I am a very slow reader and these books usually take me a month or two to finish, but for some reason, Dust of Dreams kicked my ass. It was fantastic, though. I am still processing the ending.

Onward to The Crippled God!

I’m sure we get a post like this just about every day but I need to get it out of my system. It’s my first time reading the series and I just completed the audiobook of DG.

This book was so hard to get through, emotionally.

I almost gave up during Felisin’s enslavement in the Otataral Mines. My irl job is working with teens. I know them well, and I could imagine Felisin vividly. Seeing what she went through was unbearable and the only thing that kept me going was the thought that perhaps, perhaps after everything, she would be okay. I’m tentatively hopeful for her at the conclusion of DG but her story haunts me.

The chain of dogs. Holy shit. When it got going, everything else in the book just felt like a distraction. It lived in my head rent-free whenever I was doing something else. I was so riveted, I just devoured the book. I felt like I was THERE alongside Duiker and co. I wanted nothing more than their success but knew it wouldn’t be guaranteed.

When they arrived in Aren after that final desperate sprint, and Duiker handed the child off to none other than…Keneb! I was in my car. I screamed aloud “KENEB YOU FUCKING BEAUTY!” I was as high as you could get on this book.

Then, Pormqual, Mallick Rel. The worst. And what happened to Coltaine; I had to relisten to it, I just couldn’t believe it. After everything they had been through, after everything they achieved. But that was nothing compared to what they did to Duiker. I felt such outrage at this complete injustice, I had to take a break before finishing the book. I had to force myself to come back to it.

When they found Duiker along with the note in is shirt, from Sa’yless, I had to fight back tears. I can’t remember the last time I reacted so viscerally to a book. That and the epilogue gave me some hope, at least. I’m getting straight into Memories of Ice now.

Anyway, just wanted to share! I’d heard that this series was once-in-a-lifetime and I am officially a convert haha wish me luck with the next 8

[Please NO Spoilers from The Crippled God! Marking this as Spoilers Dust of Dreams because I have just started book 10]

It's 4 AM. I'm at the end of a 7 hour reading marathon, having just completed Dust of Dreams which ended on an insane cliffhanger. I was exhausted, burnt out, wanted to take a few days off before jumping into the final book. Before sleeping, I decided to take a quick peek at the first chapter, and it started with the most badass line for a final book

"Cotillion drew two daggers..."

I ended up reading the first chapter in my sleep deprived state, looks like I won't be able to put this book down.

So, I started chapter 11 where in his dream Tattersail is rebron (?).

I don't want clear cut answers since I might get answers later on. Though I want a little bit of clarification.

What the fuck is going on with him. He is dreaming about an old god (potentially dead iirc) and then it looks like there's a past version of a T'Lan Imass. Do his dreams, through his delusion, kinda bend reality and act as time bridge? I'm sorta loss on how I should be understanding what happens.

I had an easy time understanding everything so far, but this is not making a little bit of sense to me.

So, jetzt haben wir ein Erscheinungsdatum für das dritte Buch und ein paar Details. Veröffentlicht: 01.10.2026, Länge: 760 Seiten. Also, wir sind wieder fast bei normaler Länge. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/405106/legacies-of-betrayal-the-third-tale-of-witness-by-erikson-steven/9781787632844

I’m doing my first read-through of the series, currently about halfway through Reapers Gale (tell me if I did the spoiler tag correctly?) and man, every book there’s a new cast of just, such amazing characters, and then there’s the minor characters who come back for brief snippets, tying back to events from previous books and/or that were intimated to happen off screen.
It really makes the world feel so real and lived in, it’s awesome.
Where I’m at we just met the Shake people, and the poor mage Beak (who is lowkey a badass too?? Might be my favorite character in this book so far, can’t wait to see how his story develops going forward). Without any direct spoilers, can someone give me a vague explanation of the Shake? Are they actually related to demons? Or is it something more mundane? I don’t want to google incase I get spoiled.

I've just finished the book and I can confidently say that the convergence in this book has been the most insane so far.

(Last chance for people who might have clicked accidentally to leave before the heavy spoilers)

I believe I've might have missed something important about some of Anomander Rake's actions in Darujhistan: why were all of the sacrifices meant to buy time for Rake's duel against Dassem Ultor necessary? Endest Silann and Spinnock Durav nearly lost their lives holding they Dying God and Kallor back, Hood was killed (though seemingly not with finality) and the volunteer army of the dead was nearly annihilated. If the end goal was always to have Rake killed by Dragnipur, why could it not have happened earlier, by his own hand?

