Reaper's Gale
20 Jun 2007 11:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
salineaFinished reading Reaper's Gale by Stephen Erikson (7th in the extremely epic, energetic and over-the-top Malazan Book of the Fallen series) this week end. Overall I'm pretty happy with it but with some criticisms/disappointment. Although I think a lot of what I didn't like was because it's really starting using plot threads from way back and I've never re-read those books and I only very vaguely remember who the characters/plot devices/setting info involved were.
Like House of Chains and Bonehunters, the rhythm was slightly off and the ending vaguely anti-climatic. Like these two books it did nonetheless contained some freakingly awesome scenes.
It was nice getting back to Lether and its various characters (and rabid criticism of Capitalism/Imperialism). The merging of the Bonehunters & Midnight Tides plot lines was well done and enjoyable.
I think my bigger complains about the book is because of the way SE tied so many plotlines, he needs to have characters in his whole book hanging around, doing basically nothing (banter, philosophical musing and brooding) just to remind us they exist, then finally do their big plot moving stuff. That was the case with Karsa, Icarium, the Quick Ben-Trull-Imass guy party, the Phaed and Nimander tibit, the Seren-Udinaas-Kettle-Ruin party (although at least this one saw some tiny bit of character development in between). Tehul did some stuff although but not all that on screen so it felt like hanging around doing nothing also.
So mostly we had the Malazan soldiers doing their stuff, which was cool if you don't hate the stock-soldier humour SE uses (I don't personally mind, even when he gets ridiculously repetitive and fanboyish); and the Awl-Lether war which was sorta pointless to the big plot of the book but enjoyable to read in a classic barbarian vs empire guys war thing which SE does so well. By biggest complain about the latter was that I'm sure I liked Toc at the time of MoI, but right now I only very vaguely remember him, so it was a bit of : hello Toc, oops dead, okay, whatever.
Trull I remember much better as a character I really liked but see above, he didn't do much beyond hang around for a few hundred pages, fight Ruin&Clip, hook up with a girl is the most horrid attempt at romance ever perpetrated in literature, and die. Ooops. Pretty disappointing.
Actually most of the characters I liked in MT saw a big decrease in coolness in this one. Tehul & Bugg were just not as witty, Udinaas wasn't snarky but not exactly sympathetic. Trull was supposedly more loved by every random people he met than a Mary-Sue
The Patriotic plot was rather interesting, although I don't think we needed quite that many different PoVs among them (I couldn't keep tracks of them, honestly), and I'm still wondering what was the point of the Nisall storyline. And the whole Shake (Shrake?) islands stuff might have a purpose, but it utterly bored me so I couldn't say.
Otherwise, I'm probably the only reader who actually likes the Errant.
On the plus side, I really enjoyed Karsa this book (okay, I always do ^^), Icarium did mostly nothing (well ominous device of doom, but it's not like we've seen the fallout yet, so), but it was still nice seeing him. Fiddler was fun, as were most Malazan soldiers. Loved the tragico-comic Beak story. The farmer prince demons rocked. The Nimander story was chillingly beautiful.
Like House of Chains and Bonehunters, the rhythm was slightly off and the ending vaguely anti-climatic. Like these two books it did nonetheless contained some freakingly awesome scenes.
It was nice getting back to Lether and its various characters (and rabid criticism of Capitalism/Imperialism). The merging of the Bonehunters & Midnight Tides plot lines was well done and enjoyable.
I think my bigger complains about the book is because of the way SE tied so many plotlines, he needs to have characters in his whole book hanging around, doing basically nothing (banter, philosophical musing and brooding) just to remind us they exist, then finally do their big plot moving stuff. That was the case with Karsa, Icarium, the Quick Ben-Trull-Imass guy party, the Phaed and Nimander tibit, the Seren-Udinaas-Kettle-Ruin party (although at least this one saw some tiny bit of character development in between). Tehul did some stuff although but not all that on screen so it felt like hanging around doing nothing also.
So mostly we had the Malazan soldiers doing their stuff, which was cool if you don't hate the stock-soldier humour SE uses (I don't personally mind, even when he gets ridiculously repetitive and fanboyish); and the Awl-Lether war which was sorta pointless to the big plot of the book but enjoyable to read in a classic barbarian vs empire guys war thing which SE does so well. By biggest complain about the latter was that I'm sure I liked Toc at the time of MoI, but right now I only very vaguely remember him, so it was a bit of : hello Toc, oops dead, okay, whatever.
Trull I remember much better as a character I really liked but see above, he didn't do much beyond hang around for a few hundred pages, fight Ruin&Clip, hook up with a girl is the most horrid attempt at romance ever perpetrated in literature, and die. Ooops. Pretty disappointing.
Actually most of the characters I liked in MT saw a big decrease in coolness in this one. Tehul & Bugg were just not as witty, Udinaas wasn't snarky but not exactly sympathetic. Trull was supposedly more loved by every random people he met than a Mary-Sue
The Patriotic plot was rather interesting, although I don't think we needed quite that many different PoVs among them (I couldn't keep tracks of them, honestly), and I'm still wondering what was the point of the Nisall storyline. And the whole Shake (Shrake?) islands stuff might have a purpose, but it utterly bored me so I couldn't say.
Otherwise, I'm probably the only reader who actually likes the Errant.
On the plus side, I really enjoyed Karsa this book (okay, I always do ^^), Icarium did mostly nothing (well ominous device of doom, but it's not like we've seen the fallout yet, so), but it was still nice seeing him. Fiddler was fun, as were most Malazan soldiers. Loved the tragico-comic Beak story. The farmer prince demons rocked. The Nimander story was chillingly beautiful.
Reaper's Gale
Date: 4 September 2007 03:00 am (UTC)Doesn't the back of the book claim that Icarium is "destined to cross blades with the emperor"? Oh well.
I'm particular about the kind of humor I enjoy. Tehol, Bugg, Kruppe, etc. all remind me of David Eddings, and that's not a good thing.
-Marc