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Did you know that we too left civilization behind? The scribblers were closing in on all sides, you see. The clerks with their purple tongues and darting eyes, their shuffling feet and sloped shoulders, their bloodless lists. Oh, measure it all out! Acceptable levels of misery and suffering!’ The cane swung down, thumped hard on the ground. ‘Acceptable? Who the fuck says any level is acceptable? What sort of mind thinks that?’ Karsa grinned. ‘Why, a civilized one.’
legit the mbotf is a masterwork and Ericson's unending compassion for people that comes through was a significant for me developing a healthier view on human foibles.
Preaching to the choir. Unfortunately I have little success rate with getting friends to convert to Malazan.
Serious question, and despite my tone, I mean this in a genuinely good-faith and non-hostile way: what do you like about the Malazan books? I read the first two at the suggestion of my coworkers, but I wasn't a fan and neither of them were able to articulate why they enjoyed the series particularly well.
Like, Deadhouse kinda lingered on the whole "indigenous uprising is brutally murdering our perfect colonizers" and I was struggling to understand why I was supposed to care about the colonizers in that situation. Made it hard to sympathize with Coltaine et al.
It's been years but I don't think you're supposed to be picking sides exactly.
The malazan empire is explicitly corrupt and the invasion of continent a pointless and cruel disaster. The whirlwind in extrodinarily unnecessarily violent and doesn't represent some unified purpose but one extreme faction rising to prominence. The chain of dogs could have been entirely avoided with an orderly evacuation but greed and cowardice + political scheming means a heart rending amount of suffering is going to take place.
In this backdrop a bunch of imperfect people are trying to do their best. The wickains are facing their own annihilation as the malazan empire subsumes them, but perhaps military performance can win them some freedom, a group of people set out to try kill the person they hold responsible but get tangled in a giant mess and end up maybe making things worse or perhaps not, a shithead becomes a broken girl but maybe also hope for tempering the uprising and wresting control from a corrupt and sexually perverted elite.
It's just messy, and what drives it is people trying to do their best and often on different sides. You confront how good intentions can make mortal enemies and sometimes mortal enemies can become something else through recognition of common humanity.
The whole series is basically a meditation on the corrupting influence of empire, the momentum of historical events, the fundamental goodness in ordinary people, and how compassion can win something kinder from the ashes and blood left behind by imperial ambition.