The guy who rose some controversy this past August by criticizing George Martin’s series, wrote possibly the very best review ever of Gardens of the Moon. It’s quite enlightening and wonderfully focuses on important aspects of that novel that are often dismissed or overlooked (including myself).

Some quotes:

You see, as with most sword and sorcery stories, and especially given its kitchen sink approach to fantasy tropes, there’s a danger that Gardens of the Moon won’t quite pass the giggle test, what with its floating mountain, assassins and thieves guilds, and hulking fantasy stereotype Anomander Rake. Erikson defuses this by starting off grim. By present standards, Gardens of the Moon is not a really dark book, but its darkest moments are at the beginning to set the tone.

From this bleak beginning, Erikson moderates the tone and eventually introduces various elements that, considered in isolation, would seem pretty silly. But these are defused by the inertia of that serious beginning and the constantly down-to-earth attitude of the main characters.

Erikson is actually pressed for time. In traditional fantasy, diverse groups of characters band together to achieve some sort of goal. In Gardens of the Moon, everyone has their own thing going on, resulting in not just one plot, but over a dozen. Only strong unities of place and time keep the novel from feeling more like a short story collection.

Again turning to Lord of the Rings as a useful model, the timespan of that story caught almost every important event. Aragorn had been alive for over a hundred years when he meets Frodo, but little of what he was doing had much impact on the outcome of the story. The same is true for most of the other characters. Ask a character after the events of Lord of the Rings when the important time of their lives was and all would point to the War of the Ring. Gardens of the Moon is completely different. The older characters (and even some of the younger ones) have been active for years and this is just the latest situation they’ve had to confront.

Tolkien probably felt our world was about 6,000 years old and so was his Middle Earth. Erikson no doubt sees our world as much older, and this is likewise reflected in his fiction. The Malazan Empire is just the latest of a thousand civilizations, a tiny sliver of hundreds of thousands if not millions of years of history. And this being a fantasy, there are immortal characters who have seen a sizable fraction of that history. Unlike Tolkien, who maintained a generational distance from the events of myth (Elrond was present only for the events at the very end of the Silmarillion), the influential immortals of Erikson’s present were just as influential in past millennia. This results in a unique effect where the past can feel extremely distant in one scene and very immediate in the next, depending on who is present.

Now, having made such an extended comparison to Tolkien, I have to make clear that although Erikson’s world has a depth similar to Tolkien’s, he is a very different writer. He doesn’t share Tolkien’s gift for languages, nor does he lavish nearly so much attention on the landscapes. Erikson was a professional anthropologist, so the details he emphasizes are those of culture. When Tolkien described a hill topped with ruins, he spent most of his time on the hill, whereas Erikson lingers on the ruins. The result is that Erikson’s landscapes are not beautifully evoked, but they come off as being genuinely inhabited (whether now or in the past) in a way that Tolkien’s empty countryside does not.

Whereas Tolkien’s world was fundamentally Christian, Erikson’s is thoroughly pagan. His gods are capricious and quick to interfere in the affairs of mortals. There’s no sense that humanity has dominion over the earth…the opposite, in fact.

That disparity in power is perhaps the most old-fashioned element here. It’s easy to forget that for all the inequalities of wealth in our era, most people deny there is much difference between the average person and, for example, the American president. But to the ancients, there was an enormous gulf between the lowly peasant and Pharaoh, son of Ra.

However, mixed into this authentically ancient outlook is a very modern flavor. Unlike traditional Tolkien-influenced fantasy, the past is not considered better, nor is the present a slide down into a faded future. Oh, there were still powerful races and empires in previous eras who forged mighty artifacts and fought incredible battles, but while they are certainly due some respect, ultimately there is an assumption that modern magic is just as good as the old stuff, if not better. Even the Jaghut Tyrant, an ancient evil feared by all and the closest thing in the novel to a Dark Lord, is implied to be somewhat obsolete and rather out of his depth.

Even the Bridgeburners, who are indeed glorified as a legendary military unit and present some of the most interesting and sympathetic characters, turn out to be ambiguous at best, given they attempt to orchestrate murders and then prepare a terror attack on a civilian population. They are well-intentioned, but so are their enemies who live in Darujhistan. When they meet in the right circumstances, people from the two different sides even become fast friends. Yet the intentions of ordinary people cannot change their world, so the conflict continues, grinding up human lives in the vast gears of ambition and intrigue.

