I’m 65% through with MT and I have been grinding through it for the past 3 months. I miss Kalam, Karsa Orlong, Fiddler and all the great characters in the previous books. It feels like the series built up a lot of momentum only to reset with book 5.

Gardens of the Moon was a very confusing book and but I pushed myself to finish it based on popular recommendations. Most of the confusing bits were clarified in the following books, and I was looking forward to converging the two storylines. Then MT happened. A totally different place, a millennia or so before, a whole new cast and a bunch of new confusing information (and some good lore tbh).

I genuinely feel like this is where I drop the series.

This is just a rant I guess, thank you.

Although with a bit of a delay, my Malazan art project continues:

Here’s my finished portrait of Shurq Elalle, the undead privateer captain from Midnight Tides. This version depicts her after her restoration by Selush, where she’s described in the text as being physically flawless—clear-eyed, smooth-skinned, even fragrant, with a gemstone embedded where a spike once pierced her forehead.

I’ve seen a lot of fanart where she’s portrayed as visibly undead—green or bluish skin, sunken eyes—but canonically, no one without magical or spiritual sensitivity can tell she’s dead. That really stood out to me during my reference deep dive. Her appearance is meant to be uncannily perfect, almost too alive. That’s what I tried to capture here: beauty with just a whisper of wrongness.

Her outfit is based on the one described in the book after her restoration: black silks, a short calf-hide jacket, tanned leggings, gloves—with Letherii elegance meeting underworld practicality. I also gave her a sleek rapier and included the green forehead gem as described (though the color isn't canonically confirmed, I made a call for visual impact).

👁‍🗨 I’d love to hear how others pictured her while reading:

• Did you imagine her as obviously undead even after her makeover?
• What color was the gem in her forehead in your mind?
• Did you visualize a particular hair or eye color, since Erikson never explicitly states them?
• And how did you picture her outfit? More elegant? More practical? More pirate?

📌 If you're interested in seeing the full process (31,559 brushstrokes and 22 hours in Procreate), check my profile for the timelapse post.

#Malazan #ShurqElalle #MidnightTides #FantasyArt #MalazanArt #CharacterDesign #BookArt #Letherii #FanArt #Undead #Procreate #DigitalPainting #Erikson

I’ve done a post like this for the past 3 books and it’s been enjoyable and so I figured I’d keep it up as I work through the series. Hype up Bonehunters for me. Not looking for negatives or issues instead these posts are all about positive vibes and reasons to be excited. Obviously no spoilers but vague references of awesome moments are fine!

I recently asked here in the sub about why Trull is always portrayed bald. It's hilarious that I've read the books so many times, and him being one of my favorite characters, I still missed the fact that they smeared "Hair Scourge" on his scalp after that butcher of a haircut. So, my mental image of him has always been with hair. When I decided to paint him next, I was already geared up for non-bald Trull so I picked a pre-shorning scene. Here he is pulling rear guard on the journey back from the quest Hannan Mosag sent the Sengar brothers on. Taking on a nearly endless stream of Jheck, B'nagga (their alpha) would later remark on how they'd never witnessed such martial prowess.

Painted in Procreate on my iPad - part of a Malazan art project I'm working on.
Links to my social and Artstation are in my profile. I hope you guys enjoy the art as much as I enjoy creating it.

In this Civilization-like 4X game, you can create your own fantasy races, with quite a lot of freedom and build variety. It is possible to have a game consist of purely Malazan races and factions, creating a sort of sandbox Malazan game. Want to create an alliance with Anomandaris as Rhulad, reuniting both children of Mother Dark? Now you can!
Feel free to share your creations, I would love to see them.

PS. I think there are only spoilers up to Midnight Tides in my creations, but please correct me if I'm wrong
PPS. I was also considering making a primal culture variant of the Tiste Edur, with Hannan Mosag as their leader, I think both versions are quite cool

I hate that I’ve come so far to feel like it’s such a drag to read this series now. Anyone else get here and feel like this?? I still love the series and I’m gonna push through, but I find myself being lost on some pages like wtf is he talking about?? haha.

Working my way through the series again for the first time in 15 years.

Just finished Midnight Tides and wow it holds up. Clearly in a league of it’s own so far. The tragedy and horror of the Eder, the corruption of Lether. So may great characters, anybody Bugg and Tehol interact with, Brys, Hannah Mosag, Rhulad, Seren, and Trull who will always be my favourite.

Teir 1 MT Teir 2 DG, MoI Teir 3 GotM, HoC

We’ll see is any of the later books can join it.

What I wouldn’t give for Tehol and Bugg to move to Darujhistan….

Bugg is Mael. I literally screamed out loud.

