Kevin's Watch

Actually, I'm not sure what you mean by "twist". I guess a few things could be seen as such. But "To me..." is my point. I was not disappointed, while you were. It's subjective. Maybe you wanted specific things, and could not be happy without them.

I saw characters honed throughout ten books, until they were equal to the extraordinary challenges before them. Some seriously major things were resolved.

Regarding the million-character POV, I look at it this way... There were many, many people who were important to me at different points in my life. People who shaped me into the person I am. Childhood friends, school teachers, relatives, etc. And yet, I don't know the first thing about where those people are, or what happened to them throughout their lives. The guy who was my very best friend for many years of childhood lives only several miles away, but we have very different lives, and only run into each other occasionally at the grocery story. All of their stories have gone on, just as mine has, in ways just as powerful and important to them as mine has been to me. It is not a failing of any sort that I don't know more about their stories.

Same with Malazan. How many characters might we wish to know more about? Well, we don't. But their presence helped shape the characters we do know about, and the whole of Malazan. Just as the people I no longer know shaped my life. We don't need to know the details of every character. Life doesn't work like that, and fantasy need not either. We have the whole of the story, just as I have the whole of my life.

I thought the 'twist' was pretty neat (whatever it is you're referring to, I just liked the last book in its entirety ). I can understand what you say about Erikson's 'hubris', but I also think it was saturated throughout the entire series from Gardens of the Moon onwards. I doubt it would even be the same series without this 'hubris.'

Orlion wrote:I thought the 'twist' was pretty neat (whatever it is you're referring to, I just liked the last book in its entirety ). I can understand what you say about Erikson's 'hubris', but I also think it was saturated throughout the entire series from Gardens of the Moon onwards. I doubt it would even be the same series without this 'hubris.'

Hubris is fine except when it overreaches.

There are many parallels between TCG and Foul. Both trapped, both angry, both bitter, etc. Yet evil is evil. You can't sugar coat Foul's desecration and explain it away as the fault of the Creator, for instance, because he trapped him in the Earth. It's like the man who beats his wife, then blames his dad who abused him 30 years ago.

No matter how flowery your prose, that stuff stinks.

For me it's about the emotional and developmental journey of the characters. I can read the same story over and over again, Ok, Hero, doesn't know he's the king must save the world and magic comes in to play. I get it. For me it's about relating to the characters that take the journey. If you think about it, much of fantasy is formulaic. If I like a writer I need them to make me like or love their characters. That's part of why I find the Mordant's Need stuff so amazing, the characters are so intense, all of them, even when they are vapid they are intense. THAT is why I love SRD's writing so much. You can feel their pain, feel their triumphs, feel their failures, feel their insecurities, feel their loves and hates and most of all feel how they grow and develop as they feel these things themselves. This is also what draws me to Erikson and Martin. It's also what makes Terry Goodkind and Mercedes Lackey so repugnant to me. Their writing is so much about the external triumph and so little about the emotional journey.