The Crippled God (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #10) in The Bridgeburners

Mar 09, 2014 Duffy Pratt rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, shared-world

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

This book and Dust of Dreams form a single book that Erikson cut in half out of publication logistics, so its unfair to review this one as a standalone book. The two books, taken together, work very well as a novel. And they work especially well as a counterpoint to Deadhouse Gates. That book dealt largely with the Chain of Dogs, and their trek, led by Coltaine across a terrible. This one also involves a trek across a desert, but here, the here the leader is Tavore, the d Warning: Spoilers ahead.

This book and Dust of Dreams form a single book that Erikson cut in half out of publication logistics, so its unfair to review this one as a standalone book. The two books, taken together, work very well as a novel. And they work especially well as a counterpoint to Deadhouse Gates. That book dealt largely with the Chain of Dogs, and their trek, led by Coltaine across a terrible. This one also involves a trek across a desert, but here, the here the leader is Tavore, the desert is even more impassible, the foes are worse, and the people following Tavore mostly don't know what their goal is. Contrast that to Deadhouse Gates, where the goal is to make it to the coastal city and thus survive. Here, it looks like the goal is to either die of thirst, or to die in a hopeless battle after being near dead of thirst and exhaustion, which no real hope of anything else.

Erikson makes this story work very well, and surprisingly, it even has a happy ending. A few of the happy resolutions were genuinely touching: Tools reuniting with Hetan, Icarium and Ubala becoming companions, Fiddler playing his fiddle, both for Whiskeyjack and then in Malaz City. But, in general, I think Erikson is better at tragedy and elegy than he is with restoration.

The strengths of the book are very strong. There are many characters that I came to care for deeply, probably too many to list. That in itself is an extraordinary achievement. The action scenes are fantastic. When he does deign to explain what's going on, the explanations are fascinating.

Now for a few of my lingering issues with the series. I have my doubts about whether his refusal to explain things. Let's take an example that I have been watching for since the Bonehunters. To save the world from the Jade asteroids, Paran cuts a deal with Hood. Hood asks for something in return and the narrator quite pointedly hides Hood's request from the reader. When did the content of the request get revealed? One theory is that Hood asked Paran to take him out of High House Death when the time came. That makes perfect sense, but Erikson never says so, nor does he ever talk about the deck having been remade after Toll the Hounds, at least not with any specificity. It also looks like Hood may have retaken his throne of the ice hold, and there is some talk of a new hold, so maybe Hood asked for his position to be switched from Death, to a new house of Ice. I think there's even less evidence for this, but again we don't know for sure. Or maybe, Hood as a Jaghut, had his own liking for pets, and asked Paran for a nice dead tabby that he would call Pufty. That's a bit of a stretch. But this is a point where Erikson had rubbed the fact of his hiding the information in the reader's face, so I was expecting that at some point there would be some sort of explicit, and pleasurable revelation on this. And Erikson gives nothing, and its up to the reader to decide for himself.

Maybe that's not so bad. But what about the plan itself. When was it formed, and how did the players have such incredible foresight. I have some general ideas about this, and I think I might develop them some more if I decided to read the series again (and that would be a third time for books 1-8, and a second for the last two). Here's one aspect that troubles me. At one point it looked like the mortals, especially Paran, Quick Ben, and the Bonehunters, were going to defy the wishes of the gods. By the end of the action, it seems like, with a very small handful of exceptions, every god is on the side of the mortals (Hood, D'rek, Shadowthrone, Cotillion, Mael, Crippled God, K'rull, Fener?) and only a handful of gods are opposing them. And most of them, like the Errant, seem to simply disappear. I think that the turning point may have come when Paran recognized the House of Chains as part of the deck, but I have no way of knowing for sure if this is where things turned.

And even so, when did other relationships change. Erikson never explains what Quick Ben is, and we are left making educated guesses. He also never explains why Shadowthrone at one point is trying to kill Quick Ben, but later it appears that Quick Ben was all along a part of this incredible master plan of Shadowthrone's. I'm not saying there is no explanation for this. But, I admit, on some things I'm lazy, and I would like it if the author would at least sometimes tell me what's going on. (BTW, special thanks to David Sven, whose summaries on the Malazan Fallen group read have helped me immensely to see connections that I otherwise would have missed.)

One example of this kind of rule bending happens with the idea of death, which is one of the most complicated ideas in the Malazan world. We have varying degrees of death in the book, from those who have gone to Hood, to those who go to Dragnipur, to undead folks like Shurq or Kettle, to the T'lann Imass. Then we add the notion of ascendancy, which seems to make some immortal. But the immortal can be killed, so they too can die. But the consequences of the death of an immortal seem to vary tremendously, and it seems to me impossible to figure out what sort of impact, say, the death of a god will have. We see several gods die, and sometimes its world shaking, and at others it seems to be barely noticed. I have no idea why, and for my taste, this gives Erikson too much license.

