/lit/ - Literature

Alright, I can't deal with this shit anymore - I need to bitch. I've been listening to Malazan on my commute for the last few weeks, and I've hit my frustration tolerance for Erikson's "tell - don't show" problem.

A full third of each book is bloated with the POV characters' internal monologues - all of it telling the audience what they should think and feel about the other characters, almost none of which is established through mood or tone, let alone the events of the story or even a fucking flashback scene. If Erikson put half as much work into characterization as he did into the anthropology/worldbuilding, it would actually be fun to read. As it is, it seems like he decided that illustrating these things was too much of a bother and instead had his rotating and ill-defined protagonists periodically break out of character to start infodumping the audience.

And the characters. It's clear Erikson has his pet characters like Whiskeyjack and Silverfox and tries his fucking hardest to get us to like them by telling us (via other characters' monologues of course) how great they are and how much they've suffered. To be honest, the only character I like so far is Kallor since it's easy to pretend that he's well-aware he's trapped in a shitty fantasy plot with unlikeable cardboard characters and just wants to murder everyone to get this bullshit over with.

Every chapter, I was hoping that Erikson was going to feature more undead velociraptors fucking shit up, but it ends up being more vague inner turmoil and corny humor starring characters that no one gives a fuck about. At least with Bakker, you knew that every chapter would have something fucked up like a guy raping a screaming monster.

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