About the lows, I’ve rambled a bit on the forums. The summary is that there are some small aspects in this book that are a bit disappointing and that seem to form a pattern since they all have in common the use of the more supernatural/fantastic elements of the plot. Previously I got a similar feel from the Seguleh in book 3, that I consider a rather arid concept that made my suspension of disbelief creak. This third book keeps a very high level that particularly shines when it comes to “down to the ground” characters and plots (all the scenes in Aren and around Tavore) or evocative and cryptic ones (Trull and Onrack in the Nascent), but seems getting a bit dull and dumb when the fantastic elements and badassery show off comes into play. And it seems coming into play more often and more bluntly than in previous books. In particular a scene that had a great potential was kinda wasted and thrown away (meaning that the magic element completely killed the dramatic intensity, instead of enhancing it).

Then I read a few pages further that redeemed the little perceived damage that was done. Not only the “banter” between Trull and Onrack is amusing because of how the two characters clash while yet having things in common (and sometimes think themselves different while they are similar, so a great job with subtle perceptions of both), but the dialogue is revealing and also rooted into something deep and true. I loved the tone and implications, and admire the presence of humor even when the theme is serious, without ruining it.

Some quotes that stay true out of context:

‘It is believed,’ he said slowly, ‘by the bonecasters, that to create an
icon of a spirit or a god is to capture its essence within that icon. Even the laying of
stones prescribes confinement. Just as a hut can measure out the limits of power for a
mortal, so too are spirits and gods sealed into a chosen place of earth or stone or
wood… or an object. In this way power is chained, and so becomes manageable.’

‘Do your bonecasters also believe that power begins as a thing devoid of shape, and thus
beyond control? And that to carve out an icon – or make a circle of stones – actually
forces order upon that power?’

Onrack cocked his head, was silent for a time. ‘Then it must be that we make our
own gods and spirits. That belief demands shape, and shaping brings life into being.’

After a moment, Trull Sengar followed. ‘I imagine you know little of what it is like to
see your kin fall into dissolution, to see the spirit of an entire people grow corrupt, to
struggle endlessly to open their eyes – as yours have been opened by whatever clarity
chance has gifted you.’

‘True,’ Onrack replied, his steps thumping the sodden ground.

‘Nor is it mere naivete,’ the Tiste Edur went on, limping in Onrack’s wake. ‘Our denial
is wilful, our studied indifference conveniently self-serving to our basest desires. We are
a long-lived people who now kneel before short-term interests—’

‘If you find that unusual,’ the T’lan Imass muttered,’then it follows that the one
behind the veil has need for you only in the short term – if indeed that hidden power is
manipulating the Tiste Edur.’

‘An interesting thought. You may well be right. The question then is, once that
short-term objective is reached, what will happen to my people?’

‘The stone has been shaped to encompass them, Trull Sengar. No-one asks the spirit
or the god, when the icon is fashioned, if it wishes entrapment. Do they? The need to
make such vessels is a mortal’s need. That one can rest eyes on the thing one worships
is an assertion of control at worst, or at best the illusion that one can negotiate over
one’s own fate.’

‘And you find such notions suitably pathetic, Onrack?’

‘I find most notions pathetic, Trull Sengar.’

I stopped reading House of Chains at pag 250 in September when I had the crazy idea of embarking onto Infinite Jest and the book requiring all my attention and then more.

I resume the book now at a fitting point since it wraps up Karsa POV as a kind of self contained story and then opens up from a different perspective that neatly ties threads back with book 2. I just need to get used again to the style after reading Jordan. So I read this three pages POV. On a ship with army recruits approaching a port. Just as I’m nearing the end of this short section I think: this part was surprisingly straightforward in the presentation, it may as well pass as traditional fantasy narrated in a traditional way. Nothing that seems to show Erikson’s fingerprint, which happens rarely. Then I read the very last, short line. And everything changes.

Instead of reading further, I have to go back and reread from the beginning these three pages. Suddenly they appear littered with hints. The lines of dialogue that appeared so straightforward and simple for once, all acquired a second meaning with much subtlety and different taste. Everything meant something else. It was simply awesome. The character introduced as new was revealed as one of the most well known character. Just that. Three pages that seemed so linear, and then the trick at the end that makes you reconsider everything and unveil the hidden layer. And this is simply to reintroduce a character.

House of Chains may not have the huge impact and scale of Memories of Ice, or the intensity of Deadhouse Gates, but it’s no lesser or weaker book. I actually believe it’s a much better distilled version of what the Malazan series is. It is condensed and effective and lean. It plays with tricks with much better execution and in a matter of few pages, using aptly all knowledge that the reader has built through the three previous books. Every page has something cool or a surprising twist. Dense in a very positive way.

After those three pages comes a section that revisits and refreshes plot threads coming from book 2 that were never brought to the foreground. In retrospect everything makes sense and shapes up. There’s a brief flashback that gave me chills and that was a much necessary complement to the part of the story in book 2 that was jumpstarted without enough premises. You read this scene and everything starts moving into place.