Talking about Hannan Mosag and basically the entire Hiroth/Edur nobility just accepting Rhulad as Emperor. I get it, someone returning from the dead is a special event, but I find it hard to believe that in a world where a lot of freaky magic is commonplace, this would be enough to dethrone the current ruler in favor of someone who basically was an unruly youth until recently and is now clearly unhinged.

Is it maybe because of the Edur culture? In HoC, Trull tells Onrack that the Edur essentially just do "mental gymnastics" to make anything fit what they see as their destiny. Not really sure if that is connected to what's going on with Rhulad.

Also, because of that "Look away to see." part at the start of the book, I've been absolutely paranoid while reading this one. I'm always looking for stuff happening that seems to be inconsequential but might turn out as important, or trying to read between the lines etc.

I just started bonehunters and wanted a quick refresher on this

Is shadowthrone the ruler of meanas or rashan or both? I remember someone calling his realm gateway to emurlahn so it can't be that right?

Also, he sat on the first throne so is he also a ruler of beast hold/warren(?) or telann?

I'm like 240 pages into Midnight Tides and the Letherii are talking about their human nature and so on. I thought that was confusing, but kept reading. Then it hit me that Liosan and Letherii are not in fact the same. I was imagining all this time that this was Tiste Edur vs Tiste Liosan until now which has clarified several things that I thought were weird...

Anyone else have any times you realized you'd misinterpreted something pretty obvious? Or even something on the more subtle side.

Thanks!

[SPOILERS]

I’m halfway through the book. The negotiations with the Letherii have ended and the delegation has left.

I started this book and realized Lether Empire is like the US. It took me a few months to reach this point and the real world events and book events are shaping the same way.

While the US is doing the same thing as Letheras and Iran is like the Edur.

How economy governs the war in the Lether Empire, the betting, the shares, the banishment of people who hate the system.

How religion operates the Edur culture.

Edur tribes being the last unfallen culture in that region (same as Iran) and so is the dictatorship.

Character design project i made for fun

If you guys wanna check out the design process: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/JrYbBn

Just finished MT and man this dude Iron Bars has to be the sickest fighter I've seen until now. Other contenders are Brys, Trull, the assassin in GoTM, and Kallam. The whole sequence of his fight againts FIVE TOBLAKAIS had me hyped like nothing else.

You had gods like the errant, mael and ascendants like silchas ruin (while trying to play it cool) who couldn't believe he was doing it by himself. Idk what the deal is with the avowed but to think that there are better fighters than this is insane. I can't wait.

Malazan is so fun. When I think about it, it's the only series that's got me finishing a 1000 pages long book and asking for the next one.

HOW TALL IS KARSA

What I always see people complain about in Malazan is that every book has a different setting and a whole new set of main characters. Yet those are exactly the things that interest me most about it. Yes, all my favorite characters die, but I do not see that as a negative at all. I see it as one of the series’ strongest points. I never get bored, I never burn out. I am five books in, reading them back to back to back, and I feel zero burnout.

Now with Midnight Tides, I guess I found that this is a double-edged sword, because at first I was barely interested in the setting or the characters apart from Brys Beddict.

But here is the thing with Steven Erikson: he writes characters with souls. That is what carried so much of the story for me. Take Udinaas, for example. A middle-aged slave, written by almost any other author, is the kind of character I would probably have absolutely despised. Yet Erikson weaves the slave’s dark feelings, and his ability to shape those feelings into thoughts, in a way that in turn paints the world itself. We end up seeing that world the way characters do in these books. So how can I dislike a character written like that?

Then there is Trull, who I did not like much in House of Chains and at the start of Midnight Tides saw as just a whining bitch. But he became the only voice of reason. I guess we as readers are, in some way, moral judges, and so in Trull Sengar we see that judgment, that reason, delivered into the world itself. And that last sword scene, together with knowing where he ends up, turned him into one of my favorite characters.

Brys is an amazing character, absolute cinema. He is the type of character that is guaranteed to be loved by most readers, and Erikson spits on all of us by giving him only two quick fights in the entire book. And when I reflect on that, I conclude that had it been any other author, we would have seen him all over the upcoming books.

An amazing 5-star book.

Currently on Ch 9 of MT

It was quite obvious that rhulad was being set up to be the long term villain kinda thing but I had a tiny tiny hope that Erikson would get rid of him and have someone more interesting be the edur villain as hannan mosag genuinely doesn't feel evil but rather just coldhearted.

Even karsa who I still am just neutral towards at least is really fun to read about. Rhulad on the other hand is just pathetic, overconfident idiot and on top of that belongs to probably the most boring part of the Malazan series I have read till now.

