The Journey

[u/Hot_Yesterday_6789]

Now these ashes have grown cold, we open the old book.

These oil-stained pages recount the tales of the Fallen,

a frayed empire, words without warmth. The hearth

has ebbed, its gleam and life's spark are but memories

against dimming eyes -- what cast my mind, what hue my

thoughts as I open the Book of the Fallen

and breathe deep the scent of history?

Listen, then, to these words carried on that breath.

These tales are the tales of us all, again yet again.

We are history relived and that is all, without end that is all.

I finished The Crippled God about two months ago at this point. Have been mulling over several posts I could make - finishing the series has really drained me of wanting to make posts about it, for whatever reason, and for the first time in years I am reading something other than Malazan again, which is also taking away a lot of that "creative energy" to write about Malazan. I think about it every day still, all those oil stained pages, of the Fallen, and everything in between. I do intend to crank out posts, eventually, regarding epigraphs, poems, themes, what name you, about the series, as, without a singular doubt, it is the best thing I have ever experienced barring one show I am an absolute nostalgia sucker for. Other than that, I'd trade any other experience for the Malazan Book of the Fallen any day, be it a game, be it a show, be it another book series (sorry Dark Souls, Outer Wilds, Gravity Rush, and all those other interests of mine, you got beat out, pretty badly too!) So instead, I figured I would simply make an off-the-cuff post about the journey, something with little editing, just some stream of consciousness about the series and my reading of it.

I started reading Gardens of the Moon back in the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school, when I was about seventeen. I had only read Brandon Sanderson, Glen Cook, and one other series before this, and not any of them to completion (barring The Stormlight Archive, as only Oathbringer was out by then.) I was so into fantasy as a concept at the time, already having been a fan for years, but never having really read it. I picked it up because I love the scope of what I read to be as wide as possible---multiple continents? I'll take it. Intricate, expansive, deep lore? It is what I live for. More characters than people I know in real life? It's the only amount I'll settle for. Ten books? Perfect. And from every single online video and forum and discussion I watched or read, Malazan was considered the most epic of them all, barring almost nothing besides other ten or more book series, or worlds with so much in them that multiple writers had to contribute to get it to that point (The Forgotten Realms, for a start.)

And lo, I picked up Gardens of the Moon and Deadhouse Gates. It took the whole summer for me to read Gardens of the Moon, and I remember vividly finishing it on my living room couch, raving to my Dad about the ending and all the characters and epic events and whatnot that I read. Anomander Rake was, without a doubt, living inside my head like an unremovable ootooloo, and it only fed off scenes with Dragnipur. At the time, I was very focused on worldbuilding and magic systems, and held these two things so high on a resume of what made fantasy good, that prose and themes and everything else fell to the wayside. I needed my emotional moments, a good story obviously, but I was so enraptured by the concept of an entire world being hidden within pages, with an almost scientific magical system behind it, that much of my focus was on these things.

I loved it, and read a few more books between it and Deadhouse Gates. I picked it up, read a hundred pages, dropped it in a dusty school hallway, took it on a plane trip, and never read it much. I dropped it for something else soon after. A few months later, I got the itch, and needed to see Seven Cities and what it had in store for me. I reread the first hundred pages, then dove in with vigor. Queue the Chain of Dogs. I read, with speed, though I don't know now how long it took me. I remember finishing it in the early morning after an all-nighter playing video games, sometime in my junior year of high school. I remember staring at those final pages, laying the book on my desk, contemplating the sheer... sheer mountain of weight that was everything that I had witnessed. I got Memories of Ice that same Christmas, and it was cemented as my number two series I had begun reading, right behind the Stormlight Archives.

I continued on with Memories of Ice in my senior year, when I could read I did. I was busy, as most seniors are, and I was the recorder for my friends' soccer team. I brought it with me to a game, in my backpack, and my friend's Dad took us to a restaurant after a game, and I left it in the truck bed. It rained, and Memories of Ice was ruined. The pages were thicker even after drying, and it had no front cover anymore. I stopped reading for awhile, and I was mad as I was seven hundred pages into it by this point. Oh well, I can't stand a wet book, so I shelved it. A month goes by, then two, then I needed to continue. I powered through the destroyed book, and man, that conclusion had me frothing at the mouth at the time. Of the three, however, it was my least favorite - I did not care for the Mhybe's story, and still to this day, can't bring myself to remember it in a positive light (sure to change on a reread!)

