Poll: A Song of Ice and Fire Vs The Malazan Book of the Fallen

[RandV80]

I've read but never finished a book in either series, yet for some reason I own each novel in both series. Both have their ups and downs.

The books of the fallen I pretty much need pin and paper to remember who the fuck is who. But the writing is amazing and the characters realistic. First fantasy book I've read that has an overweight female as a protagonist.

A game of thrones is pretty much a mild version the books of the fallen. The books are a little slow in the beginning, especially for fans of military fantasy.

In the end I think books of the lost wins. Too bad Glen Cook is the god of fantasy.

Yes well many of these authors tend to have some sort of personal bias or fetish creep into their books, GRRM for instance is infamous for his constant detailed description of food. And Erikson? Yeah he just likes fat chicks. Not that there's anything wrong with that, and if we had access to emoticons I'd throw a laughing face in here, but seriously he likes to ram it in your face from time to time. At one point he even drops the a line something like 'men like skinny girls because they remind them of boys'. Hah, that's pushing it a little too far there buddy!

Anyways back to the topic, epic fantasy series are my preferred genre and I've read most of them, both of these are among my favourites but I still like Martin better. Really liked the way with Malazan they side to hell with slow beginnings and gradual explanations and just tossed you into the epic fantasy mid-campagin. That will turn many people off but I didn't know what was going on half the time at first but was loving every minute of it. Overall though I thought it could get a bit campy at times, and I found Martin's more subtle approach and greater depth of characters and society to be more fascinating. The Malazan series leans heavily on glorified military campaigns and their bad ass heroes, where to take a comparison from ASoIF Robb Stark's military campaign is viewed through the eyes of a worried mother. The characters just feel more real and relatable.

But a big plus on the Malazan side, the worst aspect of ASoIF is the glacial writing speed of GRRM. First three books came out relatively quickly, but then it's been all downhill from there. I'm not one of those that bashes Martin over it, I prefer to give him the space and time to finish the books to the best of his ability. But you gotta give credit to Erikson here (being much younger helps a whole lot) for getting his 10 books out in a span of 10 years.

This topic feels incomplete without having Joe Abercombrie in it though. I put his First Law Trilogy and followup books in between ASoIF and Malazan, and if you read and enjoyed one of those two you definitely should have a look at him.

Whats my #1 though? With the glacial pace of GRRM's writing, Brandon Sanderson has slipped in ahead when I read the first book of his planned 10 book epic: The Way of Kings, part 1 of the Stormlight Archives. The dark & gritty fantasy of Martin, Abercombie, Erikson, etc is a nice change of pace because too much before was just ripping the campy nature of Tolkien, but I find Sanderson (you can add Patrick Rothfus here as well) to be a great middle ground between the two. Original setting with 'realistic' characters, but rather than just being plain dark he uses 'good' characters and there's a light at the end of the tunnel. His first series, the Mistborn Trilogy which was very good, utilized a very dark setting but had good people in it and the ultimate bittersweet ending.

Haven't checked in on him for a while so just googled it again, and OMG when did book 2 come out!!! See you next week world, I'm going to get Words of Radiance.

 

[carpathic]

I have to go with "Neither".

I did not enjoy either series.

Lots of words, and pretend politics. Swords and sorcery and I just could not get into either of them.

Maybe the problem is me.

 

[Elfgore]

I've read but never finished a book in either series, yet for some reason I own each novel in both series. Both have their ups and downs.

The books of the fallen I pretty much need pin and paper to remember who the fuck is who. But the writing is amazing and the characters realistic. First fantasy book I've read that has an overweight female as a protagonist.

A game of thrones is pretty much a mild version the books of the fallen. The books are a little slow in the beginning, especially for fans of military fantasy.

In the end I think books of the lost wins. Too bad Glen Cook is the god of fantasy.

Yes well many of these authors tend to have some sort of personal bias or fetish creep into their books, GRRM for instance is infamous for his constant detailed description of food. And Erikson? Yeah he just likes fat chicks. Not that there's anything wrong with that, and if we had access to emoticons I'd throw a laughing face in here, but seriously he likes to ram it in your face from time to time. At one point he even drops the a line something like 'men like skinny girls because they remind them of boys'. Hah, that's pushing it a little too far there buddy!

