Canada to the rescue (or The Stack of Doom)

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.



First details about Dust of Dreams

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.

Bauchelain and Korbal Broach – September in Trade Paperback

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 – Out in Mass Market (UK)

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.

Steven Erikson VS Charles Dickens

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!’

Books at my door – April

Weird order this one, I’d say.

Toll the Hounds – Steven Erikson – 1270 pages
A month ago I mail Transworld to inform them there was a mistake about the format on the page of the mass market (paperback in UK) edition of the book. I got no reply. Then the book is available on amazon.co.uk, I make my order, and a day later I read on the forums that they arbitrarily switched (AGAIN) the format to a larger one. DAMMIT! Now I have seven books in one format and one in another. Hardcovers are out of print and there isn’t one way to get this series complete in one format. They already changed the graphic of the mass market (and I got all books in the new version to have something even) now they change the damned format. There’s also absolutely no change in the way the book is set up. One could assume that they embiggen it because this is a huge book (392k words) but they just upscaled the previous format. Margins are bigger and text is bigger, the format is exactly the same, just upscaled. The decision to use a new format may also be related to the fact that when they published the hardcover they didn’t publish a trade paperback as always. So now they publish something somewhere in the middle.

It’s interesting to notice that all these three books are in the same format, also using a similar soft cover. The edition is definitely better done than classic mass market. Better paper, better cover, better binding. It looks much more solid. They are also selling it at just one pound higher, so I doubt it’s more convenient for them. But the text now is slightly too big and they could have definitely used better the space available and cut some pages.

Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson – 920 pages
Looks like a twin to Toll the Hounds, but here they used the space available. The text is tiny and fills the page (415k words in 900 pages). I decided to buy this version because I have already Quicksilver in the same style. This isn’t fantasy but it’s still epic in its own way. It also works as a “prequel” to the Baroque cycle, so I decided that I’d better start here. This book is also one of the most praised of Stephenson, and along with the full Baroque cycle will likely remain his most ambitious effort. I doubt Stephenson has equals on his field. He’s just totally insane and I crave for insane things and excessively ambitious works.

On the back cover there’s some praise talk that is quite bold:
“Mixes history and fiction in the way that Don DeLillo did in Underworld. Stephenson’s book is more successful than DeLillo’s, and much funnier.”

He is also known for having a beautiful, intelligent prose. I’ll quote the beginning of one of the first chapter as an example, even if I don’t know how representative it is, but quite a fancy introduction.

Let’s set the existence-of-God issue aside for a later volume, and just stipulate that in some way, self-replicating
organisms came into existence on this planet and immediately began trying to get rid of each
other, either by spamming their environments with rough copies of themselves, or by more direct means
which hardly need to be belabored. Most of them failed, and their genetic legacy was erased from the
universe forever, but a few found some way to survive and to propagate. After about three billion years
of this sometimes zany, frequently tedious fugue of carnality and carnage, Godfrey Waterhouse IV was
born, in Murdo, South Dakota, to Blanche, the wife of a Congregational preacher named Bunyan
Waterhouse. Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous
badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line
of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo–which, given the
number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of
all time. Everyone and everything that wasn’t a stupendous badass was dead.

David Copperfield – Charles Dickens – 970 pages
This should be Dickens real pageturner, so I bought it. I’m still about 170 pages into Bleak House and there are parts I like and parts that I have to struggle through. Some characters and some of the writing is pure genius. Something unparalleled still today. But I also got the impression that I understood most of the essence of the book and so it gets really redundant at times and the language is rather hard and requires to be untangled in a way that makes reading it not exactly an easy and fun task. With phrases nestled one into the other, that you start and don’t know where they end, like complex mathematical expressions. So I struggle and I go forward, knowing that if I stop I’ll never try again (as I have now both Copperfield and Great Expectations that are easier reads, without counting the multitude of other books in the reading pile). The book is still splendidly convoluted and masterly organized. It’s not Erikson but there’s plenty of foreshadowing even here and it’s interesting to notice that all descriptions aren’t just descriptions but metaphors of what is to come. It’s fascinating.


