I have started reading a series by a guy called Stephen Erikson called the Malazan books of the dead. A lot of review will say things like "comparable to Tolkein at his best" and after reading the book you are left wondering if the reviewer read the same book you did. Stephen Eriksons series is not only comparable, it exceeds Tolkeins work in many ways.
In short I am convinced of Eriksons genius.
The trick with this weighty series of tomes is to keep reading. Erikson doesn't explain things, he doesn't give you a quick potted history of a new character or race after introducing them, he simply assumes you know as much as he does and moves on. The beautiful thing is the way he unveils information. You will be reading through the 3rd book in the series and he will explain something that was originally mentioned in the first book.
Everything has meaning, a cast off comment or what you think may be a passing character may turn out to be critically important hundreds or even thousands of pages later. His history covers, literally hundreds of thousands of years with races, characters and even gods coming and going over that period. Some characters have in fact been around for the entire history of the world.
His writing is in some places simply stunning. The fate of Coltaine at the end of the Chain of Dogs literally had me in tears. There are hundreds of characters of varying importance and you can never be sure if a character has truly gone even if they die.
The Malazan books of the Dead aren't easy to read, but the reward in persevering is substantial.
No comments:
Post a Comment