Book Review: The Crippled God by Steven Erikson

The Crippled God is the 10th and final book of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson. There are additional books in that universe, by both Erikson and Esslemont; however, the main series are these 10 books that I've spent the last few years reading. This particular one took a while do to my recent job/city/country change, but I managed to find the time and it was rewarding to finish. Below, you will find my review of this book. In the future, I hope to write a post comparing this series to other long epic fantasies, notably The Wheel of Time.

As always, I aim to avoid direct spoilers, but given that this is the last book of the series, events prior to this book are considered fair game.

Book Review: Dust of Dreams by Steven Erikson

Dust of Dreams is the ninth book of the ten-book series Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson. This has been a good series overall and the end is just in sight. It's taken a long time to go through these books for various reasons, though, which is a drawback when trying to remember the many names or plot lines. As always, I try to avoid direct spoilers, though some knowledge of the prior books will help.

Read on for my full review.

Book Review: Toll the Hounds by Steven Erikson

Toll the Hounds is the 8th book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series.

In this book, we return to the city of Darujhistan, which we saw in Gardens of the Moon, and to Black Coral, which we saw at the end of Memories of Ice. Lots of characters we are familiar with are key to the story and mysteries that have haunted us since the beginning are starting to get answers.

Read on for my full review.

Book Review: Reaper's Gale by Steven Erikson

Reaper's Gale is the 7th in Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series.

For long series like this one, it's sometimes difficult to split the thoughts into each individual book. However, now that I think about it I realize that the Malazan series tends to have a unique and separate focus for each book, which greatly helps to keep them apart:
In Book 1, we see the fall of Darujhistan as part of the Malazan conquest of Genabackis. In Book 2, we see the Seven Cities rise up in the Whirlwind Rebellion. In Book 3, the Malazan empire gives answer to the threat from the Pannion Domin in Genabackis. Book 4 introduces us to the very interesting Karsa Orlong and his role in the Whirlwind and the House of Chains. Book 5 places us among the Tiste Edur and we see the Emperor of a Thousand Deaths emerge. In Book 6, the Malazans confront the remnants of the Army of the Apocalypse in Seven Cities and set off to answer the growing threat of the Tiste Edur. And all throughout these books we see the influence of the Crippled God and the rise to power of his House of Chains.

My review of book 7, Reaper's Gale, now follows.

Favorite Books of 2012

As I did last year, here are my Top 5 books for this year. I should re-emphasize that these are books I read *not* books that necessarily came out this year. If you've been following along in my blog, you know what sort of taste in books I have, but if this is your first visit here (welcome!) then this summarizes what I found cool. It's interesting to note that despite my preference for fantasy, 4/5 books here fall in the science fiction category (though in my opinion the line dividing sci-fi and fantasy is blurry).

Statistics-wise I read 25 books this year, in comparison with 32 last year. Surprisingly, that's about 6,497 pages vs 13,473 pages last year, as recorded by Goodreads (I wonder how accurately it tracks page counts, though). I read mainly in electronic form so page numbers are meaningless, but if we factor about 400 words per page then that is nearly 2.6 million words this year. Clearly I read a lot, yet I was busy this year with plenty of other tasks. There's still a few more days in the year, but that will only add a negligible number of pages to the running total. I expect I'll be just as busy next year, so my goal is a modest 20 books read throughout the year.

But enough about statistics, let's see my Top 5 Favorite Books of 2012.

Book Review: The Bonehunters by Steven Erikson

In this post I review The Bonehunters by Steven Erikson, the 6th book of the Malazan Book of the Fallen. It has taken me far longer than I expected to read this book. Normally a book of this length (~800 pages) would take me 2-4 weeks to finish, not over 2 months. This is in part due to the 'heavy' nature of the book (see below) and to a bunch of travel, work, and other things I was up to these past few months.

Read on to learn what I thought of this book. As always, I try to avoid spoilers of this book though prior books in the series are considered to be fair game. Here are all the reviews thus far I've done for the Malazan series (technically, this is any blog post tagged as Malazan and so a few are not actual reviews).

Book Review: Midnight Tides by Steven Erikson

When looking at my blog stats I realized that my Malazan reviews are some of the most popular and that I've been writing them every 2 months. I figure that's a good timescale: that means only 20 months to read the 10-book series and I think I'll try to stick to that. With all the recent travel and work  I've had, I am falling behind on this tentative schedule. That is now rectified with this review of Book 5 of the Malazan Book of the Fallen: Midnight Tides.

Book Review: House of Chains by Steven Erikson

House of Chains is the 4th book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson. I have previously written reviews for Book 3: Memories of Ice and Book 2: Deadhouse Gates.
I understand that Ian Cameron Esslemont has also written books in the Malazan universe and they both collaborated on the series. I may have to check Esslemont's works later on, but I intend to finish the 10-book series first.

Book Review: Memories of Ice by Steven Erikson

Memories of Ice is Book 3 of the Malazan Book of the Fallen. Naturally, you should probably check out Book 1 (Gardens of the Moon) and Book 2 (Deadhouse Gates) before this one. It feels like the series diverged in book 2/3 with the story following some characters in book 2 and simultaneously following the other characters in book 3. However, the stories are very well contained so it doesn't feel like the similarly split Feast for Crows/A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin.

