Is this the greatest series ever?

well i guess i won't be taking it up thanks

Uhhhhhhh, I think you misclicked when you tried to attack the cover of BOTNS.

QUITE EMBARASSING!

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE KEEP THIS IN THE CONTAINMENT THREAD

I think the fact that he claims to have read 11k pages of a series he hates is enough to discredit his claim.

>he only read the first book
The first book isn't good, but the rest of the series is fucking amazing. Huge gap between the first and second, and he improved immensely. Nobody listen to this psued who gives no reasons and likely never finished Gardens. It is the most rewarding fantasy series of all time, and the only genre fiction I believe truly transcends that label. I refuse to read any more fantasy, since moving on to literary fiction a few years back, but I'll revisit this one for sure. Just get past the first book, it's basically just a prologue to one of most epic and heartbreaking stories of all time.

Toll the Hounds is much better on a reread, but it's definitely the slowest. The ending was arguably the best in the series, though.

I only read the first 1 1/2 books or so in German. Liked them but stopped for whatever reason.
I'm interested in starting again in English, but I know there's razor velociraptors.
How stupid is it actually? Sounds like it jumped the shark.

lol

>Calls another person pleb when he considers genre fiction to be great

Yes read it.

They aren't really velociraptors but dinosaur kinda things, it makes sense in context.

I really wish he just let them be insects

>reading genre fiction and enjoying it

plebs the lot of you

So I have Gardens of the Moon and Midnight Tides (apparently in chronological order it takes place before GotM) and I was wondering if it'd be best to read the books in publishing or chronological order? Also, where can I find a chart or list of chronological order?
I'd like some input

Read in publishing order.
Gardens
deadhouse
memories
house of chains (my favourite)
midnight tides
Reapers gale
toll the hounds (least favorite)
Dust of dreams
The crippled god

I mean I haven't read it, but Kawakami Minoru's fantasies are the best fantasy "series" .

Just read it user. I'm an elitist prick and this is the only fantasy that gets a spot on my shelf. The rest is piled up elsewhere or tucked away in a dresser.

There should be a containment thread for people who don't read at all so I wouldn't have to read your worthless comments

For clarification

.

Can you elaborate without giving away too much?
What is it with people asking for reading or watching orders? ALWAYS order of publication with very few exceptions.
Why?
What do you think makes Malazan so good? As far as I know, it started as a role-playing campaign of Steven Ericson. Not that it would diminish the writing in any way.

same as dragonball z

>literally starts with "lvl 99 Death Knight teleports behind you"
why do you man-children praise this garbage?

Yeah?, who is this level 99 death knight because that never happens.
the K chan che'malle are basically an ancient intelligent lizard/dinosaur like creatures that operate somewhat like ants, in that they have a queen. They selectively bred traits to have subspecies but by the time of the books they are a shadow of their former selves for many reasons and are seen most often as undead resurrections.

What malazan does well is it's characters, there are lots of them with real motivations and depth and variation (someone will reply to this with muh reluctant hero but htat's a meme as there are literally dozens of characters who bear no resemblence to this trope. The magic system is good and the fights and exciting moments are great as well.

But what Malazan does better than ANY fantasy or scifi book ever written (this seriously shouldn't be up for debate) is worldbuilding. Erikson is an anthropgolist and it shows, he creates many varied and detailed cultures and races, when you combine literary skill for worldbuilding with the sheer number of pages you get a masterpiece in this area.

The main criticism of malazan I would have is that some areas drag, this is more of an issue if you are a slow reader and I didn't find it much of an issue except for book 8.

The criticisms of Malazan which I had read which are not accurate is that people can't handle seeing there Favorite character in book 3 and having to wait for book 6 to see them again. And the dialogue, apparently its too unrealistic or something.

>phoneposter
An hero now.

