Malazan Book of the Fallen

I finally finished The Crippled God tonight. 

I have to say, this is the greatest epic fantasy series I've read.  The incredible detail brought to the cultures, the larger than life characters and situations, and the epic convergences just come together to make an absolutely incredible series.  Obviously I'm flush with just finishing it, but I'm totally blown away by how well it comes together in the end.  This series is really a testament to how much can be done with a bunch of hard work and talent.

Erikson and Esslemont have created easily the most thought-out, fleshed-out, and "designed" fantasy world I've ever read about.  That alone is worthy of praise, but within that world, they created a host of characters that are sympathetic, likeable, and three dimensional.  Characters you can root for and cry with and be impressed by.  They set up amazing convergences of events that bring together exactly who the reader wants brought together, and rarely do the convergences disappoint.

The Malazan book of the fallen, a 10 book series by Steven Erikson is the "mainline" plot in the universe so far.  It follows Marines from the Malazan Empire as they have adventures on all the continents of the world.  In doing so they come across many cultures and races.  Each culture and race is a fully fleshed out culture as one would expect from an Anthropologist/Archaeologist.  The series is full of heroes and oddly has very, very few villians as Erikson is fond of changing viewpoints on the reader to get the "other take" on the actions of a previous novel or chapter. 

Erikson and Esslemont have mentioned that they hate tropes and cliches, and the book does neatly avoid most fantasy cliches, not quite all, but I don't want to spoil anything.

Anyway now that it's done and it's had a satisfying conclusion, I have to fully recommend Malazan book of the falllen to anyone who likes epic fantasy, it's the very best.  There is, however, a caveat.  The first book is incredibly confusing as the reader is thrust directly in the middle of the action.  To make matters worse, the second book takes place on a different continent and contains very few characters that appear in the first book.  By the third book the nature of the series starts to take shape and you're back with well-known characters again, and at that point, I think the series hits its stride, though, I do think the first two books are good, they just happen to be much better when rereading the series.

Fantsy Fans:  Go read this series, by the end you will not regret it.

I would talk more about specifics, but I fear spoilers for those who haven't read it, if you have read it and you want to talk about it, drop me a line.