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The theme of the books is that power attracts power, which is fair enough, and how the mistakes of the past overlay the present.
#Malazan forums series
In fact, so many of Erikson's characters are so preposterously overpowerful that I find the series more funny than epic - this is not helped in that you often have to wait for 3,000 pages of book to go by to learn the reason Character X showed up in Location Y, as Erikson always refuses to do info exposition. I just don't feel any emotional connection to the characters (aside from Anomander Rake, whom everyone agrees is just fun because he's always allowed to make the best entrances to every scene). It's a very different fantasy world, and it's also interesting to see how well he wrapped nearly a million years of alien race conflict into what's going on in mortal human politics in his current day. It's fun to see the extent of Erikson's imagination, and, indeed, the only reason I read them now is that I love the travelogue. Now, on the other hand, the Malazan setting is incredibly rich and very detailed. Erikson starts - well, imagine you were dumped into the scene where Stannis shows up on the Wall in Book III of Martin as the first scene in the novel, but were given no backstory nor even explanation of why he was there, who Rob is, and what is going on. Martin starts with a small, simple premise (Richard visiting Ned) and expands upon that, building upon what we already know to wrap us into the story.