilogue. Kruppe is, of course, amusingly cool. As is Rake. Crone, well, I don't like Crone, but I suppose that's the point of her. Rallick I think I liked, but I saw too little of him to be sure. Crokus was sort of the run-of-the-mill-multi-talent, but he's got potential. Murillo was very interesting, as was Coll, hopefully both of those will be central in later books. Whiskeyjack was... okay. I like the guy, but I think I liked Onearm better, and they kind of felt like very similar characters. Paran was among the best POVs, but as a person, not that interesting. Yet, at least. Baruk, now him I liked. And Mammot. I liked that upstuck councilman - Orr or something like that - too. He might be egotistical, but he has brains. Tattersail... as with Paran, good POV, but not too interesting in and of herself. Loved the doll, though more so before he became one. Shadowthrone is the very apex of what I want a cool God to be, and Oponn is close behind. So I liked those. Sorry never really interested me all that much, though, I don't know why. Quick Ben and Kalam, obviously, rock. Toc the Younger had great, huge potential. Lorn I tired of. Tool... I liked him, but again, I need to see more before I make a judgement.

And I think that was all of them. My apologies to anyone let out. I'll be ordering the next three books or so today, and reading Gaiman's "American Gods" until they arrive.

Cheerybye, then.