Erikson has always been prone to writing sections that are nothing more than thinly veiled philosophical points but in this book every single solitary section is just that. Page after bloody mind numbing page of character introspection.

I am only halfway through and it has taken me three weeks and reading two other books as breaks to get that far. I thought the last book was weak but this one takes every flaw in book 9 and expands on it at length.

The plot has essentially ground to a complete halt as he jumps from pointless character to pointless character waxing philosophically about crap nobody cares about.

He has abandoned dozens of plot lines and characters while boiling others down to essentially nothing just to get rid of them. Even then he has a dozen plot threads floating around and he isn't doing anything with any of them. I don't see how the last 500 pages can come to any sort of satisfying resolution even if he does stop blathering endlessly about nothing.

This book is almost unreadable.

I'm sure the left field plot he is winding toward will come to a cataclysmic end somewhere in this endless tome but it will be far too little far too late to salvage this for me.

/rant off

 

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/noooooooooooooo I was looking forward to this too.

 

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It is amazing to me how bad this book is.

I almost believe Erikson is trolling us by writing the worst thing he could imagine.

More likely he wrote a few good books to hook us so that he could prattle on like a douchebag with a thousand pages of his pretentious philosophy. He basically tricked us in to paying attention to his bullshit.

Worst book I have ever read in my life.

 

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Read and liked the first 3 books debating whether I stop right there.

 

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I loved this series up to the crippled god. I dunno wtf happened, but it pretty much went nutso at that point and I had no desire to follow whatever the hell was going on at that point.

 

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With the exception of this book, how is the rest of the series? It's on my list of things to read right now...

 

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I think the first 5-6 books are great, the best fantasy ever written.

There were some plotlines in books 7-8 that I did not like but I was more than willing to forgive him those because the writing was still top notch.

I did not like book 9, but it was mostly a disagreement between the author and myself about how he should have progressed the plot along the with beginnings of what I loathe about book 10.

I am honestly torn on rather this last book is bad enough that I would not suggest the series to people. I think I have to actually manage to finish it before I can make the judgement.

I am on page 580/900 but I have no idea when I will get to finishing it as I can not read more than fifty pages at a time without dying of awfulness.

 

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Read up to the crippled god. No reason to to deprive yourself on some great reading until that point.

 

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If if was to have my time over, I'd only bother reading up to Midnight Tides - the books upto that point are some of the best fantasy books I've ever read. Sadly it's downhill from there, and the TCG in particular is a big letdown. There's too many points of view, too much focus on Marines you're unlikely to care about and so many unresolved plot threads. I guess I should have known not to expect any closure from Ericsson but he's such a tease!

Complaint containing spoilers:
He could have at least told us who Quickben is, and why didn't Kallor get his just deserts, also why was Paran such a bit player... I also really dislike the whole Tavore arc, she's utterly unlikable which makes it hard for me to accept the Bonehunters would have followed her like that.

With a heavy heart, I'll avoid any future Malazan books.

 

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