“Mock’s Vane” is the object whose description opens the Prologue of Gardens of the Moon. I was briefly discussing its description on Westeros forums when I noticed that on Tor reread it was interpreted in a completely different way, without triggering any debate. So I thought it was worth elaborating here.

This is the paragraph with the description:

The stains of rust seemed to map blood seas on the black, pocked surface of Mock’s Vane. A century old, it squatted on the point of an old pike that had been bolted to the outer top of the Hold’s wall. Monstrous and misshapen, it had been cold-hammered into the form of a winged demon, teeth bared in a leering grin, and was tugged and buffeted in squealing protest with every gust of wind.

And this is Bill interpretation on Tor’s site:

Hardly a cheery start, but an appropriate one. I like to think of that vane as synonymous with the Bridgeburners: their armor also rusted and stained (albeit with real blood), balancing atop a sharp point (between loyalty to the Empire and defiance towards the Empress), hammered into its current shape by a cruel forging, and buffeted by the winds of war and politics.

It makes sense but I think my interpretation is more accurate and convincing. I’m not a particularly intuitive guy and these things usually defy me, but in this case I used a rather simple framework. I took the object and divided its basic qualities. Those traits will probably qualify what the vane stands for/symbolizes.

In particular, it’s the fact it’s a century old that makes things clearer. What is also a century old? You just have to glance above the first line of prose:

96th Year of the Malazan Empire

As to say “a century old”. It already defies the Bridgeburner interpretation as the Bridgeburners were most likely created much later.

This particular vane is then featured again in “Night of Knives”, the Esslemont book. It appears twice, once at the beginning and once at the end of the book.

On its pike at Temper’s side, Mock’s Vane, the winged demon-shaped weathervane, shook and hummed as if caught in a steady gale. Temper frowned at the old relic; the winds were calm this evening.

Down the wall, Mock’s Vane stood silent on its pike. Temper eyed it – the damn thing appeared frozen athwart the wind.

The main reason why I criticized this book in my review, is that Esslemont is like Erikson stripped of all subtlety and we see a good demonstration in those two quotes. The symbol is stripped of ambiguity and reveals its meaning all too plainly: the vane moves, without wind, at the start, and is still, even with wind, when the night is over. Why? Because its symbolic meaning is more important than it being a weathervane and so pointing the direction of the wind.

“Night of Knives” is the book with the story of the night that the Prologue of Gardens of the Moon anticipates. Mock’s vane is there to represent the old empire under Kellanved. Its description and physical properties are “thematic” and analogous to that sort of empire he built. The vane is restless because a convergence is close (but the reader doesn’t know this yet), in Night of Knives it moves before the convergence, then stops when the night is over. Mock’s Hold, in Erikson’s own words, represents a position of power and control, in this case it “observes” from above.

An old thing stirring. An emperor that comes back. A misshapen, grotesque imitation of life (movement).

There are lot of things and meanings packed there. In just a few lines. All the various meanings are directly connected with the prologue and what the prologue stands for (the “Night of Knives”). It works really well because it is coherent with everything Erikson wanted to do with that Prologue. You can accuse it of being maybe too plain and obvious, but here we got that piece interpreted in a different way, or considered by other readers as being pointless or not having any real meaning.

From a side Erikson is accused of being too obscure, and when instead symbols are more obvious then he’s accused of being too plain.

One has to consider in particular how that part is approached by a reader. A first time reader doesn’t know what is about to happen, doesn’t know what happened to the emperor. One doesn’t know the rules of Ascendancy and gods can be only considered on a level that is entirely separated from human affairs. This “disconnection” allows Erikson to do some of the most obvious foreshadowing and brilliant sleight of hand. Things are spelled so clearly and yet the readers are so masterfully deceived. The vane can only be registered as ominous foreshadowing that can’t be placed yet (and that aspect was well commented by Bill). Its real meaning isn’t even revealed if one reads the whole book because what happened that day is the apex of a long story involving the matters of the “old empire” and “old guard” that the reader pieces together in the longer term. It takes maybe up to House of Chains to get the whole picture.