I think the above are quibbles (at least for me). Erikson writes with scope and power. The breadth of his landscape is mind-boggling. And yet, he sticks very closely to his characters. I've complained that he seems sometimes to break his rules, or that he obfuscates the rules to give himself liberty. But he does not have the same fault when it comes to character. As much as we would like for Tavore to explain herself, it simply is not in her to do it. His characters remain true, even where the action verges on the incomprehensible. That's probably best illustrated with Stormy and Gesler, but it goes down the line with Quick Ben, Kalam, Fiddler, Banaschar, Hellion, etc...

My chief complaint with this book in particular is that I thought the Forkrul Assail were much less interesting villains than the ones we had run across in earlier books. They are severely one dimensional, and their grand powers did not interest me all that much. I definitely thought them less interesting than, say, The Crippled God, Korbolo Dom, Mallick Rel, Pearl, Laseen, Hairlock, and just about every antagonist from the earlier books. By contrast, they seemed single-minded, overconfident, and a bit stupid. And since we never got the great convergence of antagonistic gods that I was expecting, I felt a little bit let down by the climax of the book. I thought it all worked out, and I loved the part where they recall Heboric to deal with the Otateral dragon. But I was expecting a conflagration that involved the likes of Spite, Envy, Errastas, Opponn, Trake, Togg, and a host of other gods fighting amongst themselves. Of course, that didn't happen, and its up to Erikson to write the book he wants. What he wrote was really good, and its astonishing that he could pull so many threads together as well as he did.

As for the Series as a whole: It's dumbfounding how good it is. What impresses me most is how, with a very long and complex overall arc, Erikson still managed to make each book stand up pretty much on its own. One might object that a person would be hopelessly lost if they just dove into, the Bonehunters. I suppose that's true. But I was hopelessly lost diving into Gardens of the Moon. Then I thought I had the hang of some things, until I started Deadhouse Gates, and got lost right away again with the appearance of Hood as a body of flies. And Erikson managed to lose me again and again, all the way to the end with the battle of the Shake and the fate of the Snake.

Re-reading helps. And I enjoyed my re-read of each of the first eight books more than I enjoyed the last two books. That leads me to suspect that if I re-read the last books, I would like them even more. Overall, this series is as good as any series I've read (including the Palliser series by Anthony Trollope). I will probably come back to it again. The best parts of it are as good as anything, and I have already seen that it improves on re-reading. And just as a side note: to my taste, the best parts of this series are Toll the Hounds, Memories of Ice, The Bonehunters, and Deadhouse Gates.
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Mar 25, 2011 The Crimson Fucker rated it it was amazing

BUAA IT'S OVER! I DONT WANT IT TO BE OVER!!!!!!!!! BOOKS LIKE THIS MAKE ME WANT TO CREATE A MEMORY ERRASER MACHINE THAT WILL ALLOW ME TO READ IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME!!!!!!!! ...more

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Mar 29, 2012 Bee rated it it was amazing

Shelves: recommended-to-me, military-fantasy, epic-fantasy, fantasy, favourite

After 11 years reading this series, I am done. And words cannot explain the exhilaration. Nothing in my life has ever touched the epic majesty of Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen. And after rereading the last 4 books just to recap the myriad side stories I have finally finished this most noble and far reaching of series. I am in awe. 10 out of 5 stars is too few. This series and this book in particular illustrates humanity and it's foibles more clearly than any philosophy class. And w ...more

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May 25, 2011 Naydene rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

WOW!!

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Apr 24, 2022 Jason rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fantasy, epics, world-of-malazan

This paper brick had been sitting on my reading pile with the bookmark at the halfway point, waiting.

It had been sitting there for, if I remember correctly, about a year. Half finished. Why?

It wasn't because it was boring, turning into what I call a "grudge read". I asked myself why won't you finish?

And when I did finish, I said, "That's why."

I didn't want to say goodbye to old friends I made during this hard travelled mosaic journey. I didn't want to see them die or grow old. But they did.
And ...more

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Jan 05, 2012 Geekess rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fantasy, strong-women, soldiers, philosophy, keeps-you-thinking, raw, to-review, dragons, literature, cant-put-down-good

This was one good read... 10 books long.
Too much to digest. I have to re-read (someday, somewhere later this year or the next) the entire series in order to write a proper review.

In short: I Loved it. Capital L. Erikson is one special writer. Everything else pales besides these 10 books. This last book... ah the feelz. Brutal. Beautiful. Katharsis.

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