Suvudu Cage Match 2012: Initial Thoughts

For the past few years, Suvudu has run a tournament pitting memorable characters from science fiction and fantasy against each other to find out who is the Cage Match Champion. This year is no different and they've just announced the lineup for the coming competitions. I encourage you to take a look. Voting begins March 5th!

One of the cool things about these cage matches, which is obviously their intent, is that you get introduced to characters you've never heard before and encouraged to read about them. I can honestly say that this resulted in The Name of the Wind and The Malazan Book of the Fallen moving up higher on my to-read list (last year Quick Ben of Malazan won and the prior year Kvothe ended up third). Characters from those two books/series are back again- Bast and Anomander Rake. Anomander is absolutely awesome in Malazan (at least up to book 3, where I'm currently at), so I (and many others) will definitely be cheering him on. This year, I must check out Peter V. Brett's The Warded Man (the cover for the sequel, The Desert Spear, initially drew me in). His character, Jardir, is facing off against Lady Jessica of Dune. Apparently, Jardir is also a desert warrior so the organizers were very excited for it. I'm also happy that I've read the first book of Brent Weeks' Night Angel Trilogy as I now know who Kylar Stern is (he's facing Gimli of The Lord of the Rings).
Some other characters to watch out for, in my opinion, include: Moiraine Damodred from The Wheel of Time, Kelsier from Mistborn, Tyrion Lannister from A Song of Ice and Fire (aka Game of Thrones), Richard Rahl of The Sword of Truth, and Mr. Wednesday from American Gods.

The cage matches are not just about voting on some online poll. Many authors sign up to write up what they think will happen so you get to see some very cool 'fan fiction' as characters from completely different series clash against each other (I still remember how Jaime Lannister threw Hermione Granger out a window). They've also asked fans to draw art for the characters. That should also be very cool.

So be sure to follow along on Suvudu's website for the news and vote for your favorite characters. May Anomander Rake the strongest one win!

Favorite Books of 2011

While I don't feel I read a whole lot of books in 2011, according to my Goodreads log I finished 32, including a few graphic novels. In the spirit of summarizing 2011, I present here my favorite five among those books I read. I should note that these are books I read for the first time in 2011 regardless of whether or not they were published that year. I've tried to sort them in order of increasing awesomeness, but I must say I rank all of these quite highly.

5. The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham
My first introduction to the work of Daniel Abraham. This is your classic epic fantasy, but somehow it just grabs at you. One particularly interesting thing for me was to see new types of characters that normally don't make it into fantasy, namely the budding, bureaucratic banker. You'd think that would never work, but it does, actually. Combine that with an engaging story and decent setting and you've got a great book. This is the first of the Dagger and Coin series and I eagerly await the upcoming books. In addition, I've added Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet to my list of books to read.

4. The Scar by China Mieville
After I discovered China Mieville's work a year or two ago, he has quickly risen to my list of favorite authors, so much so that he appears twice in this list. The Scar is the second book set in the Bas Lag universe, of which Perdido Street Station is the first. While I enjoyed Perdido, I found The Scar to be so much better. The characters, setting, and plot are just outstanding. I particularly enjoyed the character Uther Doul, he is a brilliant swordsman with a potential sword. I want to see him included in one of Suvudu's cage matches, but I guess no luck on 2012.

3. The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
The long awaited sequel to The Name of the Wind. We continue to learn the story behind Kvothe's legend. The anticipation, like for A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin, probably skewed my views, but that's alright: I feel I enjoyed the book for what it's worth (more so than the equivalent Dance). There are moments of beautiful writing in this book. For example, if you read parts out loud,  the characters sometimes talk in verse! I thought that was clever; it's not an easy thing to do. There's so much left to do, though (at least, in my opinion) that I worry about it being all wrapped up in the next book.

2. Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson
This is the first book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen and my only regret is not starting this series sooner. This is epic fantasy at it's greatest and is a worthy addition to such classics as The Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, A Song of Ice and Fire, etc, etc. Great characters, intriguing plot, amazing world. It's still too early for me to grasp everything that's going on, but this is one series I aim to finish. And the good thing: the 10-book story is already complete!

1. Embassytown by China Mieville

When I first heard about this book, I knew it would be good. This is Mieville's first foray into pure science fiction, and he makes it work. Mieville is a master of language and he really shines in this book. It's arguably my favorite Mieville book thus far. The story has 3 arcs: first is the distant past, when the character is young and you learn about the immer, Language, and a bit about the Hosts; following that is an entertaining part where you flip back and forth between the present and the near past; after that is the fast paced section where everything ties together and you get to see the consequences of all actions past. I will be very surprised if I don't see Embassytown getting a Hugo nomination this year.

Book Review: Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson

This is the 2nd book of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series.

I had heard many good things about this series. In particular I was told it was similar to A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin with the exception that it is finished (10 books) and far more magical.
You can see my Goodreads review for the first book (Gardens of the Moon) here. I finished Book 2 on New Years Eve, but I'll post my review here since it's fresh in my mind.