Good foreshadowing = when some vague hint acquires a much greater import in retrospective.

And in that, Bill’s interpretation is actually incorporated by the greater one. The Bridgeburners are caught in bigger situation and just one of the parties involved. That day, foreshadowed by the vane stirring, has a much bigger impact. And so, depending on the level of awareness of the different reader, it adapts its meaning.

Another wonderful gift from Steven Erikson. He wrote some comments for Tor ongoing reread about why new readers struggle reading his books, his style of writing, how to approach the series and some specific aspects of Gardens of the Moon.

I think there’s a rule that is true for all books and writers: we can only hope to understand and appreciate a fraction of what is offered. This is an even bigger problem with Erikson because the text is dense and one doesn’t even expect that every word and every scene is so strongly charged of meaning and metaphorical intention. If there’s a description we approach it as a description, and most of the layers and delicate complexities are lost. If instead one wants to dig, soon he’d find himself swallowed whole. Erikson has the range of the greatest writers.

It takes some modesty to admit of not having fully understood a book. It also takes a different point of view to realize we haven’t fully understood one. If we see nothing we are sure that there is nothing. But the truth, and it’s a truth valid for all writers, is that we may be closer or far, but we always understand a fraction. Bigger or smaller, still a fraction.

Two times I reread that book, so much I’ve treasured, and I feel like I could still only glide on the surface.

Hello all,

The great thing about having a cold is the privilege of sitting round for days doing nothing and not feeling guilty about it. Having read through the chapter commentary from the beginning, I’d like to take you all back more than a few pages, and talk about why these novels seem to thrive in the context of re-reads, and why first-time readers are often left feeling bewildered. I think the two are very much related.

It goes back to how I first started writing fiction. I was in a Master’s program in archaeology when I came second in a local short story contest in Winnipeg, a tale called ‘Wooden Trucks.’ On the weight of this one venture into writing I applied to attend a creative writing program at the University of Victoria. I recall being in a sweaty phone box in Belize, on the phone with my mother back in Winnipeg, as she opened the envelope telling me I’d got in. From that moment onward, my entire world changed.

The writing program at Uvic at that time was at its zenith. When I showed up it was as a wide-eyed neophyte with a secret love of genre fiction (one keeps these things secret if one wants to be taken seriously). What I learned, almost from day one, was that I knew nothing about anything; that my writing to that point had only ‘worked’ because I was instinctively consistent, with emphasis on the word ‘instinctively.’

Uvic taught me the craft of writing; it taught me to be mindful. The key though is this: it made me a short-story writer. Short stories are a particular beasts. In them, not a single word is superfluous. Everything carries extra weight, or at least that’s how I saw it.

Track forward a few years and scores of short stories later, and I begin writing novels, only to discover that my ‘muscle memory’ is now absolute — the obsessive adherence to multifunctional, multilayered writing (line by line, word by word) is not something I can relax — when novel writing in fact demands just that: an ease with wandering, with transitive passages, with a gentler hand taking hold of the reader, etc. Instead, novel-writing for me is the building of ever more elaborate structures, designed to carry ever more weight.

A long ramble to get to this: on one level details in making a setting carry the more obvious virtues — placing the characters somewhere, giving them things with which they can interact; in creating an atmosphere and a tone; and in painting a picture for the reader’s imagination. But other levels are possible. Setting as ‘animated environment’ can feed your sense of the characters in it; can foreshadow elements of plot; can reveal theme.

Take some opening scenes in Gardens as examples, and see how they relate to subsequent scenes for those select characters. Whiskeyjack and Fiddler on Mock’s Hold: high above a burning city, in a place of power. There’s smoke and the smell of carnage — they are above it but only moments from descending into it. But we don’t see that bit. They are on stonework, but it’s cracked, and their backs are to the sea. All of these details shapes the reader’s sense of them to some extent. When next we see them, they are on the ground, far away from Malaz City, surrounded in destruction and desolation. It’s a different place, but their descent began in the prologue, if you see what I mean. And even then, they were only a short time earlier under the ground itself.