It’s Erikson’s achievement (and this is, in my opinion, a considerable achievement) that not only do we as readers immediately have the same reaction as Crokus but we have it for the same reason. Immersed in the Malazan world with its manifold deities and deep magic, there’s nothing implausible about the idea of beautiful gardens under an ocean on the moon tended by an elder god. No, the only thing that seems unbelievable about Apsalar’s description is its last image: “There won’t be any more wars, and empires, and no swords and shields.” An end to suffering and war? That’s just fantasy.

I was writing in a forum and trying to figure out if there’s a simple way to summarize how characterization works in the Malazan series. It’s one aspect that is also criticized and matter of debate and so I think it’s all about the reader and his personal reaction to a different style. For some it works, for others it doesn’t.

One problem is that for books that are part of a specific genre readers come with very specific expectations, and so it’s not easy to make them accept different canons and structures, they will judge a book by comparing it to other books in the genre that are considered absolute points of reference. The quality of a book is then relative to its performance on those canons. Malazan has an ever harder time because its differences start already with the style of the writing. So it depends entirely on whether or not this style works for a certain reader or if instead one gets “bounced back”.

“Characterization” is one of those aspects where “innovation” or change or originality of approach isn’t usually welcome. A classic kind of characterization works well and achieves a lot of important functions. Most successful books, even if much different, have similar approaches to characterization. They can do it better or worse, but usually they follow similar structures. This is instead one aspect that Erikson does in a completely different way (or in a way that represents a minority).

In the Malazan series things aren’t driven by characters, but by scenes. Often scenes are linked thematically, and different characters relate to the same theme in their own different way. In most other fantasy, putting in the same group Tolkien, Martin and Jordan to quote three of the most visible, characters are established before plot. In Tolkien we get to know the Hobbits well before the story and the journey picks up. There’s the whole birthday scene, but also lots of “infodumps” about the quirky habits of the Hobbit and all the different families. Characters and story are well contextualized before they are set in movement. Jordan follows the structure closely, sets up the countryside village, its inhabitants and what will become main characters. You have a nice bucolic scene set up, including fundamental characterization, before things start to happen. Things are again properly and carefully contextualized so that the reader acquires a certain familiarity with them before “changes” arrive. Martin, even if completely different from both Jordan and Tolkien, also starts by contextualizing. Bran’s first chapter is a well written introduction to the whole Stark family, and before the chapter closes the reader will be already familiar with all the most important traits and characters that define the Starks. Here the plot moves already as part of the contextualization, but it’s all again measured on the reader. Even with the following chapters characters are introduced in a way that lets the reader develop familiarity, and things only move after the reader got hold of them.

As I said, this is the aspect that most sets Erikson’s writing style apart from most of everything else. It’s not much that the first book starts in “medias res”, or in a point in time that is already quite complicate. That’s a detail. The real difference is that no characters are contextualized as a deliberate choice. In Erikson’s books no character is closely followed, no character is carefully presented before the plot gets moving. We get scenes. Characters are part of scenes and they get swapped depending on the scene. We get glimpses of characterization, because even when there’s direct introspection it’s always closely related to the theme in that scene. We see specific characterization and reactions. We get flashes. What we do not get is the fully disclosed character that the reader familiarizes with and knows so well to consider like a close friend. This never happen. All characters, even those who appear more often and that are minutely developed, keep obscure aspects about their lives and thoughts. There is no spotlight that clears all shadows and offers a special status of clarity. This is immediately evident from the beginning of Gardens of the Moon, where Paran, in the scene where he goes in Gerrom to find out what happened with the missing girl and her father, even with direct introspection we only get hints, glimpses and suspicions about what Paran is thinking. There is no omniscient light poured into a character.

All this is not the result of a lack of strong characterization, even compared to books praised for it, it’s just a matter of different style. Characters in the Malazan series develop in the longer term, the more those slices of characterization build up to something more cohesive. The facets we see have plenty of depths, character never develop predictably and Erikson’s habit is about breaking patterns and expectations. Malazan has plenty of originality and depth, but it is nuanced and only comes out on a emergent level. It’s not straightforward and clear, it takes effort from the reader to put together the pieces of characterization. As is the case with everything else that makes this series.