When Tattersail is first introduced I didn't even know she was overweight. When Erikson wrote that her lover was grabbing her folds, I assumed he meant her boobs or butt. Not actually folds of fat. I didn't even realize it until she told some messenger "The fat woman mage wants to talk to him." Until that part, this was my mental image of her. (I rarely read character descriptions in books.)

Spoiler

You might say I was slightly off.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

It is gritty, irreverent, believable, down to earth and darkly humorous, and completely, utterly, balls off the wall over the top, shark jumping time. Trench warfare, intrigue and god-slaying, it has it all. And just when you thought it couldn't get any more gobsmackingly over the top intense, it drops some really deep philosophical points and emotional jabs at you.

Oh and it kills off major characters too... though that doesn't always make them unable to participate in some way.

Not to harp on a series I haven't even read, but aren't those bolded attributes kind of contradictory? Well, you can have for example believable characters and still be over the top, but down to earth? I might need some elaboration on that.

 

[Cerebrawl]

It is gritty, irreverent, believable, down to earth and darkly humorous, and completely, utterly, balls off the wall over the top, shark jumping time. Trench warfare, intrigue and god-slaying, it has it all. And just when you thought it couldn't get any more gobsmackingly over the top intense, it drops some really deep philosophical points and emotional jabs at you.

Oh and it kills off major characters too... though that doesn't always make them unable to participate in some way.

Not to harp on a series I haven't even read, but aren't those bolded attributes kind of contradictory? Well, you can have for example believable characters and still be over the top, but down to earth? I might need some elaboration on that.

Think of it as a bit of a rollercoaster.

You've got your down to earth bits and your shark jumping bits. It can go from the problems of street children surviving in an uncaring city, to the champion of a god leading a small army of followers and shapeshifting with the whole lot of them into one giant tiger.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I have only read ASOIAF but Book of the Fallen has been on my need to read list for a while now. Hopefully I'll be able to find time in the summer. Still, I'm not sure if anything could ever top: "Edd, fetch me a block."

 

[Trunkage]

Eriksen writes his book in about a year, so there are some mistakes in there. Including, I think, how the story should work. Its hard to tell, as he writes enigmatically - most of the time you will not know what's going on until the end. The first MBoF is probably the most boring read. The books also jump between continents, so the whole "I wonder what's going to happen next" that makes me want to jump chapters in GRRM or Robert Jordan's writing is amplified here, I almost want to jump books. There are usually two "events" in each book for the later books. These are incredibly enthralling but sometimes between in so slow. Eriksen writes so much better than GRRM, and most of the words don't feel wasterful

GRRM was an easier read, you can skip paragraphs with any real impact on the story. That helps create a real sense of momentum when you're reading. It took me 2 years to get through 10 books for MBoF, and about 3 for GRRM (up to Dance). For some reason, the characters feel flawed in totally different ways. Eriksen usually gives main characters "Heroic" deaths, where many of GRRM seem to happen by circumstance - out of there control. I never hated any character in MBoF like I did Joffery, and the Purple Wedding was the best part of any one those books (and great to see it on GOT yesterday). GRRM also has Robert Jordan syndrome - too many stories. It made the 8-10 books incredibly boring. The last couple of ASoFaI have really felt that way.

I love both but would easily pick MBoF as the better

Also, Feist is trying to write one a year. They are way smaller, poorly written and have poor character development. Particularly after the master piece that was The Magician. I stopped reading anything of his about 3 years ago.

 

[acciolucy]

As Plasmadamages friend who has raved about GoT...

ASOIaF is a great series IMO, I typically don't like fantasy books that much as often they are difficult to really get into as the characters are not always very relatable. I enjoyed this series as there is such a wide range of characters, some shallow, serving little purpose to the plot, some hugely in depth and very likeable. The content of the books is also hugely diverse, whilst I personally think the books (and certainly the derived TV show) are very over sexualised, the underlying plots are great. You can't really go wrong with dragons and magic, right?

I will admit I found the books dry at times, especially some of the later books. Some of the characters were utterly uninteresting and it can soon get tempting to skip out whole chapters as such mundane tasks occur in them that it barely relates to the overall story, just seems like George R.R Martin wanted a new character to write about and eventually kill. There is also a lot of violence and swearing in the books, of course this is to be expected, though it certainly can get rather tedious and tiresome at times.

