Nov 18, 2011 1:36 PM
Malazan Book of the Fallen
1) Gardens of the Moon
If seen from afar, this is one heck of a good story. It has a gazillion thing happening in it, brimming with magic, swordfights, aliens, gods, demons, intrigue, mystery, and a whole more stuff. In theory this should be in the most amazing fantasy novels ever. But it ain’t. IT IS SO CONFUSING!
1) What’s with the names? Most of them sound like nicknames, the rest are impossible to pronounce. This tends to make you imagine everybody to be nothing more than a simplistic object in your mind, which ruins your imaginative visualization.
2) So many places, so many characters. We are talking about over two hundred of those, most of which have very small role in the story. Although in a way it helps to enrich the setting, at the same time it happens all too fast and at once, without giving you the time to get to know one aspect before you move to another.
3) Confusing! I had no idea what was going on in two thirds of the book. I mean, seriously, all these characters, all those names, all those events, and I couldn’t see their motivation, their line of thought, their objective. Although this was done deliberately to retain a sense of mystery, after awhile it became a real pain to tell left from right.
4) Info-dumping. The only reason everything made sense in the last part was only because a few characters revealed everything with lots of monologues. The mystery exposition was done in a most dried up way consisting of telling and not showing.
5) Too much magic action. Most of the fighting is based on spells, even those concerning weapons. The result is that you see random spells being fired around and ending everything fast and dry all the time. It is also constantly proven that all it takes is for you to have lived long enough to increase your MAG stats to epic levels and trash entire mountains with your spells. Optionally, you can just give super swords to mortals so they will be accidentally killing powerful beings without talent or willpower being important. This tends to make everything feel hollow.
6) Lack of motivation. In effect, everyone besides the great kings and the gods in this story are mercenaries. Nothing but peons in their petty power struggles. This tends to make them feel unimportant, especially when said kings and gods are not really focused much. So whatever the main characters are doing are done solely for the glory of their superiors and not because they REALLY want to do it. Furthermore, all the characters are grey and nobody is an idealist. Although this should normally be a plus, in their cases this works against them. They all feel like uncaring professionals without actual having a saying in whatever they are doing. Plus, since you don’t even know their hidden agendas for most of the story, they are again very cold and distant. You just don’t care about them, and there are sooo many of them around you just can’t even try to get to know someone long enough to MANAGE to like him.
Even the overall plot is not that great if you just look at the major points of it. Here, let me describe it to you (spoilers ahead).
We basically have a greedy empress who wants to take over the world. She sends her armies to conquer all the major cities, one of which is defended by a flying fortress. Her mages manage to make it retreat, thus easily taking over the city afterwards. A team of elite saboteur soldiers is then sent to prepare the ground for the next city, which is also defended by the fortress. The thing is, the gods intervene and choose several mortals as their champions in their power struggles, some of which don’t even know they are being used. So monsters, and imprisoned demons, and flying fortresses, and dragons, all storm in to take part in a war of supremacy.
As cool as the above sounds, down to it very little matter in the long run. All the action is told through the peons, and there are HUNDREDS of them, with murky goals and mysterious pasts. And anyway, there is so much magic panacea in this story, it doesn’t even matter what they are doing. Some god intervening or some magic sword that works at complete random moments is all it takes to end a battle. It never makes you think there is actual strategy or gravity in anything. Heck, the citizens of Daruzistan city aren’t even aware of the epic wars that take place around them; this is so stupid.
In terms of detailed descriptions and fantasy elements, the book is indeed great. There are simply thousands of different details that create a most complicating world. There are tarot cards, different gods, different races, different continents, different cities, several opposing parties, back-stabs, lies, secrets, you name it. Unfortunately, as a reader you are thrown in all that without even first being explained the core basics of what the heck is going on. The author just assumes you will be interested in his quirky world-building and on-going mystery so to keep reading for an answer to all the things you have no idea why they happen. This is extremely confusing for any reader, veterans included, as he is not first establishing foundations, or reasons to care about whatever the characters are doing.
Although the ending of the book doesn’t leave anything secret anymore, by then you are just too confused and uncaring for most of what happened to actually think it was a great read. It is not bad but it definitely kicks around the bush too much.
