Finished reading all ten books of The Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson. Started reading in late 2006 (first two books), read two more in early 2011, then finished the remaining six summer 2012. My thoughts on the series are somewhat scattered, I don’t think I’ll finish a complete review, this is more like a rough draft.

scope

It’s huge, epically epic. There’s three main continents, plus an assortment of magic warrens. Lots of factions, plus a pile of individuals who somewhat randomly wander in and out of the narrative. There were quite a few side stories I wasn’t really interested in and generally skipped over, but that turned out not to matter. I think Erikson does a pretty good job of communicating what’s core narrative and what’s color commentary.

In numbers, it’s ten books. They start at the epic standard length of around 600 pages, but start creeping up to around 900 by series end. I don’t know how many hours I invested, but financially it comes to about $100.

consistency

Around book six, I reread the first book to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, when I noticed some weird inconsistencies. The magic system described in the first book isn’t totally different then what comes later, but it doesn’t sound like the same thing. Lots of mysterious questions from the first book very quickly become common knowledge in later books. In the beginning, there’s the sense that as the reader, you and the characters are together in pondering all this forgotten lore from long ago. Somewhen in the interlude between the early books, the characters were apparently handed a cheat sheet about the world they live in, because they have substantially upped their own knowledge of the past. It’s not annoying because everything is still explained to the reader, and the effect is somewhat subtle, but going back to the beginning I first asked, wait, how do you not know this? Then I asked, wait, when did you learn this? Still, for a work of such scale, it holds together well. I’ll chalk it up to the first book being written first, then the next nine.

People do seem to jump from one location to another without a clear path (even when I was paying attention). One book we’re on one continent, and then two books later, some guy shows up leading an army on a different continent. I could never recall how or why that journey took place, but didn’t detract from the experience.

story

It’s your pretty typical every (im)mortal for himself fantasy tale.

conclusion

It wrapped up too quickly. Don’t they all? The ending makes sense, but leaves me questioning when it was all set in motion. There’s a million factions on a collision course, which only slowly becomes obvious, and then they collide satisfyingly. But why? And who architected it? Not sure. It’s easy to identify the winners, but looking back, the losers did not appear to coordinate in any way.