Daniel Cunningham’s Reviews > The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen > Status Update

Holy f@&$ing pathos, Batman. I'm not going to lie, the last 25%+ of this has been an increasing struggle for me. The books have really lost the thread, and now it's just wallowing in suffering. Verbose. F@&$ing. Suffering. Maybe, as the reader, my suffering is actually an incredibly clever ploy... but I think it's just the author really quadrupling down on, frankly, the least interesting part of this entire s@&tshow.

5/10 books finished (which brings me to 43%, so the later books are... longer!?)

Book 5 was very different. We've left the continent and history of the first 4 books behind, and some of the writing style and POV behind. This book flowed more and had much more humor. No children tortured to death. Significantly fewer rapes. More death raining down from above. An indictment of greed... and neoliberal empire?

Book 3 was a step back up for me after a somewhat off-putting book 2. I've settled into the way he does characters and humor, two things that keep poking me.

I'm trying to think of a similar "series experience" and the closest (the only) one I can come up with is reading the Dark Tower/Gunslinger series. Lots of problems, annoyances, doubts, but I was drawn onward and onward. And, frankly, Malazan is better.

14% of a ~10000 page "book"/series and... definitely into it, and deep. This is going to be one of those weird "books"/series where I plow through it, am into it, like it... but get to the end and am just unsatisfied. I can feel it now.

There is tremendous, amazing, epic, eybrow-raising world building here. I mean... this is the greatest world building I've ever read. But... ehh... ??? So far book 1 > book 2