If seen from afar, this is one heck of a good story. It has a gazillion thing happening in it, brimming with magic, swordfights, aliens, gods, demons, intrigue, mystery, and a whole more stuff. In theory this should be in the most amazing fantasy novels ever. But it ain’t. IT IS SO CONFUSING!
1) What’s with the names? Most of them sound like nicknames, the rest are impossible to pronounce. This tends to make you imagine everybody to be nothing more than a simplistic object in your mind, which ruins your imaginative visualization.
2) So many places, so many characters. We are talking about over two hundred of those, most of which have very small role in the story. Although in a way it helps to enrich the setting, at the same time it happens all too fast and at once, without giving you the time to get to know one aspect before you move to another.
3) Confusing! I had no idea what was going on in two thirds of the book. I mean, seriously, all these characters, all those names, all those events, and I couldn’t see their motivation, their line of thought, their objective. Although this was done deliberately to retain a sense of mystery, after awhile it became a real pain to tell left from right.
4) Info-dumping. The only reason everything made sense in the last part was only because a few characters revealed everything with lots of monologues. The mystery exposition was done in a most dried up way consisting of telling and not showing.
5) Too much magic action. Most of the fighting is based on spells, even those concerning weapons. The result is that you see random spells being fired around and ending everything fast and dry all the time. It is also constantly proven that all it takes is for you to have lived long enough to increase your MAG stats to epic levels and trash entire mountains with your spells. Optionally, you can just give super swords to mortals so they will be accidentally killing powerful beings without talent or willpower being important. This tends to make everything feel hollow.
6) Lack of motivation. In effect, everyone besides the great kings and the gods in this story are mercenaries. Nothing but peons in their petty power struggles. This tends to make them feel unimportant, especially when said kings and gods are not really focused much. So whatever the main characters are doing are done solely for the glory of their superiors and not because they REALLY want to do it. Furthermore, all the characters are grey and nobody is an idealist. Although this should normally be a plus, in their cases this works against them. They all feel like uncaring professionals without actual having a saying in whatever they are doing. Plus, since you don’t even know their hidden agendas for most of the story, they are again very cold and distant. You just don’t care about them, and there are sooo many of them around you just can’t even try to get to know someone long enough to MANAGE to like him.
Even the overall plot is not that great if you just look at the major points of it. Here, let me describe it to you (spoilers ahead).
We basically have a greedy empress who wants to take over the world. She sends her armies to conquer all the major cities, one of which is defended by a flying fortress. Her mages manage to make it retreat, thus easily taking over the city afterwards. A team of elite saboteur soldiers is then sent to prepare the ground for the next city, which is also defended by the fortress. The thing is, the gods intervene and choose several mortals as their champions in their power struggles, some of which don’t even know they are being used. So monsters, and imprisoned demons, and flying fortresses, and dragons, all storm in to take part in a war of supremacy.
As cool as the above sounds, down to it very little matter in the long run. All the action is told through the peons, and there are HUNDREDS of them, with murky goals and mysterious pasts. And anyway, there is so much magic panacea in this story, it doesn’t even matter what they are doing. Some god intervening or some magic sword that works at complete random moments is all it takes to end a battle. It never makes you think there is actual strategy or gravity in anything. Heck, the citizens of Daruzistan city aren’t even aware of the epic wars that take place around them; this is so stupid.
In terms of detailed descriptions and fantasy elements, the book is indeed great. There are simply thousands of different details that create a most complicating world. There are tarot cards, different gods, different races, different continents, different cities, several opposing parties, back-stabs, lies, secrets, you name it. Unfortunately, as a reader you are thrown in all that without even first being explained the core basics of what the heck is going on. The author just assumes you will be interested in his quirky world-building and on-going mystery so to keep reading for an answer to all the things you have no idea why they happen. This is extremely confusing for any reader, veterans included, as he is not first establishing foundations, or reasons to care about whatever the characters are doing.
Although the ending of the book doesn’t leave anything secret anymore, by then you are just too confused and uncaring for most of what happened to actually think it was a great read. It is not bad but it definitely kicks around the bush too much.
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Deactivated101
| Nov 18, 2011 1:36 PM |
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