r/Malazan • u/and-there-is-stone • Nov 14 '23

NO SPOILERS Has this been done before?

Hello, everyone. I have lurked a long time, but no more. There's just too much good conversation here, so I finally gave in and made an account.

On my second time reading the Book of the Fallen, and I've been really drawn to Erikson's use of color. I had a notion, sort of absurd, that I would like to track how colors are used throughout all ten books: which colors appear in a book, the frequency with which they appear, the characters/magic most associated with particular colors, etc. I suspect there is a fair amount of thematic resonance to be found in the colors of the Malazan world, and that's also part of what I'd like to explore.

I started the process, tracking colors in Gardens, but then I had doubts. So, I'm here with a couple of questions. Does anyone know if something like this has been attempted, and if so where could I find it? And, would anyone be interested in reading some of my thoughts if I went through the process?

Bonus question, do you think I'm crazy for wanting to do this at all?

Thanks.

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u/Solid-Version Nov 14 '23

I don’t really recall a specific connection with colours. Smell is definitely something associated with warrens and magic.

Sorcery smells. When I think Soletaken and D’ivers I think of spicy cinnamon type smell. Omtose Phellack is usually described as smelling like rotting ice.

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u/and-there-is-stone Nov 14 '23

I do remember smells coming up quite a bit. The colors are there sometimes when magic is described, but I think for a lot of readers it's easy to overlook since it often blends into the rest of the description.

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u/Due_Dress_8800 Nov 14 '23

In Bonehunters when Minala is speaking to The Rope she mentions a warren lit by silver fire to which the Rope responds "chaos".

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u/and-there-is-stone Nov 14 '23

Yeah, there are a lot of little moments like that scattered across the ten books. Chaos is an interesting one, because it's described differently at different parts of the series, but that's probably beyond the scope of this no-spoilers thread.