If we look to Kruppe, things get a little more complicated. Kruppe and his city are the same things; just as his language and attitude (and mystery) reflect the exotic, byzantine confusion of Darujhistan, so too his half-mocking smile and spark in the eye invite you into the labyrinthine cityscape (and the literally over-the-top assassin/Crokus chase). Kruppe is both flashy but on close examination somewhat scuffed, stained. He has a cherubic face, but plenty hides behind that. And so on. His voice is the city’s voice, and it begins in a dream, as all great cities do.

Where is all this going? It goes here. Three storm clouds converging over Lake Azure, into which Whiskeyjack and co. are headed. A reader comments that I’m too smart to now say that there was deliberate portent in the detail of three clouds warring over the lake. Hmm. It’s been too many years since that for me to be more specific than this: I could have written ‘there was a storm over the lake,’ and left it at that. The foreshadow is obvious enough. But, if I’d written that description, I would have immediately seen the foreshadowing element — it’s almost too cinematic and verges on cliche. I could then have changed it to two storm clouds, but then, that wouldn’t have made sense; or rather, it would have been suggestive but inaccurately so. There are three forces converging on the city. Two storm clouds would have been lazy and misleading; careless.

Of course there are three storm-clouds. Of course this detail is relevant. It’s how short stories work.

Uh oh. This ain’t a short story though, is it? And therein lies the problem. I know what I’m up to; I know how I think and how I write. And to make matters worse, everything I put into a narrative is saying (pleading, begging) ‘you can trust me, honest.’ But I’m not taking the reader by the hand. I’ve invited them into a place, left them standing, looking round, wandering a bit but not far, not far at all. And every now and then I tap a shoulder, point, nod to over there, or here. And that’s it.

Re-readers will nod and smile. First-timers will blink, bewildered — and will decide to either trust me or not. I really want them to trust me, but I don’t know how to manage that… beyond making sure that everything fits, that everything has meaning.

A virtue or a flaw in my writing? Maybe both. You see, I already know that world, but the only details I show you are the important ones. There’s no filler. And that’s not fair.

And the structure is such a crazed, manic machine, an engineer’s nightmare, a spider’s acid trip, it’s really no wonder that readers will doubt, and on occasion give up on the effort, on the trust I so desperately ask for.

So, to all you new readers on this, I am ever amazed and slightly astonished to find you staying with me. I tell myself that what is happening is a kind of education process: read me this way, it’s the only way. Pay attention! You will be tested on all of this, I guarantee it. Stay with me and in turn I will promise you that it will be a blast.

And even better, then you’ll have all those re-reads, when things will really get wild.

Cheers for now
Steve

I took the occasion of a forum discussion to delve in some ideas I was brooding for some time. It’s again the ideal link between all the books I’ve read lately, with “Infinite Jest” as the central pillar.

The discussion about characters is the excuse to examine literature and its position in the grand scheme of things.

—

the soldiers are just random mouthpieces for the author, who’ll switch attitude (I cannot speak of personalities: they don’t actually have personalities) with every scene. It’s not really hard to be more powerful than that :)

Take Gardens of the Moon. On my first read I could hardly match a Bridgeburner name with the corresponding character, if I did the description of the personality of that character would still be rather limited.

I’m following Tor re-read of the same book now. With the struggle to memorize names and context out of the way I’m discovering a whole new layer in characterization that was almost entirely missing on my first read. Dialogue that was before just between anonymous masks is now consistent with the character and unexpectedly rich in nuances. I feel like I’m reading a wholly different book. Not just consistent but filled to the brim with cross-references that required the insight I didn’t have before. Things to glide over or just producing a big question mark to then move on with the reading. The last two pages I’ve read about Rallick Nom gave an introspection and depth to the character that I didn’t remember was there, written really well. The tension of Kalam and Quick Ben when they are found by Sorry, and the realization that what they thought was correct, and that it meant they would be dead. Or when they leave for their mission, knowingly reciting a number of delusions as to exorcise them. Then the scene with Whiskeyjack waiting for them with the rest of the squad, a scene where every line adds something to the characterization and true friendship of the whole squad, the dialogue between them, and then the arrival of Quick Ben who cringes in front of WJ, and WJ losing his patience. An undeniable feel that these characters have been together for a really long time, and not just since the beginning of the written page. Characters that come out of the page, with natural dialogue between them and drawn from they are, and not directed to the reader.