Agreeing or not on the merit of characterization in the Malazan series, I think it’s still obvious to say that characters only relate to the specific scene and nothing else, and that this is a constant for the whole series and all characters involved. There’s a neutrality of approach that in the end delivers something powerfully authentic. Which is as far as you can go in the matter of characterization.

Lot’s of things I’m following off the blog. A number of Q&A sessions with Erikson and now Esslemont too on Tor.com and also the usual weekly re-reads.

Today I received from the bookdepository a copy of “The Bonehuters”, American Tor mass market freshly reprinted with the new cover (UK version). This is at the moment the best mass market format, slightly smaller than UK MM and looking more solid & flexible. The interior (font, pagination) is exactly the same of the UK version (so a very good thing). At the moment only this and Midnight Tides are available in shops in this updated style (plus Dust of Dreams when it comes out next month), so I asked Irene Gallo (Tor art director) if they were going to release the books in a consistent style. Here is her reply:

We are trying to standardize the series as the older books run out of stock and we need to reprint. Unfortunately that doesn’t always happen in series order.

It will take a while I guess.

I’m a bit torn about what is going to be my reading copy since I love both this updated MM but also the “UK book club” hardcover edition that is much smaller than classic hardcover. But in the meantime I should deal with The Way of Kings and The Darkness that Comes Before :)

Pat received the page proofs of Stonewielder. The official release is 25 November and official page count is the same as RotCG, 720 pages. It’s odd because Pat says the book is 635 pages and so there’s quite a gap to fill with just map + glossary + Dramatis Personae. Someone speculated there may be an excerpt from The Crippled God, but it’s unlikely as Hardcovers don’t usually have excerpts of any kind. I estimate the wordcount at 250k.

Update: Pat also posted the map that goes with the book, map of the Korel subcontinent. I saved it along my collection of the other maps.

As usual the interesting part is about Pat’s ongoing comments on the book:

Okay, about 100 pages into Stonewielder, so here’s the first update:

Can’t really say more without spoiling everything. And unless everything goes to shit in the last 200 pages or so, I’d say that Esslemont has a real winner here!

Why the title in quotation marks? Because we’re talking directly of the title itself.

There was a recent reply of Steven Erikson to some provocations of mine on Tor.com re-read. Lots of interesting topics that are relevant to the genre at large. One was about the use of “magic” in fantasy (a rather broad argument that Erikson handled brilliantly in that reply), another was about the title of the first book, “Gardens of the Moon”.

This is what he said specifically:

Before I get to the matter of DEM’s and all that … now that the series is done, and now that I’ve already said elsewhere that Toll the Hounds provides the cipher for understanding the series, it probably does no harm to reveal what was going on in my mind during the writing of Gardens of the Moon, and how my reality (and sense of it) shaped what I wrote, and gave me the reasons for writing it the way I did.

As any beginning writer well knows, the future is filled with soaring hope and crushing despair. Yes, there are bestselling writers out there making a decent living (or even filthy rich), all happily writing full-time. But they are a minority; and most even published writers need to supplement their habit with ‘real work.’ So, you hope and you fear. You want but you also need to be realistic. And in the bookshops you pick up titles and read a little bit and wonder how in hell did this ever get published? Or you think, ah, here I am in good hands.

And you daydream. A lot. These days they call it visualisation. So, there we were, living on Saltspring Island, unemployed and on welfare (starving in paraidse, we still call that phase of our lives). A baby about to arrive and scant prospects on the horizon.

But I kept looking at those books in the stores, trying to work out why some ever made it into print; trying to figure out the rhyme or reason of publishing. It looked like the biggest crapshoot imaginable. Seemed to me that luck played as big a role as talent. Who you knew, that kind of thing.

Luck. I sat down to write this fantasy novel, thinking about chance and mischance. Thinking about a life in anonymity and a life that wasn’t (refer if you will to Circle Breaker in the epilogue and the novel’s last line). Thinking about writing a tale filled with magic, high adventure and a wild, if not insane, climax. And dreaming of getting it published and actually making a living as a writer.

Lots of dreams went into Gardens of the Moon (hence the title, too, and the invented mythos surrounding it), along with ambition. And the writing thereof became on one level a dialogue with myself (as is the entire series).