It's incredibly complex and expansive. The story is dense and complicated on the whole, yet each novel has its own plot-arc that's self-contained yet connects into the overarching thread (which really doesn't start becoming apparent until about The Bonehunters). There are a lot of characters, so a few seem flat as a result, but there are plenty of well drawn and compelling characters, a few are my favorites in fantasy. There are a lot of Philosophical thoughts from each character, which is something that seems to throw off people used to action-driven, YA series, but it was something I enjoyed a lot. Some of the most hard-hitting and heartbreaking scenes I've ever read are in these novels, and I still think about some of them hears later. His prose is pretty good, with signs of brilliance. There is not hand holding or awkward exposition, you get the history a little bit at a time, usually through conversation that immediately assumes knowledge, so it's up to you to piece it together, which is another thing people complain about: it being too hard. Some of the greatest climaxes ever written, in my opinion, and by the end its clear he knew the story from the beginning. This becomes especially apparent on a reread, the foreshadowing is the best in fantasy. Again, the problem is that the first book is at best a 3/5, and a lot of people never finish it to get on to the truly great books. It slows down at times, but I don't mind slow, and appreciate the build up. It's honestly good, and I don't think any other series comes close. I loved A Song of Ice and Fire when I was younger, but when I went back to it after Malazan it seemed so childish and poorly written, I mean it when I say it's the only fantasy series I would recommend to the people on this board and still be able to sleep at night.

Literally Japanese children's books. Wow bud

I asked because people have said the books were often a mess of confusion with little pay off in the end so I figured reading in chronological order might help smoothing things out

For some, the series being difficult and playing with the order is a huge plus. Most people can't read above a YA level, so it's not a mystery why the average fantasy fan gets completely lost

Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Erikson.

Jokes aside, do you also read all supllemtary material? I believe his co-author and friend wrote some novel(la)s set in the same world? How bout dah?
Fair enough, but if you had been a reader at the time of publication, you would've had no options, right?

For anyone interested, the German translations are up to book 14. After the first one they decided to split every original novel into two translated books. There will be 19 books total.
It's also called 'Das Spiel der Götter' meaning 'The Game of Gods'.

not a bad title.

seriously read it by publication even though the timeline isn't simultaneous it ins't confusing in that regard. I haven't read any of the novellas, some are good some are ok, malazan on reddit would be a good way to find out which is which.

Erikson is also writing a 3 book trilogy which is a prequel (1 or 2 are done) and will be doing another 3 book trilogy on Karsa Orlong (my favorite character) after that set shortly after book 10.

The ones written by the other guys are amateurish in comparison. I love the series but couldn't get through his books. Erikson's prequel trilogy has been great so far, and it's more of a tragedy in the Shakespeare style than an epic modeled after the Greeks, which is what he was going for with the original 10

go to bed niggy

In all honestly it is definitely the best High Fantasy series of all time.

It's not even close, in my opinion. It's on a different level, which is why plebs on reddit hate it so much.

Not really. Just because a world is complicated and has smatterings of philosophy throughout, doesn't mean the story and characters are good. And before you shout me down for that, story and characters are pretty damn important in an SFF work.
Erikson's characters all feel more or less the same. He has a few types, but that's it. And it focuses way too much on "hiding powerlevels".

Lord of the Rings are children's books too.

It's the best because despite being an expansive world, which sets out to contain the most prominent aspects of the world - historical events, scientific advancements, political intrigue, war, mythologies, and even simple romance, it is still down to earth and humorous. It's full of personality, has an ingenious structure, and nothing compares to it in terms of scope.

Basically the most fun and rewarding adventure with a bit of everything mixed in, lots of great characters and development, a truly unique setting and plot, all tied into the theme internal vs external conflict.

Yes, LotR is a children's novel, Malazan isn't. Check it out before claiming something else is better, you might like it.

I actually was going to check it out because of this thread, and the claim was nothing more than me being abrasive for the sake of it.

Eriksons characters do have a problem of feeling the same. But he had a number of really good ones despite that, like Karsa and Anomander. Like a lot of the series really, alot of average sprinkled with really, really good stand outs.

From what I've learned ITT Malazan is the Legend of the Galactic Heroes of books.

>he's like a middle schooler tried to make a cool character.

well firstly no, and secondly he succeeded

Ever heard of Proust?

What turns me off of it is that people keep saying they first two books are bad

I don't want to read three books to decide if I want to get into the series, after three books I already haven gotten into it

Also it's apparently based off of a DnD campaign that doesn't exactly make me think of quality
It might be that I'm sort of too old for this stuff too. I might have liked it a lot when I was a teenager in high school but reading it now seems a bit silly

The second books is by no means bad and considered one of the best. The first is worse than the others but still pretty good

read above posts if you care about the dnd stuff. Its literally a roleplaying system that develops deep characters, and only 20% of the story was gamed.