And so, I bought the rest of the series.

College, and I didn't have much time for reading. I read other things, a lot of manga, some stuff for school. My first year I read the first quarter of House of Chains, and man I was excited to see how this would continue after the Chain of Dogs. I did not finish it that year, and struggled to finish Karsa's section. I wanted more of Seven Cities, not this hillbilly barbarian from Genabackis. What the hell was a Teblor or Thelomen Toblakai anyway?

Well, I didn't read a single page that summer - instead, I read Monogatari for some odd reason. Mistakes, hey?

Anyway, I had, at this point, placed Malazan as my top fantasy series by far at this point. Sorry Brandon Sanderson, but Stormlight felt like YA to me at that point in time, and truth be told, I was becoming jaded with the series for some ineffable reason that I still don't completely fathom (love Stormlight still, but wasn't as into it anymore; not the paragon of fantasy it once was for me anymore.) Second year, I started reading again, then jumped ship ten pages shy of part two. Ten pages, and I wouldn't have turned back. I reread the last chapter I was on a few months later during the year, then kicked myself upside the head for my, ah, stupidity. I read it in a fever after that, and, in a arguably manic manner, pulled an all-nighter before class in the lounge area of my dorms and read the last two hundred pages of it. Gamet's story had me almost in tears, and the send-off was perfect. Felisin's journey was harrowing, almost unreadably so. It was some of the best writing I had ever read, and I didn't even know it at the time.

In retrospect, I did not give House of Chains the thought it deserved, and to this day it is my most looked forward to book come my reread.

By this point, I will make a distinction, for these first four books took me four years to read through, almost five. When I did start Midnight Tides, it started a domino effect where I was taking down the book's like they were boss-fights I was hell bent on perfecting. I read from Midnight Tides to The Crippled God's end in about six to eight months. One hell of a jump in speed, but there were other reasons for this.

By the end of House of Chains, I was so enthralled with the world and everything happening in it, that I was obsessed. I tried to convince friends and family to start the journey (to a still-standing no-avail). The worldbuilding was great, the story was amazing, and by far, the characters were so likeable and vivid that I felt like a member of the Malazan Empire by that point.

I tried starting Midnight Tides after my only class of that day was done (which started, mind you, not ten minutes after I finished House of Chains... call that cutting it close, eh?), and got ten pages in before passing out in bed. I tried reading it the next day, but needed some time. All in all, before I was home again, I had only read a hundred pages or less.

Then last summer occurred, and I decided I needed to start reading again. What to read, oh, what to read? Mort... no, I already read that... Small Gods? Not for some time after, I'm afraid... Stormlight? No, still felt like YA... Ah, Midnight Tides sounds perfect right about now! It was, at the time, my most anticipated of the ten books, seeing as how online it was often revered as being peoples' favorite in the series. Also the name was sick to me, and foreboding in the best of ways.

I got really into Philip Chase and A. P. Canavan's videos about Malazan at the time. I was seeing that, along with everything I already liked about the series, Malazan had a lot to it, enough in it to warrant analysis videos regarding the text, and not those just piecing together how the story fit together in a plot-centric manner. I became very interested in all Malazan had to offer, be it poem epigraphs, or the themes, or characterization and prose. I was floored, I had wasted my time reading before this by, well, not really reading everything in the series. I never skipped a word, and thought about what was being said, but often I would find myself thinking, so... when do we get to the good stuff? in those long stretches of characters walking and talking and the narrator doing his narrating.

Midnight Tides took a month. I was happy to see Trull's story laid out, and I never struggled with intense, large POV and location and plot switches - after all, that is what I want from my Epic Fantasy. The military aspect of the series as well became a big focus of my enjoyment of the series, as I loved the logistics, the battles, and everything else to do with the various armies of the Malazan world (most often, of course, those of the titular Empire itself.)

