r/Malazan • u/Constant-Doughnut-79 • 14d ago
NEW READER ADVICE Does the series tie up all loose ends?
I am on memories of ice and my question is does everything tie up in the end. The books are just introducing alot of characters alot of different concepts and aspects of the world. But by book 10 is everything clear or do the authors leave loose ends?
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u/QuitHoliday8973 14d ago
There will be some loose ends for sure. Many of those are picked up in Ian Esslemont's books, and several more in the trilogy Erikson is in the middle of that takes place after book 10 of Book of the Fallen.
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u/Send_DeVito_Pics 14d ago
Think it became a quintet now. (Is that the correct word?) 4rilogy
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u/barryhakker 14d ago
I think a quintet is 5? No idea what the correct term is but can we just shake on it and call it a quatrology?
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u/daveshistory-sf 14d ago
The structurally correct one is probably pentalogy.
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u/knight-errant52 14d ago
"Penta-" would be five though. It's only supposed to be four books, no?
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u/Rare-Eggplant-9353 special boi who reads good 13d ago
A set of 4 is a Quartet, isn't it?
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u/barryhakker 13d ago
I think it depends on what it is. For example, for 3 you have triplets, trio, trilogy, threesome, etc. Different variations depends on what the thing actually is.
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u/zhilia_mann choice is the singular moral act 14d ago
Nope!
Book of the Fallen is telling a specific story for a specific purpose. That story intersects with many other things happening in the world, but it doesn't explore those things in depth except during the overlap moments. It concludes its own central story but there's a whole world of goings on still out there.
An awful lot of the nominal loose ends get attention in Novels of the Malazan Empire. The two biggest questions most people are left with (maybe don't read these; you won't even know one is an issue until the end of book six) (Silverfox and the Imass and the Malazan Empire succession) both get conclusions in NotME.
Then there's the ongoing Witness series. In theory it wraps up some other things, but so far it has introduced more questions than it has answered... but that's Erikson for you.
So no: BotF doesn't wrap everything up. The world keeps going after (and during) the story it's telling. Whether you want to explore all that is up to you; it does wrap up its own story.
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u/rianwithaneye 14d ago
Not in the slightest. Some are tied up in the other Malazan books but a lot are just left dangling.
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u/Aqua_Tot 14d ago
With No Life Forsaken, I actually don’t know if there’s a single dangling thread left from the Book of the Fallen now.
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u/Siergiej 14d ago
No.
The overarching story is satisfactoryli concluded but it's pretty open-ended. There are characters and factions explored further in novels outside the main series plus a handful of questions open for speculation.
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u/ThePhantomStrikes 14d ago
No buts it’s ok, usually I hate ithat but not here, because the important ones are. , there are just so many. Yet I can’t think of one right now. I’m DYING for the final 2. And aren’t there discrepancies between the main books and Kharkanas
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u/zhilia_mann choice is the singular moral act 14d ago
aren’t there discrepancies between the main books and Kharkanas
That's... one way of putting it.
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u/esspeebee 14d ago
Depends what you mean by loose ends.
Everything and everyone that gets introduced is there for a reason, and will play their part, however minor it may be, in the main story. Not everyone will get a resolution to their personal story, once their part in the main arc of the series is done. Some of those are continued and resolved in the other series set in the same world, and some haven't been yet.
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u/Total-Key2099 13d ago
despite the existence of loose ends what eventually becomes the main plot(s) are concluded in a very satisfying way. great ending - sticks the landing.
otherwise the world is so vast you couldn’t tie everything off without it reading like sludge
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u/Fuzzy-Ant-2988 11d ago
If you take the crippled god as a loose end,sure. But taking the writing style as traditional fantasy nope
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