I will say that I definitely enjoyed reading the books and cannot wait for the next to come out. They are certainly not my favourite books however, but do make a good read.

I attempted reading BOTF but started right after finishing ASOIaF, so really wasn't in the mood for another huge fantasy series. I will certainly be giving it a go at some point in the future though

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

I've only read ASoIaF and I'm honestly not enjoying it as much as the show. The books are just too damn slow for my liking. It's not even a matter of slow burn. It's just that nothing happens between the actually interesting bits. The world is great and I love the characters but I just can't get over the excess of Martin's writing style.

I've actually never heard of Book of the Fallen. It sounds really interesting, I'll have to give it a read at some point.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

...gave up after book 5 on Game of Thrones...just ran itself out for me...

Yeah the series really peters off after book 5.

I've read through the existing volumes of ASOIAF, and have twice tried to get through "Gardens of the Moon" with ill success. It's a boggy, tedious mess with the groan inducing "fantasy names" at every turn, and jumps around liberally from place to place and epoch to epoch with little sense for context or consistency. It is my understanding that you eventually get used to this and the books acquire a certain charm, but as I'm audiobook only these days the last thing I need is a confusing fucking mess of a first book to shoulder through. It was hard enough to follow when I had the book handy and could flip back and forth to figure out what on earth the author was even talking about at any given moment.

So for the time being it's going to remain one of those series that is well loved by a particular sub-demographic of fantasy fiction fans and will remain a total bloody mystery to me. I like a voluminous tome, and I have no issue with wordy writers. But there's something to be said for things like "pacing" and "clarity" and "engaging prose", and through the better part of volume 1 Eriksen demonstrated none of them.

Eriksen usually gives main characters "Heroic" deaths, where many of GRRM seem to happen by circumstance - out of there control.

Eeesh. Not a selling point. I've become a big fan of verisimilitude in fantasy fiction, or at least the illusion of it. Too many "heroic deaths" and it becomes achingly apparent I'm listening to the sound of the author masturbating.

I've only read ASoIaF and I'm honestly not enjoying it as much as the show. The books are just too damn slow for my liking. It's not even a matter of slow burn. It's just that nothing happens between the actually interesting bits. The world is great and I love the characters but I just can't get over the excess of Martin's writing style.

I've actually never heard of Book of the Fallen. It sounds really interesting, I'll have to give it a read at some point.

If you find Martin to be an overly indulgent writer I'd steer well clear of the MBotF.

 

[Evil Smurf]

http://www.silverfishlongboarding.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=124599&d=1371534747
Well said, tiny Spanish girl.

I'm not ever, going to choice one book over another, I'll read both. That said, I'm reading ASOIAF at the moment, so there you go. That's my answer.

 

[Trinab]

And why?

Fantasy readers of the Escapist, I come seeking opinions!I read Game of Thrones because a friend spent several weeks raving about it, and I thought it was worth a try, given all of the positive reviews.

...

So, I come down firmly on the side of the Malazans, but I am a shallow, empty creature who needs his opinions to be validated by strangers. So what, dear strangers, is your opinion?

Also, for BotF readers, who is your favourite character, what warren would you choose and what's your favourite race?

For the OP...

I do prefer Malazan over Ice and Fire as a whole, but that is not to say I find one objectively better then the other. I do feel George R R Martin lost his focus in the last two books, weakening them severely. I enjoy both series, for different reasons.

Erikson's weakness tends to be a case of over-philosophizing. Some of his characters get bogged down in their own philosophy, giving us scenes were not much is happening, save for semi-interesting conversations, depending on the reader. He also enjoys plots within plots, mixed with side and sub plots. While he does, (generally,) wrap them all up, some of their inclusions are questionable. He's the master of climax though. Book 8's climax was probably the most page turning, long, and intense climax I've ever read in a book. 200 pages of pure amazing.

And your last question: My favorite character is Bottle, the warren I would want is Mockra, and the Jaghut seem to be generally awesome.


