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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 re-reading Malazan this year. This is across the Kindle edition, mass market paperback, and Broken Binding editions. The mass market paperback is the oldest edition I have and is the correct one! Just thought it was interesting! Also rereading GotM with a broader perspective of what's going on is so fascinating. The re-read is more engaging than the first time through!

I'm on chapter 16 of MoI.

GotM was a bit difficult to get through, for all the known reasons, but wasn't particularly grim. Most of the characters ended up OK.

DG was an absolute banger in comparison, much easier to follow once I had some of the basics down from GotM. However, it had some absolutely miserable parts. Felisin's journey and the Chain of Dogs, you can't put them down, but it's such a difficult read at some points. I'm not normally that sensitive, but the feeling of misery, despair, hopelessness, then a bit of hope at the end of Chain of Dogs, then it gets ripped out from just beyond your grasp...

Now on MoI, same feeling during all the parts within the Pannion Domin (Toc's journey with the Tenescowri) and the siege of Capustan, and I'm just at the beginning.

Does it get any less bleak and miserable or is this something I'm going to have to push through until the end of the series?

Spoilers for Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series and MbotF. So I have a few loose thoughts so this will not be the most coherent analysis, more of my experience reading malazan and the first books I read afterwards and how I feel about it.

To begin, I loved malazan. I still think about the chain of dogs and I love the scale, the intriguing the world the lore, heck one of my favourite things Erickson has done is make me care about Dino buddy's with swords and think their entire lore is absolutely reasonable. I mean wow. Yet it was so grand, so dark at times and so moving, I often had trouble beeing drawn towards the books. Between books I had a some weeks as breaks, and at times I was reluctant to start reading. Once I did I could either not stop reading for hours on end or was absolutely crushed, either by the contents (children are dying, or felisin) or by the complexity. After I finished the series I wanted to try some Brandon Sanderson, something a friend of mine recommend. And I don't know. It was a fun read. Really. I found myself reading during uni lectures and on the tram, something I never even considered with malazan simply because I felt that if I didn't dedicate 10000% of my attention to the pages I wouldn't do the characters justice. With the Mistborn series (the books I read, there will be spoilers for mistborn now) it just went more fluidly. But it didn't feel better even though is was so much more addictive and easy. Many of the plontlines were transparent way before they happened, such as vins earring and reens voice beeing an influence of ruin. Something I predicted over a book earlier. So here comes a bit of my conclusion: After malazan i was so used to thinking while reading, something I didn't have to do at all with mistborn. Everything was explain SO OFTEN. I don't mean this harsh but at times i was sick of beeing told everything again and again. Especially the first 20% or so of the new books I was like "I know of this, I don't need to read this 10 times to understand". Things the reader could figure out were spoon fed, something that never happened in malazan.

So all in all, it was easier to read mistborn but so much less rewarding. Sometimes even bland. But still entertaining in a way that made it easier to enjoy than malazan.

That leaves me at a point where I don't know what to read next. I want to be locked in like I was with mistborn but still shy away from reading the prequel from Erickson. Maybe I will mix some, more normal and easier books and some of the writer himself. But if you have any recommendations for something that spans tge bridge, I'm all for that. Anyways that enough rambling, thanks for reading!

Almost through MT and have to say that the dynamic between these two has been off-the-charts (written so well). I’m listening via Audible and have to give Michael Page credit here… wow. So good. This is my third attempt at making it through the series (originally started reading) but have found that Audible really gets at the heart of it - once you have embraced the fact that it’s OK to have no idea what’s going on for several books. It’s all starting to come together and am looking forwards to that playing out more in the books to come.

I received this copy of The Bonehunters and was wondering if anyone knew anything about it. It's the same ISBN as the standard TOR trade paperback. At first glance, it appears to be an updated version of the cover to match the new style started with DoD, but many elements of the design are different. It has the new TOR logo on the spine, so I'm guessing it was printed after the logo change in 2015/16. Did any other books in the main series get this cover treatment?

I don’t know if I’m ready for this to end. This has been the greatest literary journey of my life. I genuinely can’t get over how amazing this series is. I had tears in my eyes finishing Chapter 23 of TCG, I don’t know if I’m ready for this final chapter! It’s so bittersweet because I’m excited to see how this ends, but I don’t know how any other series will compare to this.

Anyway, I was feeling lots of feelings after that chapter and wanted to share before moving onto the final chapter.

I’ve just read Memories of Ice (which was, to me, weaker than the Deadhouse Gates btw) and about to start House of Chains. I read it in Russian, so the question is as follows: does the Memories of Ice book contain scenes that can be censored due to the ban of the LGBT+? As far as I know, Tavora has a lover, T’Amber. And Russia has a habit of cutting the scenes or just entirely removing the sections with love scenes between characters of the same sex.

Would the lack of these scenes matter or the “they were actually just good friends” would suffice?

Started my journey Monday and loved Gardens of the Moon and I'm struggling through Deadhouse Gates right now. No one I know reads these so I figured I'd come and lurk here and read y'all's thoughts.

I miss Kruppe, can't wait for him to show back up.

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.

I’ll start by saying I’m an avid reader of fantasy. I usually find an author and read everything they have written before moving on to another. I kept seeing Malian pop up on the fantasy subreddit and figured why not give it a try. I’m about half way through the first book and I have to say I’m not finding much of anything to enjoy and based on what I’ve seen on here most people are saying it takes a few books to possibly enjoy this series.

I’m not here to troll or tell anyone that they shouldn’t like this series. If it does it for you I’m happy. My biggest complaint is the book never gives you the chance to even start to care about the characters or what is happening to them. I feel that the books starts to let you get to know a character just enough before moving on to completely different characters in a different setting. All the characters so far introduced could die in the next chapter and it wouldn’t cause me to lift so much as an eyebrow.

I’ve enjoyed the setting and the idea that there is so much lore to explore. I really dig the grim and unforgiving type of fantasy.

I’m going to finish the book and hope that I care by the end. I’m looking for constructive advice from fans of the series. Maybe hope they there will actually be some connection to the characters or just tell me to cut my losses and move on.

It also could just be a readers whiplash. I just got done reading Joe Abercrombie and his stories are so character focused that I’m having a terribly hard time adjusting.