Not Black Library, or Dune but is it…?

[Lathe Biosas]

7 hours ago, wecanhaveallthree said:

 

Nobody enjoys Malazan. People enjoy Malazan in the same way people enjoy being tied up, blindfolded and beaten (which is, coincidentally, exactly how Malazan is written). Gardens of the Moon is five hundred pages of somebody hitting you repeatedly with a phone book and demanding to know which glorflemungle Scapelli is keeping the whickersnacker in while you sob 'I DON'T KNOW' (this only makes them hit you harder). 

 

One of my favourites, naturally. Roomsky hates it because they don't know what love is.

 

So it's like Dhalgren by Sam Delany. A science fiction masterwork that has no middle ground when it comes to enjoyment. You either love the book and become a fan for life....

 

Or... you believe the firemen from Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 wouldn't even burn it as they only burn good books.

[Rowland]

If it’s the one with the long march through a desert and a search for a sage in a cave in the middle of said desert, that got pretty tedious and I recall wishing it was going to end.

[wecanhaveallthree]

Yeah, you've described both Gardens and Deadhouse pretty well.

 

How I'd describe Malazan is that your enjoyment will come from your willingness to engage with the material in a non-superficial way. Not that there's anything wrong with not doing so, and that's the reason a lot of people bounce off the series to begin with, Sometimes you want to just read a book, dammit. Much of the joy comes from figuring things out. There's a distinct lack of exposition for, like, anything. It is jammed all the way on the 'show don't tell' side of the scale, and is honestly a cautionary tale of of why that's good advice, but not a rule. Malazan expects the reader to pick everything up by context, by association, by the tones or rhythms of the characters and story rather than the character actually saying 'yes I am the X'. There are wheels within wheels, plans within plans, and the whole framing of the story is in media res to the extreme. It doesn't just drop you in the deep end, it helicopters you into the middle of the Sargasso and hovers just out of reach bellowing 'IF YOU WERE SMARTER YOU'D FIGURE OUT WHAT'S GOING ON'.

 

It's the reward that makes it so worthwhile. There is a deeply rich and interesting world there, and it's so entwined with itself (ruins on ruins on ruins on ruins), so recursive, there's such a sense of time and scale that it's simply majestic. Majestic. Yes, you're either a fan because the exploration and untangling of the world tickles your brain, or you say 'this is dumb, I'm going to read Peter F. Hamilton instead'. 

[Rowland]

To be honest I’m probably a more pulp fiction fan.  I read to relax.  I studied English literature and got fed up with all the “why did they use brown to describe everything” stuff when I just wanted to be entertained. (A Passge to India).  I didn’t find Malazan dull and it was pretty straightforward.  I guess I get impatient with all the interminable wandering through a decaying city when I get the point, lets move on.  I recall this was the book with the possessed girl in it.  So I’d rate it highly as having some pretty memorable hooks, I remember whisky jack and quite a bit after reading the wiki on it.

As for the reality Dysfunction, I recall the birth of the space ships but for that I think I prefer the ships of the Culture.  I found I couldn’t even be bothered with the wiki summary of the reality dysfunction.

Which is the series that has the Space pirate who wants to upgrade his ships guns by nicking them off a big vacation ring that is in a decaying orbit…maybe that was a piece of Hyperion?

[wecanhaveallthree]

Quote

Which is the series that has the Space pirate who wants to upgrade his ships guns by nicking them off a big vacation ring that is in a decaying orbit…

 

Consider Phlebas, the first of the Culture books. Didn't even need to Google it, because my brain has been replaced entirely with literary references.

[Lathe Biosas]

9 hours ago, Rowland said:

If it’s the one with the long march through a desert and a search for a sage in a cave in the middle of said desert, that got pretty tedious and I recall wishing it was going to end.

 

Not that at all. Dhalgren is a literal mind fk of a novel. Sam Delany’s novel does not have a traditional linear plot.

