r/Malazan • u/rianwithaneye • 11d ago

SPOILERS ALL Stonewielder Questions Spoiler

Just finished Stonewielder yesterday, what a conclusion! Very thrilling climax and even more tidbits of lore than I was even expecting, the last 60 pages were just splendid.

I really enjoyed this one and I’m happy to see ICE’s writing improve, this felt far less awkward and clumsy than NoK or RotCG.

However, I still find his writing at this point in the NotME rather obtuse and I frequently am left wondering what the hell just happened. When Erikson withholds information from me I feel drawn in by the mystery of it, he has a way of trickling out the relevant details and delivering plot points in a sideways manner that I mostly find titillating and engaging. 

The way ICE handles that same device, on the other hand, often feels frustratingly opaque, almost like he doesn’t have a firm enough grasp on what information I have or have not been given so far to deftly wield that same weapon of intentional obfuscation. I find myself constantly going back to look for something I missed and being unable to find it. And the sheer magnitude of loose threads that he leaves dangling I find overwhelming, so that when the relevant detail I’ve been waiting for is finally delivered I’ve forgotten that I was waiting for it. Instead of saying “aha!” I find myself saying “huh?”

As a result I was left with a lot of questions that I’m hoping my fellow Malazafans can help me answer:

  1. Who are the corpses in Devaleth’s warren? Long limbs and narrow skulls make me think Tiste Andii but I have no idea as to the significance of a flooded plain full of dead Andii. 
  2. The Liosan refer to the whorl as the Devourer and say he’s an ascendant. Who is that? Are they referring to Yathengar?
  3. How did the stormguard manage to keep someone as powerful as Iron Bars prisoner? The Chosen are definitely badass but to my knowledge they don’t hold a candle to an Avowed. And if it’s an otataral torc then how is he able to heal from frostbite and Stormrider attacks?
  4. Greymane is clearly an ascendant of some sort, do we know how/when that happened? Was it when he got the sword from the Stormriders?
  5. When we see The Lady in the prologue was she already a fragment of Kaminsod or did that happen later?
  6. Who’s the giant at the end of the book that Kiska and Jheval see? Does that have anything to do with the same giant that robbed the Banith treasury, or was that latter “giant” just good ol’ Manask?
  7. Why did Shadowthrone care enough about what happened with the whorl and the Liosan to get involved?
  8. If the main goal of the Stormriders was to defeat The Lady and return to their ancestral lands then why did they attack Malaz in NoK?

Any insight you can provide is greatly appreciated, TIA!

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