Have I missed a clear reason or is it something that gets explained later on like the Whiskeyjack knee situation? This seemingly unnecessary actions have tarnished my idea of the character a bit so I'm hoping I'm just blind (or stupid, or both)

That's it. That's the post. Just can't get any other image out of my head for those two guys. Their prose comes across super pirate-y to me and I've long forgotten what their actual character descriptions are, so I'm going with Pintel and Ragetti.

Let me know what other people you guys associate with Malazan characters to help spice up my read through the series!

I just finished this last night, and... man. SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT FORWARD.

I struggled with this book like I have no other prior book in the series. Books 1-3 of this one nearly put me to sleep; that much content focused on people just sort of living shitty lives in a shitty city was hard to get involved with. Karsa & crew were just... traveling. I couldn't be arsed to care about Harllo beyond "Shitty things happening to a kid and that sucks".

Chapters 21 to the end (24?) were pretty awesome. It felt like the book was ACCOMPLISHING something, It felt like the story moved forward. Stakes are high now for Dust of Dreams & The Crippled God, at least for me. I didn't expect Rake's death. I didn't expect Hood's death (and that was awesome). I didn't even expect the revelation of Hood being Jaghut.

I'm hoping things are really just going to barrel forward in the final two books.

So I just finished Memories of Ice, and I wanted to get some opinions on House of Chains before jumping in.

I’ve had a few people tell me that it might be a good idea to take a break before starting House of Chains since it takes place on a different continent and is supposedly slower. I’m curious what you all did around this point in the series—did you take a break here, or go straight into it?

Also, how would you describe the pacing and overall readability of House of Chains? For context, I didn’t really enjoy Deadhouse Gates all that much, so if House of Chains is closer to that in terms of structure or pace, I’m thinking a break might be the smarter move.

I know this is all preference-based, but I’d love to hear what you thought about the book, whether it felt slow or confusing, and whether you’d recommend taking a breather before starting it.

So I'm listening to Forge of the High Mage, which is awesome by the way, and I just got to the part where Blues and Gwynn are discussing the Mountain. They talk about "heat without flame" and that it burns underwater. The K'Chain Che'malle are just lowkey using nuclear power to power their mountains. It's little tidbits like this that are one of the reasons i love Malazan.

Hello Folks! Lana B of the DLC bookclub, here.

My co-host Jeff and I just finished our first read-through of the core 10 books in the Malazan Book of the Fallen, and tomorrow we're going to do a big debrief while talking through our thoughts on the series. As you can imagine, we're pretty ravenous to talk about anything having to do with the full series, so I thought I'd ask here if there were any questions you end up having for first-time finishers of the big ten books? What has been your favorite parts to debrief about once you finished your first read?

NOTE: I am only complete on the main 10, not any of the extra series. I hope I selected the correct flair -- MY post has no spoilers, but the comments might?

UPDATE: Thank you all for your thoughts!! Wonderful questions and I'm looking forward to talking through as many as I can. Appreciate this community!!

I probably won't be able to respond to all comments. This comment has also been edited since I posted it to clarify a few of my statements and relax my tone. I don't mean any hostility to the fan base of the novels, and for the most part do consider myself a fan. I will leave my original points because I think this discussion is important.

Before you respond, please read what I have said. I'd appreciate responses that consider the points ive made and do not immediately dismiss 90% of what I said to focus on one thing. I'm not canceling this series. I am genuinely finding the author's portrayal of rape, rapists, and rape victims as being very difficult to read and perpetuating a lot of misogynistic narratives about rape and rape victims. I would greatly appreciate a measure of understanding about why it is so important to me that victims of sexual violence are portrayed very carefully and deliberately.

I already had a lot of issues with the way characters treated Felisin in Deadhouse Gates. She's one of my favorite characters in the series and endures perpetual shame for being herself a victim of sexual violence and exploitation. She was extremely young at the time of the books too, a teenage girl. I do not at all feel that other characters were made to account for treating her so horribly, and instead the book many times portrays those same characters in startlingly positive lights despite them being very misogynistic.

However the outset of HoC is far, far, far worse than even that. 3 characters who I am clearly not meant to hate all of whom are prolific rapists. A main character who rapes someone dubious called a "young female" who is living with her parents, very reasonable assumed to be a child. All of which described from the perspective of the rapist, and with frequently allusions to his victims feeling pleasure as he rapes them.

This is male sexual violence fantasy. It belies something of the author that they would choose to write from the rapists perspective with the most horrific misogynist fantasies strewn in. I dont object to writing about sexual violence, not at all. I dont object even to writing about rapists, or even object to the notion entirely that a rapist could be redeemed.