That scene is as great as any Black Company scene written by Glen Cook, and it’s from a book that is far from the best Erikson delivered when it comes to characterization.

The confusion and inconsistency isn’t of the characters, it is of the reader. The books pretend a reader to memorize and familiarize way more than it is possible, way more than what it is reasonable to ask, and that’s why re-reads are so revelatory in this series about both characters and plot. The confusion of the reader is undeniable because the series represents the far opposite of “accessibility”. It’s actually a big flaw the series has. It is inimical, too dense and unwieldy. But the characterization is there in that ink and it is consistent. It requires more patience than usual because you only get quick glimpses at a great number of characters, and they only become “real” characters with an adequate amount of pages and time, time that is definitely not easily available among readers who are already having an hard time getting through a so dense book and digesting Erikson parsimonious writing style.

Erikson’s characterization can be compared to an impressionist painter who only delicately dabs and sketches. It will take time to familiarize and recognize a character for what it actually is, and to appreciate the panting that at a first glance appeared as just a confusion of random colors. The forms are in the painting, but it takes time to make the eye used to them and recognize them for their value.

This opposed to a traditional type of characterization (neither better nor worse, just different) where you stay in the mind of a character for the long haul. Full-on introspection that begins giving you the context of where and how that person is living, what he feels, what he loves, his fears, his desires. A thoroughly rationalized character. That makes a reader familiarize and understand it. Identify himself and so “caring” for the personal story and feel emotional attachment and empathy.

The heritage of “modern” fantasy was not in delivering characters that are “gray”. But in forcing the reader into their PoV. We often have warring factions, but we zoom into both of them, taking both sides. All of the recent fantasy with gray characters could be turned into solid black and white by just removing the corresponding PoVs. Without motivations and alternative observation points, every story becomes polarized.

The thing Erikson successfully or unsuccessfully tries to realize with his characterization is about starting to show that “stories” exist with the characters, but also in spite of them. The real world chews characters and spits them out, is disdainful of personal stories. A book can usually follow the life of a character through an ideal arc, whose premises define its conclusion. But that’s the nice trick and deceit that traditional literature does to the real world. The illusion that there is “sense” and “meaning”. Beginnings and ends. Justice. Retribution. Payoff. We create “meaning” out of a meaningless, unjust world. Lives are cut short and no one actually dies only once he solved his issues. Flaws, imperfection, lack of meaning and especially the lack of understanding of others are the things that are always true. Humanity is about the damnation of the deceit of seeing “meaning” where there is none. It’s a tragedy, and the Malazan series is written as a tragedy. It’s not “fantasy”, it’s a 1:1 copy of this world, a reflection on a only slightly misshapen mirror.

To grieve is a gift best shared. As a song is shared.
Deep in the caves, the drums beat. Glorious echo to the herds whose thundering hoofs celebrate what it is to be alive, to run as one, to roll in life’s rhythm. This is how, in the cadence of our voice, we serve nature’s greatest need.
Facing nature, we are the balance.
Ever the balance to chaos.

“in the cadence of our voice” means a written page. Language. Or what only separates humanity from the rest of life forms. (I am a man. I stand apart from these things.) Nature is the chaos from where we desperately scrape meaning.