"20% of the story is based on a bunch of overweight Canadians with acne eating pizza and rolling funny shaped dice" isn't exactly instilling me with confidence
As I said high school age video game playing me would be all in on grand sweeping epic fantasy but maybe I'm just really far removed from this book's target audience at this point

Also the only post in this thread that even mentions prose only says "it's pretty good" in passing

If the second book is one of the better ones maybe it's worth sampling it or something, but I sort of still have strong doubt a 10 book epic fantasy series based on Dungeons and Dragons can be any good

Don't read it then, it's your loss.

It's not based on DnD, just some of the characters are based off the DnD characters.

The first book is only bad compared to the rest of the series. Gardens of the Moon is a much-better than average fantasy book, but not that much more than that, while the rest of the series surpasses the genre tag.

>It might be that I'm sort of too old for this stuff too
I'm 27 and enjoyed it immensely, I didn't even pick it up til I was in my junior year of college and I only finished it last year. Also, I joined my first D&D group last year by finding out a lot of my coworkers play it, and I was the second youngest person in the group. Our DM was a guy in his late 40s who can remember when the 2nd Edition came out. He didn't get "too old" for anything, and neither have I. Nobody does.

>
Don't read it, then. Nobody here cares, and you don't seem like the type of person who would enjoy it anyway. For anyone else who might be interested, all I'm saying is that I tried to read 6 series after Malazan, to fill that hole, and nothing came even anywhere near doing it for me, and I had to move on to Pynchon, Wallace, Gaddis, etc. before I stopped feeling like I was wasting my time. I genuinely think asoiaf is shit, I think Kingkiller is for children, and The Wheel of Time is laughable at best, but I'll be reading Malazan for the rest of my life.

Try Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Although it's a space opera, not a fantasy, I think it would be a fulfilling read for you. It's a galaxy-spanning political saga with a large cast of characters. The conflict is multi-faceted insofar as the two major opposing forces are portrayed in equal sympathy and both present compelling philosophical quandaries throughout. One is a corrupt representative republic fighting for "democracy" and the other is a crumbling totalitarian empire that becomes increasingly populist. The series has a strong de-romanticization of violence, which I feel should be a very welcome departure from most works of genre fiction. The narrative has plenty of intrigue and there are no "I fucked an angel" characters like you would expect from Rothfuss or any other bog-standard SFF author.

The books are written as dramatized fictional-historical accounts, so their prose can be presented in a very dry manner. I could see this turning away some readers but I still think it's worth checking out, especially if you enjoyed Malazan.

Yeah he'll just read the worst book he's ever read then rush out for the next 12 in case it picks up. You know why the book's cover looks like that? It's to attract brainlets like shit attracts flies.

To be fair, not being able to read two novels is a brainlet trait, and talking about it as if you read the entire thing is another giveaway.

Not him, but is the translation any good at all?

I liked the anime adaption

The translations are acceptable, but could be better. There are some minor copy errors and Huddleston's prose can be too stiff. If you liked the OVA, you'll like the books, as they complement eachother nicely. The books allow for some greater insight into the behavior of the characters.

why do the blu ray boxes have to cost like $500 each

you just sold me on the series. I'm gonna read Malazan

So it's the same plot every book?

Runelords is vastly better.

It has some really high power levels, (although there isn't as much power creep as dragonball z) there's a giant orc guy who can stomp and generate a minor earthquake. Many many characters can move FTE

This. Uniquely shit book. Even among fantasy/sci-fi.

Assuming you even read it.

Why would I even care about the mysteries and alliances when the book isn't engaging or well-written. Promises that later everything will come together and it will be sublime...? Don't care, book is shit. It's not intimidation. People say the same type of stuff about anime and whatever juvenile media they adore: that if you just ignore how bad it is on a surface level, everything fits together perfectly once you get used to the taste of shit.

Because back when rental stores were a really viable business the distributors in Japan would sell rental copies of anime to rental stores at a huge markup several months before the retail release, because the rental stores wouldn't have to compete with retail they'd be expected to make more than their money back on those rental copies easily. But you had otaku buying those rental copies at the huge markup price just to own it that much sooner, because they didn't want to wait for retail even though it was cheaper. So eventually in Japan they stopped selling anime at retail price and just sell them at the rental markup which is now the standard price, because otaku will buy the BDs regardless of how expensive they are and they are really the only ones who buy 99% of anime anyway.

That's because you never finished the first book but still feel qualified to write out that dumbass response.