If you passed through Iowa City in the mid-2010s, you might encounter a lanky, baseball-hatted kid in a tie-dye Hawkeyes sweatshirt (me) loping alongside his giant afroed friend Ryan, yapping about fantasy books and other nerdy potpourri. To be fair, that is a likely sighting on any liberal arts college campus, but it’s where today’s…
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…
Continue reading ➞ Why You Should Read Malazan – Part 5: The Themes
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…
Continue reading ➞ Why You Should Read Malazan – Part 4: The Characters
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…
Continue reading ➞ Why You Should Read Malazan – Part 3: The World
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…
Continue reading ➞ Why You Should Read Malazan – Part 2: The Plot
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…
Continue reading ➞ Why You Should Read Malazan – Part 1: The Introduction
*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…
Continue reading ➞ Deadhouse Landing – The Beginning Of The Start
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…
Continue reading ➞ Dancer’s Lament – The Origins Of Greatness
