From the forums, an interesting message:

Hello everyone. I am writing this from a Blenz Cafe in North Vancouver. Tomorrow, early in the afternoon, I board a plane bound for Beijing, and then on to Ulan Bator. Why am I going to Mongolia? The thing with archaeology is one can never quite get it out of one’s blood. I am joining a US/Russian/Japanese/Mongolian expedition, for a five week dig. With luck, I’ll get a chance to do some riding once there, which is something I’ve wanted to do for years.

Now, before anyone panics regarding the timing of this, rest assured I do this in the best interests of the entire series in mind. Before I settle into writing the tenth and last novel, I need a period of time in which to take stock, review all that has gone before in the previous nine novels, and charge up the batteries. Five weeks in a primitive camp on the Asian steppes may not seem an ideal place in which to recharge, but for me it’s the perfect place. I return to the UK on the 21st of August, hopefully in time to do some promotion for Dust of Dreams.

Today I wandered the Malazan site for a time, reading many of your comments. Always nice to see such lively debate on countless topics. Thank you all for investing so much in the Malazan Book of the Fallen. I suspect that in the months to come, plenty will be hitting the fan with Dust of Dreams (if Bill and Hazel’s responses are anything to go by), and I will look in from time to time (though I found, with Toll the Hounds, that I would be wise to wait a month or two after launch. If precedent is anything to go by, responses mellow and opinions often reverse following the initial rush to comment: if I had taken to heart the predominantly negative reactions to Toll the Hounds in the days following its release, I might have been depressed for days. Curiously, this pattern seems pretty consistent, if I look back on the reactions to House of Chains, Midnight Tides, etc. As much as I meekly advise patience with my readers, so I must with myself). In any case, fare well for now.

Yours
Steven Erikson

So it was true, the Canadian market saves us from the continuous swapping of format of Erikson’s books and I now have book 1 to 8 all in the same mass market format.

I received today my order from amazon.ca with both Toll the Hounds and Return of the Crimson Guard, with the hope that two books left will stick with the format at least in Canada.

Absolutely nothing changes between the canadian, smaller version and the new bigger UK mass market. They have a different ISBN code and price in canadian dollars.

My precioussss…

(the first picture is Toll the Hounds in UK hardcover, UK mass mrket (paperback) and the new, shiny, beautifully fat canadian mass market)

P.S.
I know quality is horrid, but it was done with an ancient webcam and it really can’t get better than that. I’ll see if I can steal a camera from a friend these days… I like book porn.

Pat received the page proofs.

This is what we know to this point:

– The book is 889 pages long and so about the size of The Bonehunters (approximately 360k words).
– Official publication date is even earlier than expected: 17 August.
– The book comes with a note from Erikson warning readers that this is just the first part of a two-volume novel and that it doesn’t have the same structure of other novels.

I’ll update this post with more tidbits if Pat comments the book on the forums while he reads like he did for Toll the Hounds.

Okay, three chapters and 118 pages in, and that’s as far as I’ll go today.

Very good thus far. An underlying sense of doom pervades the narrative, and you know that the end is coming. Even though early in the game, there has already been a major surprise that I never really expected. Interestingly enough, although there are myriads storylines woven into this series, SE introduces us to additional characters and plotlines. This far in the series, they must be of capital importance, I guess.

That and what is likely the most important reading of the Deck of Dragons yet. . .

Good stuff! The pace was atrociously slow for about 2/3 of TtH, and if not for that spectacular ending the book would have tanked to a certain degree. Not so with DoD. You can feel that the build-up is almost over, and the shit is about to hit the fan in a way that will make past convergences look like a walk in the park.

More to come. . .

—
212 pages into it, 6 chapters down, and Book 1 done, and it’s still very good.

You know at the end of RG when Icarium entered his machine and we thought that nothing really happened. Well, something did. Something MAJOR. . .

While I’m not going to reveal which POVs are featured thus far, since a lot of you have asked I can say that the narrative is comprised of the usual suspects among the Malazans and the Letherii. A bit more interesting is the fact that we get to see the Shake, the Khundryl Burned Tears, the Perish Grey Helms, and more in the spotlight.

Good stuff, this!

—
Nine chapters and 316 pages in, and it’s still pretty damn good, though portions of this last chapter were a bit on the lame side. . . The banter and interaction between Malazan soldiers are kind of fun, but this story has bigger fish to fry, methinks.

We learn more about what Icarium’s machine did, and crap it’s HUGE! More K’Chain Che’Malle revelations, and glimpses of what the Errant is planning. More about the Barghast, the Shake,and two heretofore minor characters who seem to be destined to become power players.

Though this is the beginning of the end, so far DoD follows the same Malazan blueprint as the rest of the volumes in the series. I figure that the first two Books are the set-up, and then the shit will hit the fan.

There can never be too much shit, really. . .

I’ve stopped updating because Pat started to discuss more about the plot and less about opinions on the book. Here a post from Hetan:

There is a lot of set-up in this book as we have been told, which doesn’t mean to say there arent’ any OMFG moments because there are plenty of those and other surprises in it.
I’m not sure that Steve is even bothered about filling in what are considered plot holes or ommissions as it is clear he knows where his story is going and some of those side plots are simply that – stuff that happened – and the plot has moved on without any further explanation. But that is the nature of history.

I’m not going to comment much on the Crimson Guard and where it ties in as Steve sees DoD as Book one of the end rather than book 9 of a ten book series, therefore I’ve only read book one of two and it may be that there is more to come from that (crimson guard) side of things.

There’s quite a lot of background information on all sorts of things as Pat has said, The Shake, the Eleint, The K’Chain …. and some things that seemed minor at the time are now much more relevant than we had thought.

