#inboxed

is this ur ship 🤣🤣🤣

-🍊

- @thewomanwithanorangeface 🍊

Phoenix: Don't worry, I'm fine.

Maya: Nick, I can see through that hole in your chest.

Phoenix: Then I'll just bandage it up for now. I'll go to the hospital after I've proven your innocence in today's trial.

i actually love this doodle,,,

haneen i want you to know that high fantasy connoisseur is probably the most flattering title ever given to me!! so i don't generally recommend malazan book of the fallen without caveats for a couple of reasons — & the degree of investment required is NOT one of them! at this point the malazan series overall has ~30 books, but i think that the payoff is worth reading the main series of 10 books, at the very least.

that being said, what people generally leave out in their praise of malazan is tolkien level orientalism that goes remarkably unchallenged considering the rest of the malazan series is, in part, about interrogating the metanarratives common to the fantasy genre. it's very haradrim/fremen style cultural imperialism ignored & unchecked & vilified so if you absolutely cannot look past that, then malazan is not for you.

the other thing is some truly awful scenes of sexual assault & rape, including one in book 9 that is so graphic i put the series down for a good six months after i read it. & i was in the home stretch! i feel that it's necessary to point out that erikson doesn't make these scenes pornographic or titillating in any way — they are always awful, gruesome, and incredibly difficult to read. but they are there, and i do wish someone had told me about them. i think i still would have read the series but i would have been less surprised & shocked by some of what i read.

so, with those caveats out there, i do enjoy the malazan series very much! i think it does things that most fantasy books do not, i think that erikson's asides into deep philosophical discussion are always poignant and relevant, i think he has great characters (although the series follows a cast of literally hundreds so not all of them are winners), and the worldbuilding is truly one of kind (if you've ever wanted to read something that scratched that silmarillion itch of a mysterious, rich, and detailed world with layers of history that never truly get unpeeled, then the malazan series is the closest you'll get).

so with all that out there, if you do choose to go down this route & go all in on the malazan book of the fallen, then my absolute most important bit of advice is don't worry too much? you will 100% be confused, whether you take extensive notes or just go with the flow, so if you don't remember a character or a plot line, keep pushing because he does get better about explaining himself! being thrown in the deep end is how most people describe reading gardens of the moon for the first time, and if you find yourself swept away, then it's all part of the experience!