 

Set in Bellona, a surreal, semi-deserted American city cut off from the rest of the world by an unspecified disaster, the narrative tracks an amnesiac young man known as "the Kid" as he enters the city, experiences its shifting reality, notices odd bits like an extra moon, time disjunctions, and his journals that he wrote and left behind in a town he's never been to.

 

So basically, the character in the book starts discovering that he wrote the book that you are reading about him writing the book that you are reading. Or more accurately, he's discovering that he previously wrote the book Dhalgren (the book you are reading now) in the past, and he is discovering that the book you are reading is coinciding with what is going on with him right now...

 

There's even a bit where he discovers his journal, which is a word-for-word chapter 1 of the book you are reading.

 

As I said before, people either love Dhalgren or hate it. There is no middle ground.

 

 

[Gamiel]

It's comics books but maybe have what you are looking for:

Prophet story by Brandon Graham, art by with Simon Roy, Brandon Graham, Farel Dalrymple, Giannis Milonogiannis, & Ron Ackins.

The story in Vol 1 is presented as "On distant future Earth, changed by time and alien influence, John Prophet awakes from cryosleep. His mission: to climb the the towers of Thauili Van and restart the Earth empire. News of the Empire's return brings old foes and allies out of the recesses of the vast cosmos." but things take different turns from what you expect as the story continues. Lots of cool alien and future technology designs.

 

Multiply warheads story and art by Brandon Graham

"Ex-organ smuggler Sexica and her werewolf boyfriend Nikoli travel across a sci-fi/fantasy version of Russia while the hardcore organ hound Blue Nura tracks a bounty across radioactive wastelands.

 

Slice of life comics from a world where magic and monsters are commonplace."

It's a world where wordplay is an important part of the setting with many of the monster, magic and technology being created around wordplays.

[Rowland]

Spoiler

 

Sorry Lathe we got our wires crossed I was talking about either Malazan or First Law.

Dahlgren does sound like a child of the 70’s, like Thomas Covenant was of the 80’s. I’ve enjoyed some of the classics from that era so I will bear it in mind.

@Gamiel  I’ve done graphic novels so I’m not adverse to them.  I especially enjoyed the Nikopol trilogy and all the Akiras!  As well as a whole load of others but I’m after books really so I can get them easily and give them to local charity shops but thanks.

[wecanhaveallthree]

Are we gonna discuss Covenant now aka the best awful books I've ever read? 

 

Covenant makes Fitz from the Farseer books look like a permanent optimist, and half of each Farseer book, by weight, is Fitz moaning about how he hates himself and how badly he's ruined everyone's lives while he chows down on fantasy downers. It's also one of the only books I've read where a member of the main adventuring cast over several novels is a barely-sentient statue who has one line of dialogue across all their appearances. And he's one of the best characters!

 

I assume you've read the classics like Black Company? 

[Lathe Biosas]

Ouch, I forgot all about comic books. My love of comics was altered with a masterstroke of beautiful subversion by Alan Moore.

 

He wrote a comic series called Top 10, in which super-powered police officers attempt to enforce the law on the city of Neopolis... a city where EVERYONE has superpowers (I still love a hotdog vendor using heat vision to cook hotdogs).

 

The art was done in a style of where's Waldo, where you can spend hours looking in the background for characters you recognize (case in point there's a hospital scene and in the background, there are some doctors in lab coats: Dr's. Strange, Fate, Doom, Doolittle, etc.)

 

But in one of the story arcs, he reveals the real reason why every DC super hero (superman, batman, green arrow, wonder-woman, aquaman, etc.) had a young lad or lady in tow.

 

After that, I haven't been able to see any DC stuff in the same light.

 

If you want to destroy your childhood, I recommend it.

[Rowland]

2 hours ago, wecanhaveallthree said:

Are we gonna discuss Covenant now aka the best awful books I've ever read? 

