OT: Malazan Book of the Fallen

[Agrajag]

Kristoffer O said:
I also dislike fantasy dragons

Huh?

From what I've "seen", most of the time dragons are cunning little selfish lazy bastards (:P).
Which is why the generic hero goes an slays them.

Not that I have any fondness for dragons.

Zeldor said:
I somehow never touched it. I will have to find and give it a try. But I will be really surprised if it tops my favourite fantasy - Chronicles of Amber.

I'm in the process of reading those right now. (I got the gigantic book.)


I think A Song of Ice and Fire, has to be the best strategy-fantasy book I've read

[Zeldor]

Agrajag:

I was reading Chronicles as ebook in Polish, now I got English version, also that all-in-one version It is waiting for my return from China. Good for autumng and winter evenings.

[MaxWilson]

JimMorrison said:
they are either providing covert aid, or really just trying to mess with the silly little monkeys in between eating entire villages.

It wouldn't happen so often if monkey PD weren't so awful.



-Max

[Electro808]

I really like these books too. His strong point is the way he describes giant battles, the detail is better than any other author I've read. I particularly enjoyed the book with the pannion seer. That was creepy stuff.

[HoneyBadger]

Kristoffer: that's your problem right there!

Dragons aren't meant to be "proud and noble", atleast in human terms. They aren't human! Dragons are like an earthquake, a forest fire, or a hurricane. They're a natural disaster, an elemental force of nature that's become A: intelligent (and vengeful), B: greedy (and ambitious), and C: very, very patient. They aren't necessarily evil-but that's like saying the 'Walking Dude' from Stephen King's 'The Stand' wasn't necessarily evil.

Dragons should be terrible, awesome, beautiful, and deadly. Some-Chinese dragons for instance-can be wise and kindly, but that makes them no less fierce-infact, they're about as close to the gods themselves as you can get.

They also should be protean. As in, they shouldn't be confined to any one shape. Dragons are winged, or have no wings, they can have horns and scales, and sometimes beards. Some of them have many limbs-and opposable thumbs, and many heads, while others are just serpents. Their very blood can be anathema to everything it touches, or the very key to immortality.

Dragons should be as varied as the clouds in the sky, and as unpredictable as the ocean.

To the medieval mind, a dragon was just the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen-and the medieval mind had a lot of bad to dwell on.
Dragons were worse than the plague, worse than the inquisition, worse than the king, worse than getting drafted, worse than the Devil himself. Yes, they had plenty of tales about knights slaying dragons, but that was because they were afraid, and the knights were all they had. Knights usually didn't fare too well, anyhow, unless they had God in their corner.

Even Beowulf-all around mightiest of men, who'd already proven his worth against Grendel and his mother-met his end at the hands of a dragon.

Down with the Disney version! Down with Anne McCaffrey!! Down with Dragontales!!!

Bring back real dragons! Bring them to Dominions! I'm sorry but, as nice as the dragons we have are, in the game, they don't quite terrify me. And Dominions is the one game where they absolutely should.

[DonCorazon]

Agema said:
I like them also for the sense that for all that's going on, the characters seem very small, flawed cogs in a huge machine, rather than the world-striding, magic-sword-wielding, square-jawed, dragon-slaying, dark-lord-vanquishing, naive, over-righteous pricks that normally populate fantasy.

100% agree. I do have a problem though keeping track of who is who in terms of visualizing the characters and recalling their backgrounds, especially when it comes to keeping all the grunts straight like the Bonehunter squads.

I do wish the magic was a little more subtle - it does feel that magic is so powerful that any Erikson character has the means to survive any situation, no matter how dire. Whether Erikson lets them survive is another matter, but he is far more generous than George Martin.

[HoneyBadger]

Even George RR Martin admits that George RR Martin goes through his characters like extras in a John Woo movie.

[Aezeal]

I personally like a malazan tale of the fallen very much.. I start with book 1.. then when 2 got out book 1 and 2.. etc etc.. and ebtween the last and the one for that I must have read them another 2 times..

Same for a Song of Fire and Ice.. those 2 are my most favorite series, along with Wheel of Time (I don't mind the way it's written) and the earlier books of Feist (magician just ROX)

KO you get annoyed by the increasing number of ascendents? Seems like a lot of pplz keep getting killed.. and most decks where already there you should know how much you could expect.. only thing I think is strange that the shapeshifters who all seem incredibly aggresive etc and there seemed to be a lot on the path of hands where not so generally known (they should've been rampaging whole continents right?) but I figure they killed each other on the way to the end and then.. well we read that

[chrispedersen]

It would be interesting, if there was something like 'tawneer' the spirit of the chosen.

The question of nation hood really is separate from ascension. It would be interesting if there were a path to god hood that did not require nation building...

God games = )

[Meglobob]

I personally like dragons.

My dragons were vindictive, nasty and downright evil. I based there personility on a cat and they viewed humans (and most other humaniod races) as mice to be tormented before biting there heads off.

A red dragon captured an adventurer once in one of my campaigns, he ended up sliting his own throat after 2 months captivity.

I have such fond memories of dragons...