At the same time I spotted on Malazan forums a comment written by a reader that not only is coherent with what Erikson wrote there, but also drags it more to the surface:

I’m going to nod my head to the genius of the title, “Gardens of the Moon”, for as perverse as it seems to name a book after a seemingly obscure reference in a single conversation, that reference encompasses a theme of enormous importance in the book and the series.

1. The story of the ‘gardens of the moon’, as told by Apsalar, offers the hope of future bliss. More broadly, you can read redemption or salvation for bliss.

To all those struggling in their day to day lives with the seemingly eternal problems of societies (war, injustice, tyranny[1]) and personal existence (heartbreak, illness, hunger), any hope of future salvation and bliss is obviously of enormous appeal. Readers of later books will recognise where this idea goes. The Chained God’s apparent doctrine to mortals (regardless of his actual intentions) is the story of the gardens of the moon; an offer of future bliss and release from their present sufferings.

2. Apsalar’s telling of the story of the ‘gardens of the moon’ frames it as a kind of fairy story or children’s tale or fantasy.

In other words, it requires a certain naivety or wilful self-delusion to buy into it wholly, so there’s actually two opposed themes derived from it:
( a ) subservience to – or faith in – a wilful self-deception or illusion offering the hope of future bliss,
— versus —
( b ) clearer-eyed experience (or cynicism) teaching a truer but harder reality that hope is often transient (unless you struggle to hang on to it) and bliss elusive (unless you lower your expectations of it).

And that opposition is the crux of the drama in the entire series. Most (almost all?) of the major characters in the series embody the struggle between these notions in some way, and their experiences and personal evolution are an examination of these two competing ideas. (Consider Paran’s path in GotM[2].) That’s what makes the choice of title of the first book so brilliant.

Of course, the longer someone has been around, the closer to the second category they generally fall. In terms of groups, rather than individuals, the embracing of the second ideal isn’t often the result of revelation, but entropy and experience, and although groups don’t encompass the free-will aspect of this idea (see note [1]), the important factor is that they are (largely) without the hope of reward or bliss. Think of the ennui that permeates the Tiste Andii and what led them to that (much of which only comes out in later books, admittedly), or more amusingly, Tool’s often quoted ruminations about the T’lan Imass:

“Tell me, Tool, what dominates your thoughts?”
The Imass shrugged before replying, “I think of futility, Adjunct.”
“Do all Imass think about futility?”
“No. Few think at all.”
“Why is that?”
The Imass leaned his head to one side and regarded her, “Because Adjunct, it is futile.”

————————–

[1] One of the more amazing notions that appears in the series is that all forms of society, even the smallest community – is a form of tyranny. From anyone else, this’d sound like pure cynicism, but from an anthropologist (as Erickson is), it is – at least in the context of the Malazan series -something to bear in mind. Now I think this idea is first spelled out, albeit in passing, in MoI (in reference to the Jaghut’s self-imposed personal isolationism), although it utterly dominates some later books. What’s of interest (to me, at least) is the way in which this notion of tyranny as a social force appears reflected in the two opposed themes of the ‘gardens of the moon’ story: a personal subservience versus a rejection of the consolations of companionship.

[2] Paran has given over control of his life to an ideal of service to the Adjunct (early on in GotM) – in part a wilful self-delusion; that by following rather than making his own choices he can be absolved of the myriad challenges of free will. But new friendships undermine his isolation, casting him adrift as a pawn of other powers who test him sorely, and only by finally seeking to break his subservience to them does he begin to leave behind his illusion of hope granted by unthinking service; and now has to face the nasty idea that redemption (of any kind) will not come from any self-deception, and that new forms of more freely given service to others (and other ideals) – while being more ethically true to his heart – are without (illusory) guarantees of redemption. It’s the hard road – no more gardens of the moon for him… apparently.

Many other characters touch upon this idea in different ways. Compare Lorn’s path with Paran’s: after being tested, and tempted to leave her illusions behind, she appears to return to the path of the gardens of the moon – in action at least, but what about her heart?

Or consider Whiskeyjack, Toc the Younger, and Rallick Nom (what do they really trust in? and how have their outlooks evolved with their allegiences/friendships and experiences?).

I should also mention that this is STRONGLY related to “Disciple of the Dog” that I think I could safely define as the most extraordinary book I’ve read.

The enlightenment is right over there. One just has to figure out if it’s desirable or not.