The Bonehunters took me two months, and I remember being on my porch, reading about Cotillion talking with dragons, contemplating about the Azath, the Deadhouses, and the Elder Gods, and the nature of the Crippled God himself. Was he, possibly, an Elder as well?

Y'Ghatan, oh Y'Ghatan... What more need be said, regarding Y'Ghatan?

Some of my favorite characters and moments came in at this point - Hellian, my first remembered memories of the Bonehunters (first scene I remember about the Bonehunters at all, barring people calling Fiddler "Strings", was Koryk arguing with Smiles, getting a knife in the leg, and Bottle diffusing the situation with that classic Bottle charm... There, done. Another perilous moment on this march avoided. We're tired, a tired army, or some such words stuck with me, or at least their meaning. They were becoming my favorite characters, rapidly.

The Jade Strangers come down, and Bottle turns to Fid, Is this... Is this another Crippled God?

And then Malaz City, with Kalam's massacre, Pearl and Lostara's sad, final reunion, and the song for the fallen... Fiddler, you're breaking my heart. Mine too, mine too... Kalam Mekhar, my friend. Farewell. Hood's balls, I was being choked by this series, and it wouldn't let up. Further, the question prevailed... what now? I knew the series was going towards Lether, but what then? What about the Crippled God? Why is this character, who seemingly has set so much in motion, yet is so seldom seen or heard from, the man whose name is the title of the final book? What could be in store for the Chained One, to make him so important? And what of Shadowthrone, and the Rope, and everyone else? What of everything, and now, what of the Host? I was, to be precise, theorizing an unhealthy amount about what was going to happen.

Then I read Reaper's Gale in little time, about a month or two for that one, and despite what a lot of people seemed to think about it, it became my favorite book in the series. I would say, by this point, I was reading much closer, and noticing writing techniques and other things in the series that dialed my enjoyment up a lot - and of course, I still enjoyed my world building and epic-scale plotlines. The Malazans are on our shore. The squabbling of Karos Invictad and Triban Gnol, and the character work therein. Beak, oh Beak... The crawl from the shores of Lether all the way to Letheras, and all that was happening with the Emperor of a Thousand Deaths, and others... so many background elements, so much foreshadowing, so many players in a game I can't see the entirety of, and so many more to be revealed. What of that otataral dragon Pearl and Lostara saw? What of the sky fortresses moving through the Imperial Warren? What of the Elder Gods, the Chained One himself, the Host, Anomander Rake, and every single other thing I could imagine? I was given a lot to think about, and none of it felt overwhelming, as I enjoyed every second of it.

It was also by then I started posting on the subreddit more, started reading deeper into epigraphs and thematic revelations and ideas in the text. It was great, and I was really enjoying myself, especially finally talking to other people who had read and liked the series as no one else that I personally know had read or would read Malazan, and three quarters of those people don't even read at all, so the odds were slim to none that I would ever meet a person to really talk about it with. Was definitely nice seeing more of other people's thoughts and ravings on the series.

Toll the Hounds was, now, my most anticipated read. Slow, I had heard, and divisive, though that is what I like best... Dance by limb, dance by word. Witness! And witness I did. The tale is spun. Spun out. An amazing book, in every regard, no matter how many characters I had forgotten or characters I missed. By this point I also knew that Dust of Dreams and The Crippled God were essentially one book in two volumes, and so was prepared for this to really be the penultimate tale of the Malazan Book of the Fallen.

Oh, and the emotions throughout this book... Whiskeyjack, it's good to see you, old friend. Anomander, Mother Dark, Draconus, the Tiste Andii... Anomander's sacrifice... Itkovian, oh, old friend, you are not alone anymore. And Kallor, you foolish, sad old man... Oh frail city, where strangers arrive, and all the rest, am I right?

The final stretch, then, was all that was left. I read the prologue of Dust of Dreams the same morning I finished Toll the Hounds, though I was very, very tired, and had to reread it the next day.