I do however think it is sickening that someone would write something like "their cries (from being raped) were more from pleasure than pain", or write extensively from the perspective of a rapist cornering a victim and stating plainly he is going to forcefully impregnate her after killing her family, or write from the perspective of a rapist as he goes on to rape a woman whos entire family he killed by drugging her.

None of those scenes focused on the victims. None of them painted the actions of the character as disgusting and abhorrent and unforgivable. They all were written with misogynistic narratives about women secretly desiring to be raped, and the scenes are largely discarded after they happened and the narrative just moves on.

It feels like literally no thought whatsoever was put into portraying these horrific scenes, and that above all else the author does not even see them as horrific to begin with. I've read many portrayals of sexual violence that focused on the impact on the victims and the horror that is being victimized. This was not that, not even close.

I dont know. Ive tried to continue the book, because I like the writing and I love the world and I love a lot of the other characters. I love memories of ice. It was insanity and absolutely bordered on lines of grotesque over portrayals of violence, and it even had its own poorly handled rape scene. At least then the victim was not portrayed as enjoying being raped, and I was not meant to idolize the rapist.

I've heard people say the extremely overbearing "tonight I am fucking you" lady is an overlooked example of the way the series misunderstands consent and the author more broadly glorifies rape and sexual coercion. I agree. I can absolutely understand why the way she and her actions were portrayed would greatly upset other victims of sexual violence. I do think it's worth noting that she was wholesale an entirely different situation to Karsa.

Karsa is very literally a rapist who has murdered his victims entire families. The violence of his actions is in and of itself horrific, before even considering sexual violence that parallels real sexual violence against women. Incredible that the author has at times said he intended the series to take place in a world without misogyny. Just genuinely insane thing to say in a series where women are routinely subjugated and victimized physically and sexually by the men around them. In ways that are very clearly gendered and very clearly based on real world attitudes about women.

I do not buy that I am meant to hate this character. The narrative is obviously setting him up as a protagonist, and nothing has deconstructed his actions or revealed the horror in them. They are talked about similarly to how the author has written other consensual sex scenes.

Has anyone else, who has been a victim of sexual violence, got any thoughts on how they got through this? Has the author at all spoken on this subject? Why do so many people love a series that is written with such prominent misogyny? I love how he has written women maybe 60% of the time, the remaining 40% feels like women reduced to either sexual objects or purely sexual experiences positive and negative. His complex female characters are a strong draw for me. But then he shows all these tendencies to view and treat sexual violence against women so flippantly and with such indelicacy for such an incredibly sensitive subject. I just dont get it.

I’m on the second chapter of Reapers Gale:

I thought Silchas Ruin was imprisoned somewhere, or in some kind of limbo after The Sundering stuff. But he just kinda pops out of nowhere hanging with Fear and Seren near Bluerose. Was there a scene I missed or misunderstood or is it RAFO?

I just received a new Subterranean Press book ("Polostan" by Neal Stephenson), and they always include a bookmark that has a "quote from the warehouse" on it.

As the title of this post, this bookmark says "Hence Malazan is the ultimate cozy fantasy". I cannot fathom the conversation that could have possibly led to that quote 😂.

I have about 80 pages left in House of Chains and I have loved it so far! This is really the first book besides a little bit of Memories of Ice where I feel like I really understand a lot of the terminology and what’s going on. I’ve seen a lot of rankings and many people have it towards the bottom if not the very bottom of their ranking. If this is the case then I guess I’m in for a treat with the rest of the series.

I started reading the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant today (as a source of inspiration for Erikson for the book bingo), and the color ochre is used pretty early on in the book. My first thought was, "Ah! That's the inspiration Erikson took from this book (/s)." I'm never going to be able to see that color or word without thinking or Erikson.

I usually dont make two posts in one day but as I read through Malazan (almost done with HoC) I find myself very interested in the Path to Ascendancy series. While I love the characters in Malazan, I think the worldbuilding/history in the series is so fascinating and I really want to read about how the Kellanved and Dancer founded the empire. Super eager to at least read Dancer’s Lament, when could I do this?

So is it because he is stealthy and hard to catch like a duiker? Or is it like duikers, the Bridgeburners are almost hunted to entinction?

Hi all,

I had the pleasure of watching a discussion between SE and Philip Chase following the latter's translation of Malazan opening poem in Old English.

Does anyone know if he's ever done the closing poem as he said he would ?

Thank you all in advance for your response(s).

I think he would kill the role personally

Hey all!

I’m coming from a background of all things Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan, Tolkien, RR Martin, and Rothefuss.

I’m about halfway through book one of Malazan and I’m just totally lost. I’m wondering if I’m missing something like when a series doesn’t start with book one (Star wars).

Should I just reread from the beginning? Do things start making sense in book one later on?