On the Selling of Malazan:

The Malazan Book of the Fallen sits atop my pile of favorite fantasy books. The entire thing feels like a D&D campaign run by very intelligent, cynical, dry players. And apparently, that's exactly how the world was started! (Except they used GURPS for the flexibility.)

I've heard the author himself describe the series as a 'love it or hate it,' bit of writing, and I would say that is an apt description. It can get quite 'balls to the walls,' in terms of characters and plots.

Out of all the fantasy series, it is by far the most 'epic' in scope and presentation, and with all the implied and actual craziness that such a statement entails. Erikson seems fully aware of the problem of 'power creep' and says 'screw it, let's just roll with it and keep going,' allowing for superhuman displays and people casually winning fights with gods.

It's still clever enough however, to not bore with a standard good vs evil plot, focusing on empires, nations, and individuals. Because of its epic scope however, and the huge cast of characters, individual characters do not get as much development as you may like.

Erikson's writing is very dense as well. He got his start writing short stories, where every sentence counted, and he continues that tradition in his novels. You cannot idly skim through his books, you have to read and absorb the words, and you start getting what he's going for. I think this part is the big dividing factor for the love it/hate it crowd. Not everyone enjoys reading that way.

TLDR version:

Pros:

Epic scope
Lots of Heartfelt/Funny/Awesome moments
Tons of memorable/awesome/badass characters
Each book follows a single narrative arc, (save the last two.)

Cons:

Many characters, causing lots to be underdeveloped/lost in the shuffle.
Dense writing means dense reading, can be hard to stay focused on the task.
Epic scope means scenes/people that can come across as just silly/unbelievable.

 

[Jacco]

Only ever read ASOIAF. Never even heard of this Mazalan thing. But now I'm interested. Sell it to me! Maybe I'll try that out next once I've checked out His Dark Materials.

Though the above post does make it sound incredibly silly... please tell me it's not trying to be overly serious. I can't stand fantasy fiction that takes itself too seriously.

Don't read the Dark Materials trilogy. It sounds cool on paper, but it's just not. Pullman has an irrational hatred for everything religion and he lets it bog his stories down to the point of it being faster for you to drag your feet through the mud. That trilogy is considered by many to be one of the poster children of a fucking awesome idea that was ruined by poor execution.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Don't read the Dark Materials trilogy. It sounds cool on paper, but it's just not. Pullman has an irrational hatred for everything religion and he lets it bog his stories down to the point of it being faster for you to drag your feet through the mud. That trilogy is considered by many to be one of the poster children of a fucking awesome idea that was ruined by poor execution.

I thought the first book was decent...maybe even strong by YA standards. The following two volumes were utter piffle, though.

 

[RandV80]

I do prefer Malazan over Ice and Fire as a whole, but that is not to say I find one objectively better then the other. I do feel George R R Martin lost his focus in the last two books, weakening them severely. I enjoy both series, for different reasons.

While it's technically true, is it really fair to criticize GRRM here when we still don't know how it will all wrap up? This is kind of the Achilles heel of fantasy epics. If you're writing a trilogy you can keep things nice and compact, but write well beyond that and eventually you probably get to a middle point where there's just too much going on and the pace starts getting bogged down. Through the first 3 books, GRRM did a masterful job of utilizing a wide range of characters while keeping the plot moving ahead full steam.

Then you get to a sort of 'intermission' period in the plot, as we transition from the civil war to winter, and one book became two books which was still too big so the editor had to clip off chapters from the end and you lost the climax in Dance. Now personally I just finished reading it for the second time yesterday, and much like the first time I loved every minute of it... then it kind of ends abruptly. If you already have the next book in hand then no problem, in my opinion you gotta judge a massive fantasy epic as a whole and not just be it's parts. But I get the impression that a lot of people are overly critical because they didn't get that climax now.

 

[dyre]

Hmm, I've only read the first book of the MBotF series and I found myself rather irritated by the author's overindulgence in his own universe. Maybe it's just a case of the writer front-loading all the setting (political factions, religions, military stuff, etc), but I found myself wondering where the plot was after trying to wade through chapters of dense description that inconveniently seemed to jump around a lot while going nowhere at all. That said, I read it when I was in early high school so maybe I'll give it another try. Unfortunately my faith in fantasy as a genre is rather low so it'll probably have to wait awhile.