In the meantime I read, as I said, Bleak House (170 pages of 1000), A Game of Thrones (170 pages of 800), The Colour in the Steel (70 pages from the end) and Viriconium, but just 40-50 pages of the first novel in the book. While House of Chains (Erikson) and Reality Dysfunction (Hamilton) are sooooo tempting.

Speaking of Hamilton. I updated/recounted the wordcount of a bunch of epics (now with Hamilton and Stephenson). Hamilton’s third in the trilogy (The Naked God) is INSANE. 470k, one of the biggest books published in mass market. But I don’t want that, I want the hardcover. It’s miraculously still available. It’s huge, it has a beautiful cover. I crave it. Don’t think about buying it because there are very few copies left. And it has to be mine. My preeeecious.

George R. R. Martin and Steven Erikson

(elaboration of a forum post)

Erikson has definitely an inhuman approach.

I’m reading Martin right now for the first time and I can assure you that the most evident difference is how he puts there the characters first, and much later the plot. In the first chapter with Bran he sets up a handy situation to present one by one all his family. Plot points and history are introduced through well placed infodumps, some of them are repeated/redundant every chapter with some more elements added so that the reader isn’t overwhelmed. In any case, even if you miss something, all the focus is on a few characters, living their life relatively unaware. Readers can connect to that, as the tricks are quite common: little boy gets puppy, little girl gets pretty horse, Sansa and Arya with sisterly rivalry and contrasting personality, adding unmotivated cruelty to move feelings. The first and foremost concern of Martin is to know where the reader stands and win him over.

Erikson gets to the plot first, characters eventually come later. Because he isn’t writing an introduction for you. You start with Bridgeburners, but you get to know them better as characters only in book 2 and 3. Martin, writing Erikson’s story, would have started presenting the Bridgeburners one by one, the plot would have come much later, with time. Instead of showing the siege of Pale from Tattersail POV, he probably would have stayed in the trenches with the Bridgeburners and use them to slowly explore the plots from their limited POV. The many of the POVs at the beginning of Martin’s book are “kids” because kids offer a simplified, unaware vision that works well as an introduction point for the reader.

What I mean is that it’s not the number of pages the problem. In fact this story written from a different perspective would take MORE pages, not less. I also think that Erikson’s way isn’t inferior to Martin’s. There isn’t one better than the other, they are just antithetic, aiming for a different result. To appreciate for their difference.

Martin will ALWAYS reach a larger public because his writing is much more approachable, making easier to connect with story and characters. Erikson, deliberately, writes in a different way and doesn’t care to win the reader over. He doesn’t care to make sympathetic characters that readers find easy to connect to. Paran and Felisin may be mistaken for that, but it’s pretty obvious how their paths make them completely alien, instead of familiar.

You can love or hate this, but you can’t mistake it for a lack of skill. Erikson isn’t trying, is non-conformist. His focus is elsewhere and works HARD to avoid making familiar, sympathetic characters. He writes to upset, disappoint and put the reader off balance. He dreads to fall in some common place or typical story. So, when he does something vaguely familiar, twists it so that it is deformed. That’s how Erikson works. He writes in spite of common feelings and writing trappings. He breaks all the rules deliberately and with deep understanding.

Many here enjoy Erikson’s plots, but can’t stand his attitude. So in the longer term they are disappointed, especially when the plot isn’t the absolute focus with its pretty fireworks and all. I may be an exception but I like Erikson for attitude first, and plot and fireworks later. I can’t predict where he goes and I’m not groaning because I see him trying hard to win my sympathy (like I do often with Martin): because he’s not a fraud. I think that the aspect I admire the most in Erikson’s writing is the absolute sincerity. I think he writes for himself more than every other writer I’ve read up to this point. So I share his intent, and follow him silently :)

Martin writes for you, and writes the story the best way to please you. The audience is the protagonist and ultimate focus. Erikson writes for himself, sincerely and without hypocrisy or desires of popularity. Without compromises. He’ll never try to do something to please a reader because that would be betraying what he is and what he does.