With that lacerating truth in mind, Erikson realizes characters whose story (and characterization) is shred and tattered. Suspicion and opaqueness are traits that are true in our world. And if a foe suddenly turns into a possible ally it’s not “inconsistency”, it’s understanding. Full-on introspection doesn’t work like that even for ourselves. (Foster Wallace attempts “true” full-on introspection with the result that it generates a tremendous annihilating whirlpool that either sucks you in or hurls you away) We don’t have the privilege of a personal writer who overlooks what we do every day and inscribes meaning and finality into our lives. We are opaque and uncertain even to ourselves, even less to one that merely observes. Meaning is not “found” outside, it is created within. The story of the Malazan series is unmindful of characters, it’s up to the characters to find their path, only to see it end abruptly. And up to the reader to decide what to do with them.

The only journey that lay ahead of him was a short one, and he must walk it alone.
He was blind, but in this no more blind than anyone else. Death’s precipice, whether first
glimpsed from afar or discovered with the next step, was ever a surprise. A promise of
the sudden cessation of questions, yet there were no answers waiting beyond. Cessation
would have to be enough. And so it must be for every mortal. Even as we hunger for
resolution. Or, even more delusional: redemption.

Now, after all this time, he was able to realize that every path eventually, inevitably
dwindled into a single line of footsteps. There, leading to the very edge. Then… gone.
And so, he faced only what every mortal faced. The solitude of death, and oblivion’s final
gift that was indifference.

The Malazan series is not consolatory, it is about compassion and reconciliation.

While on other blogs the cover blurb for The Crippled God is being posted, I asked Hetan if she could provide the wordcount for this last novel in the series, and she did.

Being myself at the 5th book yet to start, the internet is now filled with spoilery perils, including that synopsis. Hopefully I won’t stumble on something that ruins my own reading in the next months and years. I have to hone my dodging and skimming skills.

So, this wordcount that Hetan provided is still tentative since the book is currently in the editing phase, but it should give a decent approximation of what to expect, and then sum up with the rest for the final count of this staggering (on all levels) achievement.

We’ll now wait for the cover and official release date. The tentative one is 20 January 2011

Here’s the summary:

Malazan Book of the Fallen – Steven Erikson

Gardens of the Moon: 209k
Deadhouse Gates: 270k
Memories of Ice: 351k
House of Chains: 306k
Midnight Tides: 271k
The Bonehunters: 365k
Reaper’s Gale: 386k
Toll the Hounds: 392k
Dust of Dreams: 382k
The Crippled God: 378k (tentative)

Total: 3M 310k

other wordcounts

I’m re-reading some parts of Gardens of the Moon to follow the Tor official re-read and I’m amazed/dismayed to realize that most of the flaws I had noticed in the book, some of which even pointed out in my review, were only due to my lack of attention and familiarity with this series. The book is really incredibly dense with details I couldn’t pick up, so leading to call for apparent mistakes when it was just this reader who wasn’t being smart enough to catch the nuances ;)

Anyway, I just opened the book on a random page and found a nice Kruppe quote:

That one’s own skull is too worthy a chamber for deception to reign – and yet Kruppe assures you from long experience that all deceit is born in the mind and there it is nurtured while virtues starve.

I’ve hunted for this news for the last four months, after about two months of delay on the original deadline The Crippled God is complete and now going in the hands of the publisher.

The current estimation for the release is the 20th January, but it may as well be anticipated (it happened before) or postponed. Now it depends entirely on the publisher, hoping they’ll do a great job since Erikson deserves it.

Announce that came from Erikson’s Facebook page (but it is private and not open to fans):

“GASP! That would be me, coming up for air. How long was I down there? About twenty years, from conception to completion. The Malazan Book of the Fallen is done. Sure, editing and all that crap to follow. But … done. I don’t know who I am. Who am I again? What planet is this? Three months of butterflies … maybe this double whiskey will fix that. Hmm. No. Delayed reaction going on here.”

According to my wordcount list the complete series will be around 3 millions 3 thousands words.

It’s a monumental achievement in literature in general. No one can realistically embark for a 10-books series and expect to be successful, because no one can realistically plan ahead 20 years of his life, even more insane if this sort of plan is artistic in nature, and so more capricious and out of control. Erikson succeeded in the only way possible: sticking to deadlines and keep delivering without losing focus. He survived his own staggering ambition.

