Hello all. I am about to come to the end of the "Wheel Of Time Series", so as always in this situation I am on the look out for new books to read. After many minutes of browsing through amazon I can across "The Malazan Book of the Fallen Series" Has anyone here read them? and would you recommend them? thanks all!
I have read all the ten books - I'm a fan. So I would certainly recommend them, but not to everyone. It requires some concetration, be prepared that there are many characters (hundreds worth mentioning) and almost as many storylines. And the author is not making it easy for the readers - you'll get thrown into a living world with no explanations and learn as you're reading. Everything is from a POV of one of the characters, no extra info for readers, no view from above. And although it's that long, there are really no fillers, no redundancy, just so many pieces that make up the history of that world. My memory is not very good, so I know I must have missed so many details that connect different parts of the story (often only mentioned in passing), but it still feels as a whole, as something that had been thought through beforehand. It taught me a few things as a writer too, especially how helpful is for the reader if the story keeps to one POV within one scene (he switches them often, but always at scene breaks). I don't often read long series, so I can't really compare it to any others. If you like to see a big world with interesting magic, lots of various characters, if you like to put two and two together yourself, if you don't mind that you'll only realize something on your second or third read, then go on and read it. But I wouldn't recommend it to those who prefer to be just entertained - it doesn't work if you don't pay attention to details.
