Why You Should Read Malazan – Part 5: The Themes

Previously - Part 4: The Characters While the ten core Malazan books are filled with tons of awesome plot, memorable characters, and more laughs and tears than you know what to do with - Erikson also made sure to pack in some consistent themes and messages that are ever present. There is not enough time…

Why You Should Read Malazan – Part 4: The Characters

Previously - Part 3: The World So, a long time ago when I was only just beginning to think about making The Quill to Live, one of my co-editors (Will) asked me to make a list of my 100 favorite fantasy characters of all time. I started making my list, but then turned to him…

Why You Should Read Malazan – Part 3: The World

Previously - Part 2: The Plot One of the longest-standing go-to complaints I hear when I read fantasy book critiques is “lazy world building”. What this refers to is an author taking people and cultures that exist in either our real world (such as Russian or Middle Eastern) or popular established worlds (such as elves…

Why You Should Read Malazan – Part 2: The Plot

Previously - Part 1: The Introduction Malazan’s plot is huge and sweeping, but let me see if I can help ground you. The first thing to understand about Malazan is that the protagonist isn’t a person, it's a people. The Malazan Book of the Fallen follows the story of the Malazan empire - and their…

Why You Should Read Malazan – Part 1: The Introduction

So I am going to do something I swore I would never do: review my favorite fantasy series of all time - The Malazan Book of the Fallen. The reason I am breaking my self-promise is the lovely people at Tor sent me copies of the new Malazan spin-off stories to review, Dancer’s Lament and…

Deadhouse Landing – The Beginning Of The Start

*Sorry for the typos in the original article regaurding the book name. Clearly I was editing with too little sleep. Now this is more like it. I am taking this week and the next to review various parts of the Malazan series. This week I am talking about the two most recent prequel books, Dancer’s…

Dancer’s Lament – The Origins Of Greatness

So first off let me apologize to the wonderful people over at Tor. About a billion years ago they send me an advanced copy of Deadhouse Landing, by Ian Esslemont. It is the second book in a three part prequel to The Malazan Book of the Fallen. I was planning on writing a huge mega…