(no subject)
As mentioned earlier, I recently finished Gardens of the Moon, by Steven Erikson. Here are some ways it failed to impress me.
The Magic System:
In two words or less, horribly arbitrary. There are extradimensional realms called Warrens (I think), that certain people can draw upon for highly-generic magical powers. Certain Warrens have certain limitations (helpfully only brought up moments after they became plot-relavent); other Warrens don't. There are also apparently Elder Warrens, which appear to be pretty arbitrary in what they do, how they work, and what limitations (if any) their wielders have.
Now, don't get me wrong. I have no problem with powerful magic. I'm quite a fan of it, in fact. But I need to know how it works. If I don't know that it's difficult to summon demons but easy to dismiss them, or the other way around, or what demons really are in this universe, I can read about a wizard summoning a demon and sending it to attack another wizard and having it be at all meaningful.
There is also an embarrassment of gods. Old gods, young gods, gods that perform acts of random jackassery, gods of fate and chance (grrhatemurder), and so on. And they do stuff. They're active players in the plot, and meant to be characters. It works...poorly. Again, with no real conception on what it means to be a god, on what restrictions they labor under, and why they can't say "Wow, yes, you did catch me in a clever trick there. Well done. I'm going to go back on my word and murder you now."
Between the poorly-deliniated gods and arbitrary magic, it's hard to have any idea for what we should be expecting to happen in any given conflict involving any magic at all. Total uncertainty does not, to me at least, produce tension, especially when I lose any expectation of there being a pattern I can figure out.
The Actual Plot:
Exciting and adventure-filled, yes. Coherent? Surprisingly so. So what irritates me about it so much?
Because Mal the Evil Consultant would say to each and every one of this world's supposed master-level plotters "That's an interesting plan. It seems rather complicated. Instead, have you considered murdering everyone?"
And this is a serviceable plan! We get pages and pages of plot and counterplot, and never do the magical movers and shakers of the setting ever go "OK, enough of that. Time to actually use my power to explode the countryside."
And speaking of said characters...
Anomander fucking Rake:
Who is Anomander fucking Rake, you ask?
OK. He's a seven-foot shirtless buff guy. He has ebon skin and silver hair (bing), mood-sensitive color-shifting eyes (bing), fucking ridiculous magical power from two sources (ba-bing) that is never nullified, never misdirected, and always up to the task at hand, even against similarly stupidly-powerful magic-wielders (ba-bing), is hundreds of thousands of years old (biiiing), is the leader of his people (bing), smoulders with generic angst and ennui, yet commits acts of plot-generating heroism for what he admits himself very little discernable reason (biiiiing), a super-special magic sword that eats souls (BING).
Oh, yeah, he's the firstborn and favored son of a goddess. (BIIIING).
And he's actually an enormous, ebon-scaled silver-maned shapeshifting motherfucking dragon. (BIII-KRUNCH.)
Sorry, my Gary-Stu-omoter just broke. He does avoid that one persistent curse of the author avatar, though not through his own virtue as a character. A persistent, and incredibly annoying facet of Gary-Stus and Mary-Sues is that competent people become incompetent when faced with them. This doesn't happen to Anomander fucking Rake, though, because when he, for example, goes off to fight a similarly-hundreds-of-thousands-of-years-old continent-shattering undead sorceror-king, after angsting that this will weaken him, and assorted political bullshit fucking Rake could prevent with a little pre-emptive Malzacide will happen. So, he angsts, and hefts his uber-sword and uber-magic and gigantic draconic penis, and fights the hundreds-of-thousands-of-years-old continent-shattering undead sorceror-king. And not one but two random twists in magical physics are presented, including a Keeper of the Plot Balance (wharrmurderdeathkillfirehate).
I don't get the point of A.f.R., I really don't. He's not entertaining to read about, his motivations are laughably stupid, he has grand cosmic power and doesn't actually do anything with it other than look impressive and intimidate a bunch of other characters, and the fact that he exists means that, along with a bunch of other characters, the world of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series will only survive until someone says "Hey, Mal, you're right! Horrible brutal magical mass-murder is within my power, my morality, and would totally get rid of that that pesky empire with it's people! I'll get right on that!"
Now, the magic system might look much more coherent if I had more background information. If the personalities of the various high-end characters were shown more, if it was clear that they knew that they could turn powers of ultimate destruction on their enemies but had chosen not to for their own reasons and needed to work with plots-within-plots, there could be great potential. But any author who writes Anomander fucking Rake not as a self-aware parody of That One Character, but seriously expects drama in a universe where they exist, is not getting any assumptions of credit from me. It may be that this series does have a richly detailed magical physics sytem, scads of entertaining and individual characters, complex motivations for the movers and shakers, and all the gods die in the introduction of Book 2. (On the first page. In the first paragraph. And whoever is doing the deicide is shouting 'Vae victus!') But with the existence of Rake, I am no longer desirous of finding out.