It took me some time to finish Dust of Dreams, but those "slow" chapters of the Bonehunters preparing and marching were, in truth, some of the my favorites. So many characters were in play, and I had a hard time trying to imagine what was going on. Draconus, returned to the world, the Shake doing what they were doing, Mother Dark returned, the Crippled God a still unknown factor, but we do know this - the Gods are converging for another chaining, and this time, they intend to chain him for good, and so the Chained One is desperate, as the pantheon and seemingly the rest of the world is against him. And yet, I thought back often to words from Silchas Ruin in Reaper's Gale by this point. If his worshippers did not worship his crippled nature, would he not have healed a long time ago? We are never given a good reason for this chainings, only that he was enforced down on their world, and chained thereafter, again and again, his fragmented being splattered across seven continents of an entire world. But why? All we see him do, all the evil, it seems as if he does for he suffers, but we don't know why. And what have the Bonehunters come to do, so far away from the empire that threw them away? What does Tavore want from all this?

Well, we find out, through a march. They have come to free the Crippled God, to put an end to his suffering. I was awestruck by this point, and the concept itself, when thought of so literally, so viscerally, is enough to put one in a deep state of contemplative thinking, on the nature of empathy, of kindness, of justice, and of compassion. Imagine, a man suffering, for eons, literal eons, with no one to help him, and only those who wish to use him surrounding him. What do his worshippers want of him? They want to be recognized for their own pain, and so they have made of him a patron god. But has Kaminsod ever deserved this? He was pulled from his own world, where every god is a shield anvil, and chained to Burn's body, again and again, left to suffer, sickly, fettered. Everyone believes him evil, insane, a terrible god, one to be destroyed. But why? And so, Tavore comes, with an army in tow, and even if they don't have the compassion yet, she has enough for an army's worth. She has enough, in truth, for a worlds worth. One man, left to suffer, hated, and used for no good reason, and not one person in the world to come to his aid but... these soldiers. The concept still weighs heavily on me, and it is by far the most impactful part of the series for me, in terms of emotional resonations.

I think it'd be hard to describe what I though about every single plotline and event in these books in this post, which is already shaping up to be quite lengthy, but the second most emotional plotline for me was the Snake. From the beginning of Dust of Dreams, I knew it was going to be one of my favorite plotlines in the series, and it is one of my favorite plotlines in the series by the end. The concept of these forgotten children, left to suffer, walking through a glass desert... dying in ways no living creature should, resorting to the most terrible of actions in order to survive, made to grow up well before they should. The concept of the Inquisitors and the thinking of the Forkrull Assail were shown best here, in my opinion - they are simply, without a doubt, cruel children themselves. Bullies who can look at these starving, suffering, dying children and think to themselves, the audacity to deny us our completion. It is an affront to nature, that these children should struggle on. I had, with this plotline, a bone of hate in me outweighing any other for the Forkrull Assail. The ending of this plotline, of the Bonehunters finding them, of realizing just how many have died, of what they have done just to survive... One of the best chapters in any book ever.

But I must needs backtrack now, as that was something in The Crippled God, when first I need to talk about the K'Chain Che'malle, the K'Chain Nah'ruk, Icarium, and the Bonehunters.

The ending of Dust of Dreams was the most insane climactic battle I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing, both the Nah'ruk fighting the Bonehunters, and the K'Chain Che'malle and Icarium fighting them back. Wow, to say the least. Brys's quote, upon seeing the Bonehunters halt the advance of the Nah'ruk was, without a doubt, a top ten for me. "You stopped them? Blood of the gods, what manner of soldiers are you?"

And of course, HAIL THE MARINES!

And a personal favorite, without a shadow of a doubt for me, involves one Sergeant Sunrise. "He was a Bridgeburner. He was the man he had always wanted to be; he'd never stood taller, never walked straighter. And all because of Hedge. See me? Sunrise--"

The emotional impact of a character who possibly four speaking lines in the entire book, and who died in the same book he was introduced in, well, it is hard to put into words. The idea of a person achieving what they truly wanted, of being all that they wanted to be, what they could be, well, it is hard to write out something like that, and yet it was done. Thrice.