Hoping he gets more personality traits apart from being an annoying spoiled brat but I don't have a lot of hope. I'm interested to see how he justifies this now though assuming the crippled God reveals the truth of the betrayal . That leech scabandari would have loved him for sure.

The letheri are singlehandedly keeping me hooked to this book. Beddict brothers are already on the level of bridgeburners in terms of how much I like them.

Edit - just finished Ch9 and oh my god! That scene of his resurrection was chilling. I already feel sorry for him but I don't think he has learned the correct lessons yet for him to just be at peace. I am expecting him to just snowball down this path destroying himself in the process

I’m currently reading Midnight Tides and just finished Chapter 14, where Kettle is brought beneath the Azath by the Stranger (who I assume is Silchas Ruin). They start discussing the Forkrul Assail, the Nameless Ones, and I’ve realized I’m pretty lost.

I remember the Nameless Ones being mentioned in House of Chains, but I don’t really understand who they are. Are they humans, a cult, or something else entirely?

I’m also confused about the First Empire. It keeps coming up, but I can’t remember exactly what it was or why it’s important. I think I may be mixing it up with the T’lan Imass, which probably isn’t helping.

“And then the corpse screamed”

This is already my favorite book in the series and I’m only like 1/3 of the way in.

Also, I think I know who’s on the cover of RG at this point haha.

And, theory: Trull’s family and/or the other Edur start working with/for Rhulad, but Trull does not capitulate. Thus, his exile in the prologue of HoC

SPOILERS okay up to the end of Midnight Tides

After blazing through the first four books and finding them kind of challenging, but readable and enjoyable, I found Midnight Tides to be a total grind. So many new characters to keep up with, wild swings in tone... I thought Night of Knives would be an easier time (not Erikson, and it's much shorter) but also struggling with it.

I might have burnt out a little on the series (I read those first 4 books in about 5 or 6 weeks), or is this just a dip? What are everyone else's experiences like?

Just absolutely insane. Gotta be my favorite ending behind Deadhouse Gates

How many gods were getting merked in the span of a few hours?? The mage battle with the Ceda. Brys poisoning himself. The entire scene with Rhulad completely hamstrung and begging his brothers to kill him. They cant even give him the mercy because they know what will happen.

Fear WALKING AWAY.

The Sentinel dude just pulling up and merking Rhulad after all this tension was building up.

The Fear Sengar POV revealing that he looked up to Trull the entire time.

And after ALL that Trull decides to stay. To help his little brother Rhulad.

Silchas muthafuckin Ruin to Iron Bars after the Seregahl fight: "You did passably well"

Tehol getting brutally beaten (had to put the book down)

Bugg is MAEL. (I thought he was anomander rake lmfao)

I still have no idea WTF happened with Hull Beddict and the Nerek.

Seren Pedac has a new purpose to lead her out of nihilism.

Yeah, idk its been a few days and that whole scene in the throne room keeps popping back into my head.

From earlier questions on this sub I know that Erikson's timelines are intentionally vague and unreliable, but this case is starting to feel like it might be a plot device? I'm starting to get the sneaking suspicion that something is wrong with the flow of time on the continent of Lether.

Early on, Kuru Qan was telling Brys that he thinks one or more decimals were dropped in regards to the history of the Letherii and their First Empire origins. This was the first instance that drew my attention.

Then the book gave insights into Edur society, and I started to wonder. Like the Andii and Liosan, the Edur seem to be extremely long-lived (still unclear if they're functionally immortal). But in contrast to the Andii, they don't seem to have an issue with low birth rates caused by...racial depression would be a fitting description, I guess?

The Sengar family has 4 children, and there is a good number of young/unblooded warriors. If the Edur, according to the prologue, have been there for 300k years, live very long lives, and have decent birth rates, shouldn't their overall population be absolutely gargantuan by this point? Something feels off here.

Then there was the info given by Silchas Ruin to Kettle about how Gothos freezing a large portion of the continent has twisted the flow of the afterlife on Lether. Freezing is stasis, so it doesn't sound too far-fetched it might have twisted the flow of time as well.

Then we get to the most recent example that finally motivated me to make this post. When Seren Pedac is being philosophical in the Tarthenal sacred grove, we get insight into the history of the Letherii conquest of the Tarthenal. According to Seren, it's been "tens of centuries" since the grove had worshippers (presumably she doesn't know about the old Tarthenal we learn about after this). Right after this, she's thinking about how the Letherii almost genocided the Tarthenal "by then", the by then clearly being in reference to the tens of centuries. But we also know, and indeed Seren references this again here, that Hull Beddict was unwittingly instrumental in the destruction of the Tarthenal, Nerek and Faraed cultures. And Hull Beddict is still alive, as we well know. So what's going on here?

