Your favourite Malazan novel to date

[finvarre]

OK, I know this has been done many times before, especially on the Erikson board, but still, I'm quite curious about which volume of the saga is your favourite and why?

Personally, I don't agree with the usual choice - that is, the Deadhouse Gates was my least fav novel. I read The Gardens of the Moon back in 2000, and reread it 2 or three times before finally I read the entire 5 novels in a row last month. And still GotM is my favourite, mostly because of its complexity. I especially loved the beginning. My second fav would be the Midnight Tides. As for the MOI - it was great, but I was quite angry with the ending, also because I wanted more Genabackis novels, I prefer that setting to the 7 Cities one.

 

[nixie]

MOI is my favourite...the ending had me crying,MT is a close second but I haven't finished it yet.GOTM hooked me straight away

 

[Rane Longfox]

Memories of Ice. The Grey Swords are the best thing since sliced bread...

Actually, DhG isn't the most popular, in most of the polls. Its MoI that wins most of the time.
Personally:
Memories of Ice
Gardens of the Moon
Midnight Tides
Deadhouse Gates
House of Chains

 

[jim l]

midnight tides has to be the best so far if only for the introduction of tehol and bugg.I have recently read them all in reverse order to try and gain some clarity. It worked really well, try it.

 

[bendoran]

definitely MOI, itkovian and gruntle are two of the best characters puts to paper, and quick ben owns in the books. Its also an immense novel in scale and scope, the fact that it never gets boring or slow despite being the same length as the entire lord of the rings trilogy is just a testament to how good it is.

 

[Rosemary]

I have only read the first three volumes to date. So I feel that I cannot in all honesty put down my favourite one. Pehaps when I have caught up with everyone else I shall feel qualified to voice that opinion.

 

[Jonzey]

Onward, Rose!

My favs in order (in my current mood - cos it tends to change somewhat)

Deadhouse Gates
Midnight Tides
Memories of Ice
Gardens of the Moon
House of Chains

 

[GOLLUM]

Although they're all excellent my personal order from best to worst is:

Memories of Ice
Midnight Tides
Deadhouse Gates
Gardens of the Moon
House of Chains

 

[GOLLUM]

I have only read the first three volumes to date. So I feel that I cannot in all honesty put down my favourite one. Pehaps when I have caught up with everyone else I shall feel qualified to voice that opinion.

I thought you'ld started House Of Chains though?...

 

[a|one]

Deadhouse Gates, bitterly humerous and darkly entertaining. Just the way I like it.

Definitely glad I didn't skip it, I thought Anomander Rake had possibly the coolest pathos I'd ever seen, but Icarium beats him hands down. And The Fall was one of the most moving scenes I've ever read. Really didn't want it to end... waiting 3 days for a paycheck to buy HoC was just plain painful.

 

[Brys]

Sorry to be predictable, but, these are my favourites in this order:
1) Memories of Ice - some great characters here, a very powerful ending and this is the book in which you finally get to start learning properly about the Malazan world. The only problem with it is the Mhybe storyline.
2) Deadhouse Gates - the Chain of Dogs, of course. But Felisin's storyline's pretty good, and while everyone else seems to hate her, I still think she's one of the most interesting, realistic characters Erikson's written about. Iskaral Pust does a good job at providing the humour for the novel, and Icarium and Mappo provide another great storyline.
3) Midnight Tides - easily the best written of those published so far, and the humour between Tehol and Bugg, with Shurq, Harlest and Ublala is amazing. And the insight into Edur culture was very interesting. As with the first two, it was a very powerful novel, especially the ending, and this novel introduced perhaps the best character of Erikson's IMO - Rhulad Sengar. (So what if he's another Elric clone, but without stormbringer).
4) House of Chains - decent ending, but not quite as good as the others overall IMO.
5) Gardens of the Moon - lots of decent ideas, but the writing isn't that great, and it isn't anything like as powerful as any of the others. The ending wasn't that strong, and pretty much all of Erikson's flaws in the other books are here, but magnified. It wasn't a bad book at all, and it was very entertaining on the re-read, but it wasn't a great book either. Strangely enough, on the re-read I didn't find it particularly complicated at all, it was more like reading an epic scale, sword and sorcery novel.

