There is a humble bundle offering the complete Malazan series as ebooks (does not include the Dancer trilogy as far as I saw). Just thought someone might be interested. For those who don‘t already know and own it: Malazan is the most epic Fantasy series ever that was completed by the original authors 
8 Likes
I bought an e-reader last week in the hopes that it would get me to read more… having now read 5 books in 6 days, I have some confidence that it will do just that. I credit two features for this: (1) I can borrow e-books from my local library at absolutely no cost, and (b) the thing has buttons! I despise having to tap a screen to move a page forward every 38 seconds, but being able to hold it by the side and press a nice button? Now you’re talking! Anyways:
Deadeye Dick: Solid, if unspectacular. I’ve enjoyed almost every Vonnegut thing I’ve ever read (the notable exception being Sirens of Titan), and this was good! His writing always manages to convey absurdity and tragedy with a minimum of words.
Their Eyes Were Watching God: Very interesting read. Gave me a similar vibe as The Grapes of Wrath, and I liked it less than that, but I don’t consider it any “worse”, if that makes sense? It’s intimate and conversational where GoW is epic and detached, which makes them very different beasts. Not usually my genre, but I thought it was well worth a read.
Death on the Nile: Of the two Agatha Christie novels I’ve read now, this is my least favorite. The ratio of murder mystery to high-society drama was much too low, and for a fairly short book it felt overstuffed with plotlines. That said, I did chuckle at the end, where it turns out Jacqueline (the mastermind) sort of planned the perfect crime with no evidence to convict her, but her lover Simon (the accomplice) ruins everything by being a complete buffoon.
Stranger in a Strange Land: Started strong, but slowly fell apart. For a book with a (at the time) controversial endorsement of free love, emotional oneness, and the end of jealousy and bitterness, it’s also very clear to point out that homosexuality is not a part of that vision, with multiple derogatory references to it and an emphasis on “man and woman” as the ultimate pairing in the universe (that is not an exaggeration). Also has a weird Biblical slant near the end, even as most of the book tries to tear down the absurdity of religion. Some interesting ideas, but a swing and a miss for me.
Dragons of Winter Night: The Dragonlance series continues to surprise me by just being… good? That sounds dismissive, but I’m not a fantasy fan in general, and the Dungeons & Dragons setting is some of the most bog-standard fantasy there is, so I expected it to be extremely generic. And these books are generic (there’s a great evil and a group of heroic adventurers seeking out the secret macguffins that will allow them to triumph, etc.), but the story and characters are so well-written as to make it compelling anyways. It’s maybe not as “substantial” as I might ordinarily prefer, but it’s a fun adventure to pop into the reading schedule every now and then.
On my list to read at some point is A Memory Called Empire, solely because of the positive reviews by this fine forum.
7 Likes
It is a great offer, but „just“ includes Erikson‘s books and not Esslemont‘s. That‘s why two series in that universe are missing.
But the best (the 10 books of Malazan Book of the Fallen) is there. This is an amazing work of literature. Even better on a reread. Changed my life as a reader.
It is not by accident that I work as a mod for the Malazan subreddit. Great place to talk about the series, very nice and helpful community and we are very strict in regards to spoilers. Best mod team I‘ve ever worked with.
4 Likes
I did start reading the first book, but didn’t get very far. I think at least some of this was knowing just how many books were in the series.
Might have to give it another go.
2 Likes
The first book is harsh. You are thrown into the middle of everything and have to figure out the story, the setting, the characters along the way. I had not figured out a bunch of stuff by the end of book 10. The best thing is rereading book 1 after finishing the series and suddenly understanding the characters and their motives and knowing what is going on.
I managed half a group-re-read on goodreads once upon a time and it was one of my best reading experiences ever. Group reads are intense though and I quit halfway through. I just didn‘t have the time.
1 Like
In re: Malazan; Tehol and Bugg are the best. It’s a darn shame they don’t appear earlier in the series.
1 Like
I revisited these recently and found to my pleasure they still stand up well. The Legends trilogy is even better. I haven’t kept up since then because there’s only so much time a human has on this Earth.
3 Likes
The Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends trilogies used to be on my annual re-read lists, back when I was reading multiple novels per month. Of course, that was back in high school, college, and for a bit after. Since then, my reading speed has greatly tapered off, so I don’t re-read books nearly as much as I once did. Dragons of Autumn Twilight suffers a bit for being too tied to the D&D system, which can be seen in the descriptions of Xak Tsaroth and Pax Tharkas mostly, as rooms are basically described the way a GM would to a group of players.
But overall, Weis and Hickman do great work together. I also really enjoyed their Death Gate Cycle series.
3 Likes
Oh yes, the Death Gate books are also very good, particularly Fire Sea, gripping stuff. Genuinely great writers. I totally agree about Autumn Twilight, the first half especially. The second half and the subsequent books rapidly mature and focus on the characters.
3 Likes
Dragon Wing was the first fantasy novel I read after Tolkien. For some reason it was in the high school library. I had to almost grovel to convince my parents to let me buy the paperback of Elven Star when it came out they were so skeptical of it.
Put me down for liking the Rose of the Prophet trilogy. It just worked for me at the time.
3 Likes
I never got round to those - for some reason I gathered they were more comedic in tone, although goodness knows that doesn’t normally put me off anything.
1 Like
If you’re enjoying the initial books, I definitely recommend the Twins Chronicles. I thought they were much better than the original three. I did read a lot of the other books when I was younger but I these 6 are the ones that still stand up. A lot of the others got very silly.
EDIT: I really should read the rest of the replies before I respond, given that several people have said the same thing…
2 Likes
I bought a lot of the W+H books (first 9 Dragonlance, Darksword, Death Gate from the library - ooh, Rose of the Prophet, remember those?)
I didn’t realise that the original Dragonlance books were commissioned directly by TSR (and were basically the first full D&D novels?) Anyway, how can you resist this - UK Jeff Easley cover.
2 Likes
I used to have a jigsaw of that picture. Its great.
4 Likes
@yashima I finally bought the Malazan books, after hearing so much chatter about them, here and elsewhere. So far, so high fantasy. One question though, the ebooks seem to have a weird quirk of not delineating changes between character perspectives. No break, no formatting, just the end of one paragraph from one perspective flowing into the next paragraph from another perspective. Is that the same in the physical print run, or is the ebook or my reader cutting out a blank line?
4 Likes
I can’t speak to Malazan but I’ve seen this in a few books recently - sometimes it’s ebook conversion (I suspect particularly when the only separator was an extra blank line), but some paper books do this too.
5 Likes
Finished Inhibitor Phase which rounds off all of the Alastair Reynolds books I had in my pile.
Decent enough story, not sure how well it works as a standalone book. Without saying too much, it kind of ended like the previous book.
I wasn’t a big fan of giving the main character a sort of happy ending given how it was achieved and found it odd that the author felt the need to devote a section at the end to explain how the previously established timeline wasn’t really broken by this book.
The series is meant to be read several times. After all the twist at the end of the series puts everthing in a new context.
I am doing my 3rd reread right now. We have a reread happening on the subreddit right now and I joined that one.
The first time reading Malazan was great, the second time was even better. Though experiencing something for the first time is always something special.
@WolfeRJ Tehol and Bugg are absolutely the best. The humor in the series is something you would never expect
2 Likes