Opinions on Stephen Ericksons series

[AngelEy3 he/him]

Just found this thread, and I'm feeling a little down about not catching it when it was fresh. I love Malazan. I'm glad everyone else was able to provide enough info to get you into it. I wasn't sure when I started, but @Ammanas talked it up so well that I had to bite. 

Just wait till you really start getting into the meat of things. By the time you finish #3, you'll feel almost obligated to keep going cause it's so interesting. 

I'm on book 8 right now and hardly noticed some of the other complaints people have made about philosophy and the like. 

@KnightofLight How is Deadhouse Gates treating you? The 2nd half of that book is Storming excellent. 

[Briar King]

Something told me you would be one of the majority and not the minority like me.

really hope the 2nd goes incredible like I heard.

[AngelEy3 he/him]

This may be personal projection, but I feel like at least a portion of what seems to be leftist viewpoints are actually Libertarian in nature. The distinction that I draw between the two is generally the willingness to do something about it. Basically "I don't like that" vs "I don't like that AND I'm going to use violence to show you how much I don't like it." 

I felt a lot of that going around during the Lether story arcs. 

[Who Sharded?]

Glad you're liking book 8.  For me the problem was not so much the philosophy, but the large focus on all of these very minor storylines within the huge world.  I just wanted to get back to the epic stuff, which thankfully it does.

[KnightofLight]

8 hours ago, AngelEy3 said:

Just found this thread, and I'm feeling a little down about not catching it when it was fresh. I love Malazan. I'm glad everyone else was able to provide enough info to get you into it. I wasn't sure when I started, but @Ammanas

I'm on book 8 right now and hardly noticed some of the other complaints people have made about philosophy and the like. 

@KnightofLight How is Deadhouse Gates treating you? The 2nd half of that book is Storming excellent. 

I'm enjoying Deadhouse Gates for sure. I've noticed on the malazan forums that quite a bit of people don't enjoy the Chain of Dogs story line but I really like it. I have always enjoyed battle scenes and also the scale of what Coltaine is doing is EPIC in and of itself. I really like Heboric as well. Honestly tho GotM was faster paced which was fun, but you can tell Erikson became a better writer in DHG. 

[AngelEy3 he/him]

It's for sure more satisfying when the epic stuff happens, but looking back I don't think some of the epic stuff would have as much weight if we didn't get the small stuff beforehand. 

Chain of Dogs is still one of my favorite things to happen through 7.5 books. That and every page with the words "Anomander" or "Dragnipur" 

Edited July 27, 2017 by AngelEy3

[Who Sharded?]

Chain of Dogs is definitely one of the most popular threads in the series.  On the Malazan forums you may have just seen a few contrarians like myself.  This thread and Deadhouse Gates as a whole didn't really work for me (aside from that one scene at the end), but I plan on doing a reread soon and I think I'll enjoy the book more this time around.