 

[Green]

Go on then, I'll have my say...

First time round:

1) MoI, for all the reasons stated above. Not many books bring me to tears, but this one did.

2) DhG... It was about half way through this book that I realised the MBotF was amazing and I had to read as much of it as I could RIGHT NOW. 'Nuff Said, I think.

3) HoC... I liked the Karsa storyline, but thought the last half of the bood was a bit lacking in its own identity. Felt like a tack-on to DhG. Stil great.

4) MT... It's well written and gives us some good snippets of infodump, but I found most of the Letherii pointless and uninteresting. T&B excluded from that, of course.

5) GotM. I thought this was pretty good, but not great. Interesting ideas but too many cliches imo (floating mountains, deck of dragons, great big monster-hounds). I think only after Erikson elaborated on these ideas in later novels did they become interesting.

On my second read, HoC inexplicably jumped up into first place I'm not sure how it did that, but I think the emotional hits of DhG and MoI were not so strong second time round. That, combined with the fact that I was better able to appreciate the threads in HoC with a bit of hindsight ("Aaaah, so that's where that came from" etc).

****POSSIBLE SPOILERS for MoI****

MoI still got me crying, but instead of the ending, it was the bit where the T'lan Imass share their grief/thoughts with Itkovian and one of them says something like "I dreamed I stood at the First Sword's side and defied the ritual". That really touched me.

 

[Rahl Windsong]

Midnight Tides: For me, MT was the best of the 5 so far, the war between the Letherii and the Edur is very similar to some very serious problems in our own society today. I will say no more on that and if you want me to explain then PM me. To post my thoughts here would be too painful for many of us. All I can say is the main characters are the hope of both the Letherii and the Edur. In order for either race to survive they must forgive and move on to a future that is unattainable unless they do. The main characters on both sides understood this even if they had to go against their own morals because of circumstance.

I needed a box of tissue beside me throughout this book, because for me it pointed out many problems facing the human race. If we can never forgive we will never find any peace, never! It takes two for there to be a fight but once the fight starts the reason for it is forgotten, the fight is all that matters and no one ever wins. Winners can only be found in entertainment like sports in war there is only loss.

The rest of them were all great books as well and perhaps I would put GoTM at the bottom of the list but without it none of the others would have been as enjoyable to read.

Rahl

 

[Rosemary]

I thought you'ld started House Of Chains though?...[quote Gollum]

Only just started... However, so far I would have to say Memories of Ice would be the best. Maybe this will change with each further volume...

 

[Azzriel]

Midnight Tides and Memories of Ice are neck and neck for me.
then House of Chains - gotta love that animal Karsa...
Gardens of the Moon and then Deadhouse Gates..

 

[GOLLUM]

I thought you'ld started House Of Chains though?...[quote Gollum]

Only just started... However, so far I would have to say Memories of Ice would be the best. Maybe this will change with each further volume...

MOI and MT are my 2 favourite ones so far but DHG is also brilliant.

 

[Mulch]

MOI is the best book in the series, then MT, GOTM, HOC, DHG

 

[stainedglassanmarble]

have to say Midnight Tides, I just loved the characters. don't get me wrong theres no shortage of great characters in any Erikson novel to date, but I found several -Trull and Udinaas in particular- easiest to relate to by far. not to mention the usual well written battle scenes and excellent humor we've come to demand. also I was just getting bored of the Seven Cities setting, read MOI before DhG so going from that to HoC and then TB afterwards, it was refreshing to say the least.

 

[bendoran]

got to be memories of ice, it has the best ending of any book i have ever read. The attack on coral is just nonstop brilliance

 

[Jason_Taverner]

well for me
Deadhouse Gate
Memories of Ice
Gardens of the Moon
House of chains

and I currently reading midnight tides which is outstanding. I have to say that I have loved every book so far so the order above is a bit irrelevent as they are all just so good and stir all the emotions and like to see that just about everyone who read them has been upset at the ends of DHG and MOI just shows you how powerful they are and house of chains did we all just love it when the ghostly revenege came. I am slowing down my reading of midnight tides because I know there is only the bone hunters in print after that and I don't want to wait to long between books but then again I could always read them a second time ha. I prefer the seven cities setting