Lengthening shadows and changing colours

It's been an oddly two-paced sort of month. The weather has definitely taken a turn for the cold and wet. The days have gotten shorter (although not so short as to make me miss Indian weather just yet), the nights darker. Overall then, definitely into supplementary Vitamin D neighbourhood.

On the other hand, there has been the occasional break in the clouds, fantastic bright sunny days, blue skies mirroring blue water. And while the whole 'I shall strive to be active this summer' thing never really happened (I mean I strove, valiantly and largely in my day-dreams, just not in the real world :P), we nevertheless managed to enjoy some of the nice weather.

Given the weather though, (yes, that's the excuse I'm going to stick to) TV has been very much a go to chill-out option :D. Rediscovering the joy of such series as White Collar and Life on Mars, while at the same time following Maria's continuing starring turn on the Norwegian Sewing Bee (NRK Symesterskapet)!

Since finishing with the Malazans (for now), I've decided to work through the not particularly short stack of unread books already sitting on my bookshelves. Minus the three and a half unread books from Song of Ice and Fire because, well, I don't trust GRRM to finish what he's started, and would really hate to go into the series not knowing if there will ever be an end in proper (i.e. book) form.

First was the second part of Stephen Fry's Mythos trilogy - Heroes. And much like the first part, I liked it, but that was about all one could say. In some ways though, the books together make more sense than individually, in my head. Looking at the Greek myths spanning the arc of 'history', so to speak, is way more interesting for me than just reading them as stories. I do hope he releases the last part as a book in the not distant future.

And finally we come to Ready Player One. This is one of that rare breed of book where I saw the film, liked it quite a lot, and more or less because of that decided to get the book! Yup, dangers galore of the heightened expectations killing the reading experience. Not so far, I must say. I mean there are bits of it I like more than others. (That attempted pseudo-romantic interlude was particularly pathetic I thought, unless there turns out to be some relevant plot point that it contributes to later on. Although I'm not holding my breath.) The best thing was that pretty much into the first couple of chapters I'd figured this was a rather different story compared to the film. Which is better? Well, I've got a few more pages before I decide for sure :).

Man! What a trip!

It's taken me a whisker under a year to finish reading The Malazan Book of the Fallen. And in the aftermath there is a distinct sense of wildly swirling thoughts and feelings. And loss. Loss? Maybe loss is a strong and not wholly appropriate word. But something like it. For one thing, I sorely miss being immersed in this world almost daily for such a long time! On the one hand there's all the different bits that keep floating up to the forefront of my recollections from all the books. On the other, there are the unanswered questions. Oh so many questions!!

As I may or may not have posted last year when I started reading the series, I first came by the Malazan books about six or seven years ago. I had Kindle copies of them but for one reason or another never really managed to get started. Maybe it was the size of the endeavour, maybe it was the fact that I'd never really bothered to try and find out much about the series. But then, last summer, given the abundance of time and the lack of proper fantasy reading in the recent past, I decided to give it a go.

I started off with my Kindle copies, getting through all of Gardens of the Moon and almost halfway through Deadhouse Gates before being thoroughly and delightedly surprised by the gift of the first five books in paperback for my birthday! Fan that I am of book-books, I decided to start over :D. 

As I said, I'm having severe Malazan withdrawal at the moment :). Which somehow led me to this article on Tor. (Yeah, I was a bit taken aback at the number of people really really into this series :D. I mean, I get it, it's awesome! But yeah, there are some things the internet is good for.) Reading through the series wrap up from the hosts, especially that from AR, it was a relief almost, to see some of my feelings so clearly reflected! In turn, I guess, it's helped me channel all the aforementioned wildly swirling thoughts and feelings into something approaching a coherent set of opinions... maybe.

This is definitely the first time I've read a series with this sort of an overlapping story line. And while it can be confusing and maybe even frustrating to start with, for me it added greatly to the enjoyment of working things out for myself. The same can be said about the amount of hand holding (or rather, lack thereof) when it comes to a variety of concepts starting with world-building and on to plot and character development. Erikson obviously has created a world with its many details well thought through. But he isn't scared of letting the reader work things out for themselves! And this is a feeling that I found very hard to not totally love once I'd gotten used to it :).

There's also the way points of view are used. It took me a little while to work this out, but the characters' points of view are just that, their points of view. They do not constitute 'absolute truth'. Which on the one hand gives the reader, on occasion, a bunch of apparently contradictory information, but on the other hand, it allows one to really try and figure out what 'really happened' while at the same time providing unmatched access to each character. I mean, it's how we see the world that in some ways makes/shows who we are. Yeah, there's definitely a lot of stuff that I've experienced with this series that I haven't before, and I feel grateful for that.

And then there were the characters themselves! Should I really go into it all? It could turn into a very long and invariably rambling post. Not that it hasn't already :). But let's put it this way, it is nearly impossible for me to settle on favourite characters. There are just so many outstanding ones I could empathise with at various points in the series. So many amazing scenes. Heartbreaking, heartwarming, terrifying, soul-destroying, joyful... Whatever you could say about these books, they could definitely never be characterised as boring :).

So what next then? From the start, I wasn't really sure how many of the different series set in the Malazan world I would want to commit myself to, so I ignored the Novels of the Malazan Empire and stuck to Steven Erikson's work. But now, given the sheer pull of the characters with their tales left unfinished in the Book of the Fallen, I feel I must before long begin with Ian Esselmont's books. Different author, same world. But will it be the same world? I suppose I'll just have to find out!