/lit/ - Literature

>>23405053
is the malazan series worth getting into? heard it's a really difficult series to get into

>entire book is a list of characters with dialogues and interactions obliquely referencing events that are not explained to the reader
>"THE WORLDBUILDING IS SO DEEP" - midwits
His prose is of low quality.

Which book deserve a video game adaptation?

HBO should've went with Malazan instead. The only fantasy even worth adapting.

>>22560538

>The Malazan series contains many themes around socio-economic inequality and social injustice throughout such as gender equality with Erikson stating "It occurred to us that it would create a culture without gender bias so there would be no gender-based hierarchies of power. It became a world without sexism and that was very interesting to explore."as well as the inevitability of and role of art in civilizational collapse and many other themes rooted in a postmodernist and post-structuralist deconstruction of the fantasy genre and magical realism.

Anddddd just like that, one less series I have any interest in reading.

>>22433430
Easy

Malazan, zero question about that. Nothing even comes close, although Gene Wolfe made a pretty good effort.
You read Malazan, read Gene Wolfe, and then drop fantasy altogether since you're getting the best of the best.

LotR btfo

>the audiobook is 200 hours
Lmao who reads this shit?

>>21917008
>I've waited over twenty years for a postmodern/poststructural analytical discussion of my series (Malazan Book of the Fallen). In fact, I'd just about given up hope that these elements would ever be noticed (how many students of philosophy read Epic Fantasy? Well, at least one!). I was lucky in that my initial foray into fiction writing (a Creative Writing program at the University of Victoria) was in the midst of the Magic Realist movement in literature, which as you know is explicitly deconstructed in terms of narrative reliability, while also openly challenging notions of objective reality. Magic Realism of course is deeply connected, philosophically, with Existentialism (made metamorphic beneath tyrannical polities), and all of this led, in a roundabout way, to metafiction. Alas, most metafiction struck me as too obvious, and I remembered wondering, way back then, if there was a way to make metafiction subtle. Then I began to wonder if one could make metafiction a hidden meta-narrative embracing a postmodern, poststructural story. Turns out, the answer is yes, as epitomized in the Malazan Book of the Fallen (the cipher unlocking the metafictional element to the series is found in Toll the Hounds). But for me, all of that was just me grappling with a growing uncertainty regarding almost everything, making the process of writing the series a kind of dialectic, not only between me and myself, but also between realities: ours here on Earth, and that other one being a made-up Malazan world. I would hasten to point out that so much of what happens in the series is in actual homage to traditional fantasy (especially sword & sorcery): I grew up loving dramatic clashes, battles and sword-fights, dragons and all the rest. Without all that cool stuff, how could I hope to appease my fellow fans of fantasy? So, despite the overarching, philosophical considerations I was exploring, the Malazan tale is also all about Big Scenes Where Cool Stuff Happens (lest we forget!). --Steven Erikson

>LOTR btfo
/lit/ will cope and never accept it, but it's better.

>grunts start talking about types of commanding officers
>divide them into hot steel officers and cold steel officers whatever the fuck that means
>their new CO is talented enough to choose between cold steel or hot steel
>extended nonsensical discussion on cold steel and hot steel
>actually cold steel always wins against hot steel
>also the stronger cold steel wins against other cold steel
>hot steel never wins against anything
What the fuck? What was that whole conversation supposed to be about? What's the point of hot steel? What's the point of choosing whether you're cold steel or hot steel when hot steel is worthless? What the fuck does cold steel and hot steel even mean in the first place? Is the author a schizo? And why is everybody fat?

>makes The Lord of the Rings obsolete
nothing personal, *nglo chump scum

>mogs the ever-living SHIT out of LotR in your path

When does it get good?

LotR btfo

>>20017601
So no one here has actually read this?

>>19496813
There are a lot of series like that, but most of them are trash. You should avoid Tolkien copy-cats like the plague. You might enjoy the Malazan Series. It will certainly be refreshing. If you do, you can check The Second Apocalypse Series by R. Scott Bakker. It's every one's favorite around these parts.

Also, don't read Earthsea.

Is this worth reading?

Is this worth reading?

The answers are going to be subjective. But where does Malazan stand as a fantasy in literature, compared to the likes of Mervyn Peake, Gene Wolfe, Tolkien etc? Is it being praised because it is complex or it has genuinely good prose and great narration? I am currently reading the fifth book, The Midnight Tides. Will reading another five series be worth the time I spend on them?

About to dive into Malazan. What am I in for? Is it even worth the effort given the supposed complexity, or is that just a meme?

"Malazan Book of the Fallen is underrated" Edition

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