Actually, I take that back. Either Raziel or Kain showing up in the Book of the Fallen-verse might get my attention. But only that.
The Magic System:
In two words or less, horribly arbitrary. There are extradimensional realms called Warrens (I think), that certain people can draw upon for highly-generic magical powers. Certain Warrens have certain limitations (helpfully only brought up moments after they became plot-relavent); other Warrens don't. There are also apparently Elder Warrens, which appear to be pretty arbitrary in what they do, how they work, and what limitations (if any) their wielders have.
Now, don't get me wrong. I have no problem with powerful magic. I'm quite a fan of it, in fact. But I need to know how it works. If I don't know that it's difficult to summon demons but easy to dismiss them, or the other way around, or what demons really are in this universe, I can read about a wizard summoning a demon and sending it to attack another wizard and having it be at all meaningful.
There is also an embarrassment of gods. Old gods, young gods, gods that perform acts of random jackassery, gods of fate and chance (grrhatemurder), and so on. And they do stuff. They're active players in the plot, and meant to be characters. It works...poorly. Again, with no real conception on what it means to be a god, on what restrictions they labor under, and why they can't say "Wow, yes, you did catch me in a clever trick there. Well done. I'm going to go back on my word and murder you now."
Between the poorly-deliniated gods and arbitrary magic, it's hard to have any idea for what we should be expecting to happen in any given conflict involving any magic at all. Total uncertainty does not, to me at least, produce tension, especially when I lose any expectation of there being a pattern I can figure out.
The Actual Plot:
Exciting and adventure-filled, yes. Coherent? Surprisingly so. So what irritates me about it so much?
Because Mal the Evil Consultant would say to each and every one of this world's supposed master-level plotters "That's an interesting plan. It seems rather complicated. Instead, have you considered murdering everyone?"
And this is a serviceable plan! We get pages and pages of plot and counterplot, and never do the magical movers and shakers of the setting ever go "OK, enough of that. Time to actually use my power to explode the countryside."
And speaking of said characters...
Anomander fucking Rake:
Who is Anomander fucking Rake, you ask?
OK. He's a seven-foot shirtless buff guy. He has ebon skin and silver hair (bing), mood-sensitive color-shifting eyes (bing), fucking ridiculous magical power from two sources (ba-bing) that is never nullified, never misdirected, and always up to the task at hand, even against similarly stupidly-powerful magic-wielders (ba-bing), is hundreds of thousands of years old (biiiing), is the leader of his people (bing), smoulders with generic angst and ennui, yet commits acts of plot-generating heroism for what he admits himself very little discernable reason (biiiiing), a super-special magic sword that eats souls (BING).
Oh, yeah, he's the firstborn and favored son of a goddess. (BIIIING).
And he's actually an enormous, ebon-scaled silver-maned shapeshifting motherfucking dragon. (BIII-KRUNCH.)
Sorry, my Gary-Stu-omoter just broke. He does avoid that one persistent curse of the author avatar, though not through his own virtue as a character. A persistent, and incredibly annoying facet of Gary-Stus and Mary-Sues is that competent people become incompetent when faced with them. This doesn't happen to Anomander fucking Rake, though, because when he, for example, goes off to fight a similarly-hundreds-of-thousands-of-years-old continent-shattering undead sorceror-king, after angsting that this will weaken him, and assorted political bullshit fucking Rake could prevent with a little pre-emptive Malzacide will happen. So, he angsts, and hefts his uber-sword and uber-magic and gigantic draconic penis, and fights the hundreds-of-thousands-of-years-old continent-shattering undead sorceror-king. And not one but two random twists in magical physics are presented, including a Keeper of the Plot Balance (wharrmurderdeathkillfirehate).
I don't get the point of A.f.R., I really don't. He's not entertaining to read about, his motivations are laughably stupid, he has grand cosmic power and doesn't actually do anything with it other than look impressive and intimidate a bunch of other characters, and the fact that he exists means that, along with a bunch of other characters, the world of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series will only survive until someone says "Hey, Mal, you're right! Horrible brutal magical mass-murder is within my power, my morality, and would totally get rid of that that pesky empire with it's people! I'll get right on that!"
Now, the magic system might look much more coherent if I had more background information. If the personalities of the various high-end characters were shown more, if it was clear that they knew that they could turn powers of ultimate destruction on their enemies but had chosen not to for their own reasons and needed to work with plots-within-plots, there could be great potential. But any author who writes Anomander fucking Rake not as a self-aware parody of That One Character, but seriously expects drama in a universe where they exist, is not getting any assumptions of credit from me. It may be that this series does have a richly detailed magical physics sytem, scads of entertaining and individual characters, complex motivations for the movers and shakers, and all the gods die in the introduction of Book 2. (On the first page. In the first paragraph. And whoever is doing the deicide is shouting 'Vae victus!') But with the existence of Rake, I am no longer desirous of finding out.
Actually, I take that back. Either Raziel or Kain showing up in the Book of the Fallen-verse might get my attention. But only that.