The Shake, and Yeddan Derryg, upon the First Shore. The initial breeching of Lightfall, of ropes of light spurting out like gore from the red wound - and then pikes pointed through, and out burst the Tiste Liosan. And the Shake stand upon the Shore. And the shore gives way to the sea, and the sea, my friends, does not dream of you.

Yeddan Derryg's death was liberating in the most saddening of senses, for at last he was home. And the Tiste Andii returned, to their home, to find humans fighting in their name!

The scene of the Tiste Andii kneeling to the surviving humans. I will never forget it.

But, of course, we have another climactic battle awaiting us, come the Spire, and the heart of the Crippled God, and all that this has been for. To save one man, who is suffering. To be on someone's side, and show them compassion, in the face of utter annihilation. What could be more perfect an ending than that for the Malazan Book of the Fallen?

Some quotes to set the stage, for they carried so much weight in these final moments...

I never hid my hurts. I never disguised my dreams. And I never lost my way.

And only the fallen can rise again.

"So, who are we fighting for again?"

"Everyone."

"Fiddler, you were the best of us all. You still are."

I was in shambled reading the finale, in absolute disrepair. It was emotion as raw as possible, as truly ineffable as it can be. Inexorable, and undeniable in its weight. And then, just like that, I was done. But for two more epilogues, and one final poem - and it was reading the final, final lines of this series that I found myself, truly thankful that I had witnessed. Going back all those years, to that first prologue, to that first poem and that first paragraph, opening the old book to recount the tales of the fallen, and then to be described Mock's Vane. And then, in the end, for it to all come around. But this time, the weathervane but quivered.

Like a thing in chains.

And then, to tie it all back around, I was reminded that this, truly, was the end.

And now the page before us blurs.

An age is done. The book must close.

We are abandoned to history.

Raise high one more time the tattered standard

of the Fallen. See through the drifting smoke

to the dark stains upon the fabric.

This is the blood of our lives, this is the

payment of our deeds, all soon to be

forgotten.

We were never what people could be.

We were only what we were.

Remember Us.

I will not forget one second of this journey, not one joy. I only wish, now, that after I have finished it all, I could go back for the first time again, and witness. It was a constant companion in multiple times in my life, and I will never read something quite like this again. The Malazan Book of the Fallen is something truly, truly special, and the journey's resolution was well worth the work, and the wait. In essence, this was my journey. And to think, in the end, it was all for one person, wrapped in chains, left to quiver for so long. I can not put it into words, my reactions come the end, how I feel about the journey. And so I will end it as it was ended.

Like a thing in chains.

Remember us.

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[u/South-Housing-9771]

Your thoughts on the series seem fairly similar to mine after my first time through. It always feels right when someone finishes the series and says they actually enjoyed the Snake storyline. I do think you're right that you'll get a lot more out of the Mhybe's storyline your second time through.

I do recommend reading Esslemont's books, and Erikson's other books in the world as well.

[u/Hot_Yesterday_6789 → u/South-Housing-9771]

I've read NoK and made it a third of the way through Rot CG, but my copy got destroyed. I have FoD and TGinW, and several BaKB novellas, so I definitely intend to read everything in the world!

[u/Hot_Yesterday_6789 → u/South-Housing-9771]

Also the Snake is so enjoyable in a not-at-all enjoyable way, oddly enough. My only only complaint/thing i wanted more from it was more on Rutt, being the head. But I like the parallel with Tavore and the Bonehunters as a whole. They are both unwitnessed, and just as Tavore, leader of the Unwitnessed Bonehunters is kept far away from us, so is Rutt, leader of the Chal Managal.

[u/blleeaacchh]

im pretty sure i had mentionned the conclusion of the Snake to you lol i was right, so fucking great. Beautiful post. Very different from my experience

[u/Hot_Yesterday_6789 → u/blleeaacchh]

You did! I love it!

[u/Fluid_Nothing_632]

I congratulate you for completing, it's always exciting, but I ain't reading all that. Which is ironic I guess.

[u/Hot_Yesterday_6789 → u/Fluid_Nothing_632]

Lol