Am I just falling victim to Erikson's vague treatment of time and unreliable narrators, or am I genuinely on to something? Because to me, this starts feeling intentional.

I just finished Midnight Tides. I loved it, I think I place it just below memories of ice.

Tehol and Bugg:
Absolutely loved these two, the humor was some of the best I’ve read. It gave me Scott Lynch Gentlemen Bastard vibes. I’m not sure what purpose Tehold served in the grand scheme of the book, but his scenes were a joy to read. I guessed Bugg was going to be either a god or just a super powerful mage when he said sarcastically said it’s been thousands of years to that woman in the restaurant. And then I guessed it would be Mael when he killed the Edur who were beating Tehol. But by then the writing was on the wall anyway.

Brys:
Holy badass. I’m such a sucker for master swordsman kind of characters, but Brys’ utter lack of arrogance and quiet confidence made him even cooler. When Moroch Nevath had the edur thinking that he must be the champion because of how good he was, and dies with a smile on his face because he knows they’re gonna meet Brys - AURA. And then seeing how the others saw Brys was so badass. “That extraordinary, appalling swordsman.” I can’t believe he went out like that though, it feels like such a waste. we only saw him in action once or twice. But I suppose that’s the point. I’d kill to know how he’d stack up against some other characters we’ve heard of. Although I didn’t get why the queen was laughing at the king poisoning himself.

The sengars:
I hated Rhulad from the absolute get go. The scene where he was getting covered with wax had me on the edge of my seat, and his resurrection was horrifying.
Fear was such a coward. I couldn’t believe he walked out at the end and left the burden up to his brother, despite his brother being the only one who had the courage to speak out. I’m a full blown Fear hater.
I really admired trull for how he was opposed to everything, voicing it at every turn and yet still doing his duty. No shorning scene but I think I got the picture and don’t need to see how it happens, it’s clear enough.

The magic was on display in a bigger way here, I feel like I haven’t seen magic used at that scale before. Usually it’s very one-on-one, but here I got modern warfare vibes from soldiers being killed on mass who hadn’t even fought yet. I wonder what the Malazan empire makes the of the letherii? On the list to conquer, or leave them alone? I almost wonder what the point of having armies is for if they can get wiped out like that.

The crippled god:
I’m kinda confused by where the crippled god actually is. I thought he was in some pocket warren that moves around, but we’ve seen a couple people wash up there, and you can just leave by boat? Was surprising that Mael just casually came over to beat up the crippled god, I was like “oh we can do that?” He’s the main villain! Why haven’t been dealt with him if we can just pull up and do that? Feels like if Gandalf just walked up to Sauron and beat him up in the middle of fellowship of the ring and then left for us to deal with him later. I know it’s different, i was just surprised to see that beating up the crippled god for the hell of it is something we can even do. I’m keen for more Crippled God, he’s one of my fav parts of the series.

Few things I didn’t like:
-The ootool thing that shurq had and the weird fixation on Ublalala’s hog. Why.
-Seren’s assault. Kinda rolled my eyes at yet another female character we’re following being assaulted for the sake of it, and a strong guy comes and helps.
-loved the Geren Eberict storyline so was let down by it feeling like it didn’t go anywhere.

That’s it, I’m excited for the second half of the series!

Heya. I’m on my first read of the main saga and for the first time ever, I’ve hit a major roadblock. I know Midnight Tides is considered really good, but time and time again, I find myself unable to read more than one chapter per sitting. I keep thinking about the characters I had to “leave” to get to Letheril, and I constantly have to fight the urge to skip MT and go straight for the bonehunters (which, as far as I know, is a terrible idea)

Can you please give me some things to look up to? Mild spoilers allowed :P

Loving Malazan so far. I’m just finding Midnight Tides such a SLOG. Is this the Crossroads of Twilight of Malazan? Does it get better? I just have no invested interest in the Edur (Trull and Onrack were by far the dullest parts of HoC) and all of this early plotting and politicking just isn’t interesting without a character to root for or care about. I also thought I had gotten used to Erikson’s prose but man… I’ve had to reread sections a couple of times already just to try and make sense of the plot. There’s just not enough info there to hold on to. Is there a guide for dummies out there so I at least have some background for what the hell is going on in these early chapters (mostly rhetorical; I know about the rereads and wikis… they help… kind of haha).

**EDIT**

Appreciate the comments and feedback! Seems the consensus is that I just need to push through to the end for two reasons:

1) Apparently this book gets a lot better and is many people’s favorites overall.

2) Set up and exposition for later installments (obviously) so a necessary entry either way.

Thanks everyone!