Books: The Malazan Book of the Fallen series
Entry posted by Clephas
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The Malazan Book of the Fallen is perhaps one of the most complex series I've ever read... and that is saying a lot. It is high fantasy in the sense that it is based in a fantasy world that is unbelievably complex (it makes Game of Thrones look simple at times) and it has the combined moral ambiguity and dark humor of Glen Cook's Black Company series as well.
However, where Steven Erikson shines the most is in his world-building... and in his character-creation. This is perfectly natural, as he is an anthropologist, and it tends to show in the way he portrays societies, nations, cultures, and people. There is no 'good' or 'evil' in this series, in the classic black and white sense that most high fantasy writers seem to prefer. While many characters are cruel, brutal, or tyrannical, he quite simply doesn't make flat characters that only exist to fulfill a specific role in the series.
As an example... Cotillion, the God who is the Patron of Assassins (also known as the Rope), is perhaps one of the most ambiguous characters in the series. Many of the gods in this universe are petty, obsessive, cruel, or otherwise 'trashy' individuals despite their worshipers views of them, but Cotillion, despite being the patron of one of the most socially 'evil' professions in existence, is an individual who is as capable of compassion and giving unexpected gifts as any of the supposedly 'good' gods. Considering that he starts the series as an antagonist, this development of his character is perhaps one of the more obvious elements of deep character development I observed in the series.
Erikson, throughout the series, uses various techniques to develop various characters. My single favorite character in the series, Anomander Rake, never has any first-person time. This is despite the fact that he is perhaps one of the most influential beings in the entire universe in which they are based. The opinions of others and reading about his interactions with the various characters are your sole points of reference on him... but he is subtly built up to be one of the most amazing representations of virtue - hidden behind a darker mien - that you see in the entire series.
This is a man who has spent over three hundred thousand years doing his level best to keep his followers from committing collective suicide as a result of their racial despair at the abandonment of Mother Dark, the goddess that was once their patron. He leads them by example, rather than by command. He never asks more of them than they are willing to give, and when one of them finds joy, he is always the first to give them his blessings, even if it costs him their services in the most vital of times. In many ways, he is the very representative of divine compassion in the series (as he is technically an Ascendant and is worshiped by many of the race he was born from), as opposed to the odd representation of human compassion and folly that is the Paran family. In many ways, his departure from the stage is the defining moment for us, the readers... but his most defining moment came long before that, when he made the decisions that led up to that point.
Another oddly ambiguous but admirable character is the God of Death, Hood. Hood is... perhaps the most ironic character in the series, by far. Originally, he was the King of the Jaghut, a race that abandoned society and racial unity because of how pointless they came to see it. Being the King of such a race would have been an ironic oxymoron in and of itself, but the fact that he became the God of Death by first declaring war on the concept, leading an army against it, only to die and drag an impossible victory from the ashes of defeat, creating the afterlife as it is known during the series. He is frequently indifferent, cruel, and/or petty in his treatment of others... but some of this is because he himself has been dead for hundreds of thousands of years and is more or less stuck carrying out a role that is almost anathema to his original reason for 'living'.
In the series, there are degrees of racial and societal foolishness that dwarf what we have experienced... for example, the T'lan Imass. Once a race of human forerunners (intelligent tool and weapon users), when they discovered the nature of the Jaghut Tyrants that had enslaved them at times, they made themselves undead as a race for the sole purpose of committing genocide upon the Jaghut, most of whom just wanted to be left alone... thus ending the Imass as a race and condemning themselves to an endless existence as what amounts to dust-aspected revenants with weapons of stone.
Another example are the Tiste Liosan, who took their racial father's sense of justice and twisted into a dogmatic religious belief in the fundamental justice of themselves as a people, regardless of their actual actions.
Erikson's world is full of dichtonomy, corruption of ideals, hidden compassion, hidden glory, and dirt-covered heroism. At times, men and women of the worst sort will willingly give of themselves and at others, seeming pillars of virtue will commit horrifying sims or fall completely out of grace.
In other words, the Malazan Book of the Fallen is a series that rejects absolutes. That is perhaps what makes it so much fun to read, as it is for the most part told through the eyes of various soldiers, many of whom are neither admirable nor good. The Bridgeburners, who are a presence in just about every book in the series, define the series' human heart, in many ways balancing out the more... changeable beings that float around them. At times, I even felt tempted to interpret them as the voice of 'modern man' in a world of ancients, though that is probably not entirely correct.
In any case, this is a series that is generally fun to read and provides a lot of food for thought.
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