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A review by incarnationblues
Forge of Darkness by Steven Erikson
4.0
Well then.
Let's just get this out of the way first - this ends exactly how you'd expect and Erikson/Malazon book to end.
Moving on.
Lots of parent/child stuff going on here, especially father/son (Draconus/Arathan & Urusander/Osserc). Really good story. Definitely slow to start with the expected barrage of dozens of new gibberish names. It sucked me in by about 200 pages. Even at the end I have no idea who half the characters are. Nor do I care. That's part of the magic!!
2/3 of the way in, got really depressingly dark (as expected...). Jesus fuck. ARGH. ARGH. Yep, it's Erikson.
He mentioned in an interview somewhere (maybe one of th ones I'll link in a bit, I forget) in context of Malazan and escapism that there is something to escape to - that in this world anyone can have some measure of power or greatness or something like that. I forget. Anyway, whatever it was, it was true. BUT. Most of the anyone's just get killed, fucked, or both. Sometimes simultaneously.
Malazan always feels bleak as shit to me. There are moments of blinding brilliance and kindness, generally followed by mundane (what you might elsewhere call "unexpected" but, if you've been around more than a year or two, you might suspect that it's just the way things go) death and loss. BUT. There's still a core of hopefulness and spring in there but hot damn it's buried deep. The thing is... it's really there. But. The digging. Good for the soul, the aged might say.
There were lots of interesting bits in here - to me the Azathanai nature of the Azathanai stuff stood out the most, especially given how little we know of them from the other books. Little things like who was and wasn't Azathanai (over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, many came to be represented/shaped to the shapes of their followers, for example). Although, what they are is still up in the air. That or it's incredibly simple and obvious and needs no explanation beyond the statement of such. I can't decide. We'll see what the other two books have to say.
There is definitely a sense of (at least to [SPOILER]) of being bound by their aspect (even if the aspect is unclear) and perhaps a little blind to the horrors that could wreak... while simultaneously being near omniscient?? It's a weird setup.
FOUR STARS
Maybe more later. Need to steep in it for a bit. Can't wait to re-read the original Malazan series once this trilogy is done. I get the sense that it really is going to do something that every prequel sets out to do - enrich the reading of the originals - and generally fails at.
Some cool links I found while googling various character names I'd forgotten:
A Wired interview from last December.
An essay from Erikson on his website about "The Problem of Karsa Orlong". I had a huge problem with him at the outset (and it sounds like many others did as well), but I think I picked up something of the intent. Maybe a little later than I should have. <.< I forget. I know that by the end I empathized with him to a degree. I do like that there was always a sense of "Oh shit, Karsa is here. What the fuck is he going to do?" I don't get that much with characters in books.
Tor.com's re-read of Malazan blog series. Man, I hope I have the time to read those some day...
Let's just get this out of the way first - this ends exactly how you'd expect and Erikson/Malazon book to end.
Moving on.
Lots of parent/child stuff going on here, especially father/son (Draconus/Arathan & Urusander/Osserc). Really good story. Definitely slow to start with the expected barrage of dozens of new gibberish names. It sucked me in by about 200 pages. Even at the end I have no idea who half the characters are. Nor do I care. That's part of the magic!!
2/3 of the way in, got really depressingly dark (as expected...). Jesus fuck. ARGH. ARGH. Yep, it's Erikson.
He mentioned in an interview somewhere (maybe one of th ones I'll link in a bit, I forget) in context of Malazan and escapism that there is something to escape to - that in this world anyone can have some measure of power or greatness or something like that. I forget. Anyway, whatever it was, it was true. BUT. Most of the anyone's just get killed, fucked, or both. Sometimes simultaneously.
Malazan always feels bleak as shit to me. There are moments of blinding brilliance and kindness, generally followed by mundane (what you might elsewhere call "unexpected" but, if you've been around more than a year or two, you might suspect that it's just the way things go) death and loss. BUT. There's still a core of hopefulness and spring in there but hot damn it's buried deep. The thing is... it's really there. But. The digging. Good for the soul, the aged might say.
There were lots of interesting bits in here - to me the Azathanai nature of the Azathanai stuff stood out the most, especially given how little we know of them from the other books. Little things like who was and wasn't Azathanai (over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, many came to be represented/shaped to the shapes of their followers, for example). Although, what they are is still up in the air. That or it's incredibly simple and obvious and needs no explanation beyond the statement of such. I can't decide. We'll see what the other two books have to say.
There is definitely a sense of (at least to [SPOILER]) of being bound by their aspect (even if the aspect is unclear) and perhaps a little blind to the horrors that could wreak... while simultaneously being near omniscient?? It's a weird setup.
FOUR STARS
Maybe more later. Need to steep in it for a bit. Can't wait to re-read the original Malazan series once this trilogy is done. I get the sense that it really is going to do something that every prequel sets out to do - enrich the reading of the originals - and generally fails at.
Some cool links I found while googling various character names I'd forgotten:
A Wired interview from last December.
An essay from Erikson on his website about "The Problem of Karsa Orlong". I had a huge problem with him at the outset (and it sounds like many others did as well), but I think I picked up something of the intent. Maybe a little later than I should have. <.< I forget. I know that by the end I empathized with him to a degree. I do like that there was always a sense of "Oh shit, Karsa is here. What the fuck is he going to do?" I don't get that much with characters in books.
Tor.com's re-read of Malazan blog series. Man, I hope I have the time to read those some day...