Loving the book.

Two quotes from his latest blog where he started to describe his approach to writing.

In a general sense, I write elliptically. By that I mean I open sections with some detail I want to resonate throughout the entire section, and through the course of writing that section you can imagine me tapping that bell again and again. Until with the final few lines, I ring it one last time – sometimes hard, sometimes soft, depending on the effect I want, or feel is warranted.

While the narrative infers something linear, as in the advancement of time and a sequence of events, in fact the narrative loops back on itself again and again. And each time it returns, the timbre of that resonance has changed, sometimes subtly, sometimes fundamentally.

It sounds like playing with rays of light and mirrors (reflections, diffractions), and it also made me think about Infinite Jest. In IJ the characters couldn’t be more different between each other, yet they are all reflections of each other. Both Erikson and Wallace use the writing as way to see reality and both use heavily this game of light and mirrors. What they write is layered and interconnected, it’s up to you to find out the links and make them resonate so that they can tell something unique and true.

The same happens in the way Erikson creates his characters. I’ve read on forums how some readers consider some characters as copies of each other. So, for example, Kruppe is essentially the same character of Iskaral Pust. At a superficial level this is true. Both characters have a funny way of speaking and relying plenty on wordplay (sometimes metalinguistic wordplay! my favorite kind). They are both quirky and both used as a humorous interlude. They both act mysteriously and following an undisclosed plan. Yet seeing them as equals means failing to recognize their purpose.

At a basic level these two characters are not specular, but opposite. This is the first thing I noticed when I started to read about Iskaral Pust and why I enjoyed the way they are related in their being opposite. Kruppe is a man who’s deliberately trying to appear clumsy and harmless. He is aware of himself and his quirks are mostly a deceit in order to make an impression. What Kruppe does in the first book is trying to not be noticed and be underestimated so that he can pull threads and manipulate things in the back. He plays his part deliberately and willingly. He’s sly and only dressing himself an idiot because that’s part of his play. It’s all sleight of hand: he is in control.

Iskaral Pust has a kind of similar explicit role because he also passes as an idiot who babbles on about useless stuff. He appears as nuts, completely fool, gone. But he is INDEED a fool. He thinks he is smart and he is outsmarting everyone else, but this conceit is a false one. Iskaral Pust thinks aloud without being aware that others can listen his most secret thoughts. He is blind toward his own condition and he is definitely: not in control. In fact he is manipulated directly by Shadowthrone and it’s very hard in the text to figure out when what he says “belongs” to himself or his master.

These characters ARE related. But they aren’t related because the writer isn’t good at characterization and “repeats” himself, but because the narrative is emergent FROM that relationship. It’s the relationship between the two characters that builds “meaning” in the text and helps layering it in a meaningful way. What’s written opens on a much broader sight.

See how all this takes back to Erikson’s quotes.

Erikson is genius.

When I read a book I don’t just pretend I’m reading about a good story or an interesting theme, but that there’s some creative and inspired use of language, and wordplay. Something that is pertinent to writing itself as an art and form of expression.

In the latest months I’ve moved from reading Erikson (and fantasy) to David Foster Wallace. They can’t be more far away in style and purpose, yet I seem to find more in common than differences. One thing I love about both is that the single WORDS they use have a weight that’s bigger than the space they take on the page. Words alone open worlds. What’s plainly denoted in the text is nowhere the breadth of what it suggest or implies. Of what’s emergent from the book and transcends it.

Here’s the simplest of examples I just quoted below:

“a sudden expostulation of amorous possibility”

Basically four relevant words that suggest much more, and yet that couldn’t be more precise and delimiting perfectly the meaning of the text.

SUDDEN – Something abrupt, unforeseen. Something that breaks whatever came before. Interruption. A suggestion of change. Change of course. Break point. Something new.

EXPOSTULATION – “Postulate”, comes from a latin word. It is used in geometry. “to assume or claim as true”. An axiom. A principle but, in particular, a starting point. Following “sudden”, it’s what the New Wave is based on. Something that is both true and undeniable and new.

But you aren’t unaware of context. The context is what happens in the mind of a bear. A bear doesn’t think logically and its thoughts aren’t articulated through language. So what it thinks is like an image that is projected on the mind. Ex-postulation. “Ex” stand for “out of”. Something coming out. Something that, “suddenly”, takes shape. That becomes real. A sudden axiom, a change in the bear’s mind, coming as an image, a sudden apparition. But “expostulation”, as a word, also directly suggest a demand. A claim. People who pretend their government responds to their demands. Here standing for a sudden request, something that suddenly exists, appears, is true and can’t be denied. Also something totalitarian, that doesn’t admit objections and that erases everything that was before.

OF – Of what? What is the object?