I’m rather impressed, this is the first cover for a book by Steven Erikson that Tor publishes and that doesn’t suck. Beside the horrible green used in the name, the image is a rather faithful representation of awesome duo (minus the manservant, the real protagonist).

The book, till now only available in limited hardcover, is going to be published in September by Tor for the american market, trade paperback only. It collects all the three novellas Erikson wrote, probably in their story order, but not in publishing order (The Healthy Dead was written after the first, but comes third in reading order). Erikson has already the contract to write three more as soon he finds the time.

Maybe more people will read what I consider Erikson’s masterpiece and, without a doubt, the very best thing I ever read in fantasy and sci-fi. This book is my all time favorite (even if the first novella can’t reach the awesomeness of the other two).

The summary on the Tor page is also quite fitting for what’s written in the book.

Return of the Crimson Guard, second book by Esslemont and suggested read after The Bonehunters or Reaper’s Gale, is out in mass market format in UK and available at the usual places. (amazon.co.uk and bookdepository)

Even for this version they are going to use the slightly larger format they started to use with the MM version of Toll the Hounds. Sadly.

The real question is whether it will contain the prologue form Stonewieleder or not. The MM version of Night of Knives had the prologue and a few pages of the first chapter of RotCG, but Esslemont had already completed the book, while we don’t have any news about when the next book should come out.

In the meantime the wait for Dust of Dreams continues. It should be out by the end of August and in a couple of weeks the first reviews should come out. The moment of truth.

Some time ago there were flames on the forums after some people continued to compare the Malazan series to Dragonlance. I started to explain that if Erikson wasn’t original it wasn’t because he copied Dragonlance, but because the idea of the Ascendants came right from Glen Cook’s “Taken”, and, before that, from greek mythology with all its meddling gods with humanized flaws.

Nothing is truly originally, especially in fiction. Everything is influenced by what was before. Literary genres are still the same, we play with the same narrative structures, the same tricks. Creativity isn’t about shaping alien concepts. It is about molding what we know into something clever or moving or sincere or authentic or spectacular.

I posted a short quote from a character in Dickens’ novel. It got my attention somehow. Now I know why.

That character is the exact copy of Erikson’s Kruppe. From the physical description to the style of dialogue it is a faithful representation. This is interesting because I used to read that Kruppe was a character that Erikson borrowed right from one of the later books in the Black Company series.

How amusing to have another proof that you can never pinpoint the origin of ideas, even when they seem so obvious.

Dickens:

Mr. Chadband is a large yellow man with a fat smile and a general appearance of having a good deal of train oil in his system. Mr. Chadband moves softly and cumbrously, not unlike a bear who has been taught to walk upright. He is very much embarrassed about the arms, as if they were inconvenient to him and he wanted to grovel, is very much in a perspiration about the head, and never speaks without first putting up his great hand, as delivering a token to his hearers that he is going to edify them.

“My friends,” says he, “what is this which we now behold as being spread before us? Refreshment. Do we need refreshment then, my friends? We do. And why do we need refreshment, my friends? Because we are but mortal, because we are but sinful, because we are but of the earth, because we are not of the air. Can we fly, my friends? We cannot. Why can we not fly, my friends?”

Mr. Snagsby, presuming on the success of his last point, ventures to observe in a cheerful and rather knowing tone, “No wings.” But is immediately frowned down by Mrs. Snagsby.

“I say, my friends,” pursues Mr. Chadband, utterly rejecting and obliterating Mr. Snagsby’s suggestion, “why can we not fly? Is it because we are calculated to walk? It is. Could we walk, my friends, without strength? We could not. What should we do without strength, my friends? Our legs would refuse to bear us, our knees would double up, our ankles would turn over, and we should come to the ground. Then from whence, my friends, in a human point of view, do we derive the strength that is necessary to our limbs? Is it,” says Chadband, glancing over the table, “from bread in various forms, from butter which is churned from the milk which is yielded unto us by the cow, from the eggs which are laid by the fowl, from ham, from tongue, from sausage, and from such like? It is. Then let us partake of the good things which are set before us!”

The persecutors denied that there was any particular gift in Mr. Chadband’s piling verbose flights of stairs, one upon another, after this fashion.

Erikson:

The slippered foot probed daintily downward, wavering until it touched ground. A rather plump calf, knee and thigh followed. The short, round man who emerged was wearing silks of every colour, the effect one of clashing discord. A shimmering, crimson handkerchief was clutched in one pudgy hand, rising to dab a glittering forehead. Both feet finally on the ground, the Daru loosed a loud sigh. ‘Burn’s fiery heart, but it’s hot!’

The short, round man blinked myopically, mopped his brow once again, then beamed a smile. ‘Representative of the City of Darujhistan? Indeed! None better, Kruppe says, though he be a lowly citizen, a curious commoner come to cast kindly eyes upon this momentous occasion! Kruppe is suitably honoured by your formal, nay, respectful welcome – what vast display, Kruppe wonders, will you formidable warriors unveil when greeting the Council of Darujhistan’s official representatives? The sheer escalation now imminent has Kruppe’s heart all apatter with anticipation! Look on, to the south – the councillors’ carriage even now approaches!’

Kruppe was the first to lower himself into a chair – at the head of the makeshift table. He held a tankard and a handful of Rhivi sweetcakes. ‘Such rustic environs!’ he sighed, round face flushed with pleasure. ‘And traditional pastries of the plains to lure the palate. More, this ale is most delicious, perfectly cooled—’

He offered everyone a broad, crumb-flecked smile. ‘But please, let us get under way lest this meeting stretch on, forcing the delivery of a sumptuous supper replete with the dryest of wines to whet the gullet and such a selection of sweets as to leave Kruppe groaning in fullest pleasure!’