The Crippled God by Steven Erikson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
It's been almost eight years since I first picked up Gardens of the Moon and began my journey with the Malazan Book of the Fallen.
This series has demonstrated to me that it is one of the most dense and complex narratives that perhaps will ever be written in this genre. The Crippled God follows in the general form of the predecessor books. The story is dense, with multiple storylines weaving back and forth. Erikson demonstrates once again his proficiency for writing a war epic and I found myself sobbing at the latter half of the book as the final stories of heroes and brothers and sisters all came together.
This book and this series stand as a testament to such an incredible narrative concept. Yes, the writing at times was long and verbose and the internal monologue of characters extends for pages at times, but the grand story of what is told over the course of ~10,000 pages is truly epic in all sense of the word. The world, the story, the events that occur here are grand beyond scale, while at the same time never losing sight of the personal stories of the soldiers and their comrades standing next to them in the trenches.
It's remarkable to sort of look back both on the series and where I am as a person. It's a chapter that is closed in many ways, finally finishing this series. I don't know if I'll ever go back for a second read, but the writing in this book has influenced me creatively perhaps in more ways than anything else I have ever read. These books have become tent-poles for my concepts on fantasy in much the same way that the Lord of the Rings has for so many others. The world, the races, the gods, the magic are all diverse and creative and it is bittersweet to close this final book out.
View all my reviews
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
It's been almost eight years since I first picked up Gardens of the Moon and began my journey with the Malazan Book of the Fallen.
This series has demonstrated to me that it is one of the most dense and complex narratives that perhaps will ever be written in this genre. The Crippled God follows in the general form of the predecessor books. The story is dense, with multiple storylines weaving back and forth. Erikson demonstrates once again his proficiency for writing a war epic and I found myself sobbing at the latter half of the book as the final stories of heroes and brothers and sisters all came together.
This book and this series stand as a testament to such an incredible narrative concept. Yes, the writing at times was long and verbose and the internal monologue of characters extends for pages at times, but the grand story of what is told over the course of ~10,000 pages is truly epic in all sense of the word. The world, the story, the events that occur here are grand beyond scale, while at the same time never losing sight of the personal stories of the soldiers and their comrades standing next to them in the trenches.
It's remarkable to sort of look back both on the series and where I am as a person. It's a chapter that is closed in many ways, finally finishing this series. I don't know if I'll ever go back for a second read, but the writing in this book has influenced me creatively perhaps in more ways than anything else I have ever read. These books have become tent-poles for my concepts on fantasy in much the same way that the Lord of the Rings has for so many others. The world, the races, the gods, the magic are all diverse and creative and it is bittersweet to close this final book out.
View all my reviews