POSSIBILITY – The object isn’t what is sexual. It is not being amorous. The object is the entire realm of “possibility”. Whatever it suggests in your mind. Facts and potential. Wonder. Whatever is unspeakable, just suggested. Omitted because it’s all in potential, whatever it is. Just the state of being in potential.

AMOROUS – Amorous is used as an adjective, not as the object. In this case it simply gives quality to the “possibility”, and delimits it. It let’s the object of the thought open up to embrace all possibility, without restraint. Yet it delimits it to give it a quality and express what it is for. But it’s up to the reader imagine the “what”. While keeping it open to everything that keeps “amorous” as a quality.

So here’s why the language isn’t powerful for its objective meaning, for what is denotative. But for everything else it suggest, precisely and without limits, in the mind of the reader. It conveys an idea in four words that is precisely what it wants to express (no misinterpretation), yet open to a world of possibility.

Still the very first few pages. I’ll stop before PS Publishing has to sue me for showing too much of the book :)

Here’s you have an example of VERY unreliable narrator who at the same time expresses the typical narcissism of an artist for his art. I love Erikson’s original use of language, filled with creativity and love for words.

Only Erikson could write “a sudden expostulation of amorous possibility”. And in spite of this indulgence in the use of language I admire that everything that is written has still a meaning and it’s not just there for empty embellishment (Gene Wolfe for example is even more indulgent).

If you wonder what exactly IS the art of writing, if it comes so far from plausibility, here’s the distilled idea, perfectly summarized by our narrator who admits of being unreliable:

And here an example of half-serious remark that still stays in a parodic context (here not shown):

As I wrote on Twitter I got this sexy, awesomely crafted book (three illustration and at 181 pages almost twice the length of the three previous novellas), and proceed to reading with insanely high expectations since I believe the previous three novellas are above everything else Erikson wrote.

The book starts with elegant writing, in a tone that is somewhere between the famous Blade Runner’s ending monologue in reverse (meaning that here it starts the story) and the Greek poets that used to begin their works with formulaic flourishes where they invoked the muse to favor their art and inspire. All within the sub-text typical of Erikson of men against gods. He does not beg their help, but almost commands them to stay back, and witness.

Written as himself (Erikson) while disguised as one of the characters.

I’ve read that in this book Bauchelain and Korbal Broach barely appear, I’ve read that this book may disappoint Erikson’s fans. Ken writes: “a book that is all about fandom, author intent, artistic integrity, criticism, contemplative self-doubt and cannibalism.” I always love Erikson’s audacity and recklessness. I admire courage and ambition. I don’t get the novel to expect and pretend a certain story. I want to be brought to places. I just want to read something that gives feelings and thoughts. And something that is true deep down.

I was actually worried about the way Erikson would deal with this fourth novella because the relationship between the two necromancers and their manservant Emancipor Reese needed to be renovated to not fall into repetitiousness and predictability. Erikson was able to do this wonderfully in the third novella (The Healthy Dead) where the dissertations of Bauchelain on the nature of society were a masterpiece on their own. A great satire, incisive and funny. But where to go from there? It seems Erikson surprises once again telling a completely different story that takes place around the central characters instead of having them right on the scene. And Erikson here writes about themes that I want to know all about.

Great things await me, I’m sure.

Here’s the quote for you:

Even the gods must wait spellbound.

Feed then, or perish.

From the latest interview at Pat blog. Trite questions, but interesting answers. I still wish someone will make an interview with him discussing more directly what’s in the books, like this one with Sanderson.

The only thing that rankled me in some of the reviews was the expression of doubt regarding my ability to pull off this finale, to which I respond: for fuck sake, there’s been nine books so far, and each one has delivered the punch I intended (even if some readers objected to some of those punches), so where does this doubt come from? I’ll deliver. I always have and there’s no sign of stumbling this time around. Yeesh.

– After the massive commercial success of the Lord of the Rings films, do you look at the growing mainstream success of authors like George R. R. Martin and Neil Gaiman, following in the impressive footsteps of Terry Pratchett, and take comfort that genre fiction is starting to become more accepted as a whole by society? Do you think the perceived social stigma attached to it can ever be overturned so that authors such as yourself are compared on a level playing-field to those who write in other more widely “respected” genres? And, I suppose, do you actually care?

No, no, and sometimes. With each writer you have named, the critics invariably practise exceptionalism: these writers are not fine representatives of their genre; by virtue of their fineness, they have left the genre. By this alchemy the stigma remains. Will my stuff someday cross that threshold? What if it does? I will simply have been made … exceptional.

And about progress on the last book:

Hope to be done by the beginning of the summer. It’s coming along just fine. My son has read what I’ve done to date, and looks at me and says: “It’s all going down, isn’t it?” And no, he doesn’t mean that in any negative sense. But he’s right. It’s all coming down. It’s all coming down.

Also good to know that cooperation with Esslemont is once again strong.

Now if only the novella could reach my house instead of being in vacation around the world…