 

Covenant makes Fitz from the Farseer books look like a permanent optimist, and half of each Farseer book, by weight, is Fitz moaning about how he hates himself and how badly he's ruined everyone's lives while he chows down on fantasy downers. It's also one of the only books I've read where a member of the main adventuring cast over several novels is a barely-sentient statue who has one line of dialogue across all their appearances. And he's one of the best characters!

 

I assume you've read the classics like Black Company? 

I was a teenager in the 80’s in the UK.  Robin of Sherwood was on the Telly.  Books were expensive and there weren’t people to recommend stuff to you.  They also took time to read.  I started with Tolkein loved that so looked for something else.  Found the Sword of Shannara, loved that so read the series, went onto the Belgariad, loved that, then found the Covenant series.  By the time I’d read that I joined the Police and (please excuse the impertinence) “grew up”.  I then read lots of pulp, Hornblower, Sharpe, got into Andrew Vachs, Robert Crais, Wilbur Smith, Ken Follett just loads of stuff, especially if it was serialised.  I did graphic novels after I saw Michael Keaton play Batman and learned of The dark knight, so once my Graphics novel cherry was popped I went there with all sorts of random stuff.  I’d always been into sci-fi so did lots of that too.  It’s only within the last 7 years after I retired that I returned to fantasy which had also “grown up” I looked for a big meaty series so I started with The wheel of time one summer, devoured lots of that, which was very classically Tolkein but then it got a bit tedious so the wife and I started swapping fantasy novels, she found the first law stuff, I went from TWOT to Malzan.  I reread Covenant recently (LFB) and was a bit underwhelmed.  A lot of these books have been “cancelled” because of issues with the content or the author which surprised me.  I still have a soft spot for TCoTC because of that main indomitable Orky guy, one of the few characters who would make me weep with his stalwart sacrifice/heroism/savage bravery despite doing it for an indecent man.

I’ve never done stuff with dragons as a main feature and struggled to give a damn about Gormenghast or Elric.  Conan and Carter whilst entertaining were a bit superficial.  I need some depth but I don’t want the author to spend five pages describing the building the character walks into to draw a comparison with his decay…or whatever.

Edited August 10 by Rowland

[Rowland]

48 minutes ago, Lathe Biosas said:

Ouch, I forgot all about comic books. My love of comics was altered with a masterstroke of beautiful subversion by Alan Moore.

 

He wrote a comic series called Top 10, in which super-powered police officers attempt to enforce the law on the city of Neopolis... a city where EVERYONE has superpowers (I still love a hotdog vendor using heat vision to cook hotdogs).

 

The art was done in a style of where's Waldo, where you can spend hours looking in the background for characters you recognize (case in point there's a hospital scene and in the background, there are some doctors in lab coats: Dr's. Strange, Fate, Doom, Doolittle, etc.)

 

But in one of the story arcs, he reveals the real reason why every DC super hero (superman, batman, green arrow, wonder-woman, aquaman, etc.) had a young lad or lady in tow.

 

After that, I haven't been able to see any DC stuff in the same light.

 

If you want to destroy your childhood, I recommend it.

I have the first TOP 10, I didn’t know about the where’s Wally thing.  Next time I’m in the loft I will take a look.

 

[Lathe Biosas]

Just now, Rowland said:

I have the first TOP 10, I didn’t know about the where’s Wally thing.  Next time I’m in the loft I will take a look.

 

 

Its especially fun in the exterior shots or at the trans dimensional station. I've spent waaaaaay too long trying to figure out what obscure characters have been placed into the backgrounds. 

[Gamiel]

1 hour ago, Lathe Biosas said:

The art was done in a style of where's Waldo, where you can spend hours looking in the background for characters you recognize (case in point there's a hospital scene and in the background, there are some doctors in lab coats: Dr's. Strange, Fate, Doom, Doolittle, etc.)

 

Personally is one of my favorits that we have Proffesor X, the Cheif (of Doom Patrol), Barbra Gordon and a Dalek protesting for mobility rights.

Edited August 10 by Gamiel