He made it. It is done.

Here’s a pertinent quote from the recent introduction to Gardens of the Moon:

The journey ahead, of words on a screen and then paper, still awaited me in the idyllic state that was the future. Yet the publication of Gardens of the Moon was, for me, a momentous event; for it permitted me to sharpen my focus, as I slowly, almost disbelievingly, comprehended that what was now coming to pass was indeed possible. These things could be reached. The import of that statement cannot be overemphasized. They can be reached.

I am now on the cusp of the tenth and final novel in the Malazan Book of the Fallen. Almost ten thousand pages span the gulf from Gardens to The Crippled God, a detail even more numbing than the decade it took to compose them. I am often asked; how do you sustain it? A difficult question to answer. How do I not? I have a tale to tell and until it is done an inexorable momentum drives me, an impatience against which I still struggle, knowing I need to do it right, and that haste is my deadliest enemy. Especially now.

I cannot claim any prescience with that opening; perhaps, indeed, I was aware on some subconscious level that I was fighting the very thing that confounds many readers with this series. For me, it was the push to advance the story versus the pull to keep it under control, to hold tight on the reins no matter how wild the bucking beast. For the reader, the whole thing reverses: the story pulls, the details prod, claw and tug.
Prod and pull, ‘this the way of the gods …

I can only say that I’m glad I found these books, I feel like I’ve waited all my life just to read them :)

Beside the subtleties of plot, the Malazan series has two different main levels that represent the foundation of the whole thing: the first is the infinitesimal small, the (under)world within a single person, his perceptions, his feeling, his thoughts, his personal yourney; the second is the impossibly huge, the human condition, what embraces all of us.

Today I discovered a non-fiction letter/article by Erikson himself. After reading few lines I thought it was interesting, after reading some more I thought it was EXTRAORDINARY. He talks about his view on the whole series, then his experiences as archaeologist, and finally the perspectives of our world and our species. In the same way these themes have built the Malazan series, I think we can deduct some aspects of where the series will go with its conclusion.

His fiction is a way to elaborate his thoughts, and this article is like a deconstruction of the series itself, and the reason why it is extraordinary. We can see the core bared of all conceits.

Sometimes my series feels like a ten thousand page requiem for our species, or a long, drawn-out howl verging on utter despair; as I search in desperation for moral gestures of humanity, no matter how small, no matter how momentary, in the midst of self-inflicted carnage.

I write novels under the name of Steven Erikson. I am nearing completion of a ten book Fantasy series entitled ‘The Malazan Book of the Fallen.’ These novels are set on a fictitious world that is Homeric in nature—magic and meddling gods—but at a technological level somewhere around late Roman Empire. Progress has stalled, as magic has supplanted technological innovation. Unfortunately, magic is also highly destructive. While these epic novels seek to portray a history in an entertaining style, the underlying themes concern the life cycles of cultures and civilizations (including those of non-humans) against the backdrop of environmental degradation.

In the fourth novel in my series I introduced, rather brutally, a character emerging from an isolated tribal culture, who finds himself first a slave, then an escaped slave, within the far larger world of civilization of which he previously knew nothing. He ultimately concludes, after numerous travails, that civilization is an abomination, and so he vows to destroy it.

I recall standing on a pyramid in the Guatemalan jungle (back in ‘83), during the modern civil war (that had everything to do with land), and perversely feeling a strange optimism. After all, when the Mayan Priest-King stood where I was standing, only a few centuries ago, he could see the vast expanse of his demesne—planted fields out to every horizon. I’m sure he believed it would last forever (just as we believe our civilization will last forever, that we are somehow exempt from the rise and fall cycle that afflicted every previous civilization). He didn’t realize that his culture was unsustainable. That it was destined to collapse even before European contact. He believed as did the pre-Inca civilizations in Peru and Chile. Why did I feel optimistic? Because I was surrounded in jungle. The natural world had reclaimed everything. It had healed, and in a very short time.

Read on.