Some evidence of this is in the way they work. Some writers write for money or popularity. They are quite easy to recognize because after they get enough money or become popular, they lose their motivation. Martin has some of this. He struggles with the writing, doesn’t find it an easy or pleasant task. He sweats on the books. On his blog he says often that he enjoys “having written” much more than writing. This is symptom of the fact that his true moving motivation comes after, my guess is that he may enjoy more the popularity and satisfaction that comes after the book. This reflects directly in his writing style. He writes to please first and foremost and this is obvious reading his books and I’ve explained above.

I think I read in a interview that the longest vacation Erikson took between the books was ten days. He doesn’t stop writing and keeps an aggressive schedule, writing huge books almost every year. This also is reflected in his writing style. He writes in spite of the audience and I think that the real risk is that he would take his readers with so much antipathy to start doing everything possible to kick them away. I have the impression that he’s scared to meet his readers and find out they are a bunch of idiots. If he writes it is because he finds the motivation within himself only, and has demonstrated that he does absolutely nothing to meet the reader’s desires. If you follow him it is not because he dragged you forcefully down his path, but because you agreed to his work in an uncompromising way. Saying that the books and plots needed to be edited and cut is like saying that his work should be subject to manipulation in order to meet better validation. I don’t think that Erikson refuses this because of some “noble integrity”, but because that would mean lying to himself and obtain an attention he doesn’t desire.

His flaw isn’t in his skill, his flaw is being a niche writer who is exposed to a larger public than the one he writes for.

Cover and prologue from Dust of Dreams

The events that accompany the release of one of Erikson’s books are the release of the prologue followed by the cover art, then the hunt for the first comments and reviews. The book itself should be shipping around the beginning of September if delays don’t happen.

Today is the day of the first two events, since the mass market release of the previous book (Toll the Hounds) is already being shipped to selected few.

Here’s the prologue and the cover.

Yet, I no longer regret. For this is as it should be. After all, war knows no other language. In war we invite our own destruction. In war we punish our children with a broken legacy of blood.
He understood now. The gods of war and what they meant, what their very existence signified. And as he stared upon those jade suns searing ever closer, he was overwhelmed by the futility hiding behind all this arrogance, this mindless conceit.
See us wave our banners of hate.
See where it gets us.
A final war had begun. Facing an enemy against whom no defense was possible. Neither words nor deeds could fool this clear-eyed arbiter. Immune to lies, indifferent to excuses and vapid discourses on necessity, on the weighing of two evils and the facile righteousness of choosing the lesser one – and yes, these were the arguments he was hearing, empty as the ether they traveled.

As always, this was followed by my usual rant about the cover (bring me Komarck or Swanland, this “guy on a horse with both guy and horse smiling at the camera under sunset” is as generic and unsubstantial as it could be).

But then another event promptly reminded me that things could be worse. MUCH worse:
– Jordan’s last book to be completed by Brandon Sanderson won’t be just split in two like all bad omens used to tell us, but in THREE. And the cover couldn’t be more hideous.

EDIT: Beside the diplomacy, Sanderson doesn’t sound too happy either.

Erikson’s ninth book almost finished

The last publication date I had read about Dust of Dreams was the beginning of September.

Calculating things and comparing dates to previous occasions it was about the time we received the prologue for the book, followed by its cover.

Latest news are slightly different, but still quite good: Erikson is later then usual finishing this book. The reason seems partly about some “massive battle scenes” that conclude the book and that are taking more time than usual. The book is still scheduled for the same date but it may get delayed (still within the year almost for sure).

Hetan on Malazan forums was more precise and said that currently Erikson is working on the last two chapters of the book (by Erikson’s standard about 90 pages on a total of 900). We’re close, and the book requiring more work is a good thing, even if “massive battle scenes” don’t work as a solid argument for me. I prefer strong, meaningful plot with the right revelations and things falling smoothly in their right place. Diversions! Deceits! Reversals! Upheavals! The exhibition of cool things is nice, but a coat of shiny paint over what’s meaningful.

I already commented that I find him less incisive when he tries too much to impress. I expect from Erikson so much more than pretty fireworks.

I want sleight of hand.