ASoIaF is very enjoyable genre (i.e., not literature) up through book 3, but slows in book 4 and dies in book 5 as far as I'm concerned. The series suffers from horrendous pacing issues, character inconsistencies, and way too much scheming and/or moping from some characters (whole chapters of the stuff), but for three books it was entertaining and I will admit RR Martin has an engaging writing style that keeps the reader interested even if nothing interesting is happening. Unfortunately, I'm sure RR Martin doesn't actually have a plan on how to tie the various subplots together, and it seems he has contented himself to releasing one book (full of zero plot development) per five years. Which means at that rate the story will never be finished in a satisfying way.

A related thought: has anyone noticed that fantasy books are often extremely long, and yet many of these 800 page volumes are full of irrelevant subplots, overindulgent description, overdrawn scheming/whining/etc, and other general nonsense? It's like fantasy writers don't remember that editors exist, or that longer or more complex does not automatically mean better...the whole genre needs to take a page from that chapter about clutter from Zinsser's On Writing Well, and apply to a macro scale (as well as its conventional application). I'm reminded of a D&D GM I know, who will often recite his lovingly written, 10 page descriptions of a new town's history, culture, local areas of interest, significant persons, etc while the rest of us (the players) space out and check our smartphones...

If anyone can recommend me any well-written, self-contained fantasy works of below 400 pages in length, please do so!

 

[Gary Thompson]

There's a Mexican restaurant near me called Mazatlan, does that count?

 

[Evil Smurf]

Only ever read ASOIAF. Never even heard of this Mazalan thing. But now I'm interested. Sell it to me! Maybe I'll try that out next once I've checked out His Dark Materials.

Though the above post does make it sound incredibly silly... please tell me it's not trying to be overly serious. I can't stand fantasy fiction that takes itself too seriously.

Don't read the Dark Materials trilogy. It sounds cool on paper, but it's just not. Pullman has an irrational hatred for everything religion and he lets it bog his stories down to the point of it being faster for you to drag your feet through the mud. That trilogy is considered by many to be one of the poster children of a fucking awesome idea that was ruined by poor execution.

I enjoyed it, give it a go. It's interesting, fun and makes you think.

 

[Trinab]

I do prefer Malazan over Ice and Fire as a whole, but that is not to say I find one objectively better then the other. I do feel George R R Martin lost his focus in the last two books, weakening them severely. I enjoy both series, for different reasons.

While it's technically true, is it really fair to criticize GRRM here when we still don't know how it will all wrap up? This is kind of the Achilles heel of fantasy epics. If you're writing a trilogy you can keep things nice and compact, but write well beyond that and eventually you probably get to a middle point where there's just too much going on and the pace starts getting bogged down. Through the first 3 books, GRRM did a masterful job of utilizing a wide range of characters while keeping the plot moving ahead full steam.

Then you get to a sort of 'intermission' period in the plot, as we transition from the civil war to winter, and one book became two books which was still too big so the editor had to clip off chapters from the end and you lost the climax in Dance. Now personally I just finished reading it for the second time yesterday, and much like the first time I loved every minute of it... then it kind of ends abruptly. If you already have the next book in hand then no problem, in my opinion you gotta judge a massive fantasy epic as a whole and not just be it's parts. But I get the impression that a lot of people are overly critical because they didn't get that climax now.

It's all objective really. I can honestly say that the last two, in my mind, were much weaker then the first three as books. There are actually very few truly long, completed fantasy epics that to compare it to. Sword of Truth, Malazan Book of the Fallen , Wheel of Time being another, at twelve, ten and fourteen books respectively. I'm sure there are some I missed, but those are the ones I have read.

Book Seven of the Sword of Truth is still regarded as truly awful. In Wheel of Time, the 9th book is pretty much terrible. Even with both of those series' completion, looking back at those bad books, they still remains terrible.

Erikson's narrative in the 'middle books' did not waver in quality, his writing was consistent throughout, and the story was as strong in the middle as it was in the beginning, and mostly the same at the end, hence my preference.

Nevertheless, I don't really want to get into a big debate as to why I think books 4 and 5 are weak. I still enjoyed reading them for the most part, and it's not like I'm calling George RR Martin a hack.