A guide to the books of Steven Erikson and Ian Cameron Esselmont.

[Rane Longfox]

Advanced warning: These posts may contain very very generalised spoilers, such as the geographical and character focus of some of the books. They will not contain any specific spoilers though, such as which characters die, major events etc. Worry ye not!

Now... I started writing this in another thread, but it was in response to someone who had just read Gardens of the Moon, so I realised I should try to avoid spoiling to much for them. If this turns out to be any good, it would be great if a mod could sticky the topic

The Malazan Book of the Fallen, as a 10-book epic, is not all there is to the world of Malazan! The world was co-created by Erikson and his good friend Ian Cameron Esselmont (from here-on referred to as ICE, because it's an awesome set of initials!) Erikson was the first to be published, so a lot of people assume that he is the "owner" of the world. This is not true, and ICE's 6-book series is just as relevant to the world as Erikson's.

The vast majority of people will have gotten into Malazan through Erikson and Gardens of the Moon, however, and this is a good thing, because here is a rough reading order for the two series:

Gardens of the Moon, Deadhouse Gates, Memories of Ice, House of Chains, Midnight Tides, Night of Knives, Bonehunters, Reaper's Gale, Return of the Crimson Guard, Toll the Hounds, Dust of Dreams, Stonewielder, The Crippled God.

The italics being Erikson's series, and the bolds being ICE's. They are seperate series, so you don't have to read both, but it definitely fills in some details to do so, and there are references to each other's books that otherwise you might thing was just jibberish. I definitely recommend reading at least Return of the Crimson Guard and Stonewielder as if they are part of the main series though, personally. Return of the Crimson Guard has some relevance to the story of Toll the Hounds, and Stonewielder has some juicy information on the Crippled God, which it's worth knowing before reading the final book in Erikson's series. ICE deals more directly with the Empire itself, which Erikson moves away from somewhat after Bonehunters.

That was a bit of a ramble I know... if it's not clear what the hell I'm talking about, let me know, because I intend to continue adding to this thread. Feedback would be nice - let me know what would be useful to see here!

 

[Rane Longfox]

The Malazan Book of the Fallen - Steven Erikson's main series.

Erikson's 10-book epic is without doubt the main work in the Malazan world. The final volume was released earlier this year, and concluded a thirteen year wait for some of us! The order of reading is as follows:

Gardens of the Moon
Deadhouse Gates
Memories of Ice
House of Chains
Midnight Tides
The Bonehunters
Reaper's Gale
Toll the Hounds
Dust of Dreams
The Crippled God

Of these, the only one which follows directly on from the previous book is the final story, The Crippled God. This series is not written in a strictly chronological order, and jumps about all over the place! For example, Midnight Tides introduces an entirely new continent, with only one character from any of the previous books showing up! To make it even more confusing, it takes place before House of Chains, and there is one particular thing that places it before most of Memories of Ice also!

What I am trying to say is, don't expect to read a sequence of events that is easy to plot on a timeline! If you enjoy Gardens of the Moon, and want to read a load more about some of your favourite characters, bad luck, Deadhouse Gates only has a few of them in! Most don't return until Memories of Ice.

The single most important thing to keep in mind is that if you read this series, you must be in for the long haul. There are things that happen in The Crippled God that will affect the way you read Gardens of the Moon, and most of the other books too! What this means is that you will certainly not be able to understand a book entirely without having read the whole series. This doesn't mean you have to bulldoze through the whole thing in order to understand any of it, but just be prepared to let a few questions hang, without desperately searching for an answer and getting annoyed when you can't find one. If you're a reader who needs instant pay-offs on every character, this is not the series for you.

 

[Perpetual Man]

Thanks Rane, very interesting and useful.

As I'm so far behind in my reading, I was going to work my way through the latter Erikson books, think it's Toll The Hounds next, but thanks to you I'll now put the Esselmont books in the appropriate places.

Who knows when I'll actually read them though....

(Looks at the to read pile and weeps)

 

[Rane Longfox]

Tales of The Malazan Empire - Ian Cameron Esselmont's 6-book series.

ICE came on the scene a lot later than Erikson, and his debut, Night of Knives was originally published as a novella by PSPublishing, a small press which had earlier published some of Erikson's novellas (more on those in a later post). However, after a year or so, ICE got himself a deal with Bantam, who publish Erikson's main series (outside the US, anyway) and it was announced that he would be publishing five more books, so here is the order:

Night of Knives
Return of the Crimson Guard
Stonewielder
Orb, Sceptre, Throne
City in the Jungle
Assail

As of this moment, only the first three have been published, and there are no announced release dates (or even confirmed titles) for the last three, however, in an interview he did last week, ICE confirmed that Orb Sceptre Throne will take place pretty much directly after the end of Erikson's Toll the Hounds, and will be set in Darujhistan, so it will include a number of major characters that Erikson has dealt with for the first time. (Characters have appeared in both author's books before, but this will be the first time the characters have been so major!)

In the same interview, ICE confirmed that City in the Jungle will take place in the so-far unseen continent of Jacuruku, and Assail, predictably, will be based in Assail! From this, it definitely seems as though ICE is filling in the gaps left in Erikson's main series. So in general, I would recommend reading them, but don't think that you have to in order to enjoy Erikson's series.

Return of the Crimson Guard is perhaps the most significant book ICE has written so far, as it details a civil war right in the Empire's lap, and gives a lot of information about the malazan's military history, including some very interesting stuff about their early incursions onto Quon Tali, and Dassem Ultor's military stratagems. Since the malazan military is the main focus of Erikson's main series, it does help to know a lot of this information in order to understand some of the things the Malazan armies get up to on far-away continents... basically, if you only read one ICE book, read Return of the Crimson Guard.

 

[Rane Longfox]

Novellas and Add-ons.

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[Rane Longfox]

Forthcoming series and books.

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[Rane Longfox]

General Malazan World Information - fictional stuff you should know!

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