Ask Steven Erikson Your Crippled God Questions!

Hi Steven,
Thanks as always for taking the time to answer our questions.
1. The loose end that got to me most was Draconus and the twins’ search for the Errant. Do you have any plans to pick up this tale where it left off in the Karsa trilogy or elsewhere?
2. Can you give us any updates on your progress on Fall of Light? Have you been able to resolve the structural difficulties posed by the War on Death?
3. Speaking of Fall of Light, is Amazon’s listed release date of September 2015 correct or can we hope for something sooner?

Hi Steven, Thanks for such a great series. Was Olar Ethil Burn or was she lying/a different Burn? A part of Burn?

Hey :)

1) When you were playing the original tabletop game, who was your favorite character to play (ie, the most fun).

2) Whose character was Rake?

3) The one thing that I’ve struggled with resolving in my mind is the idea of Gruntle and Mappo bargaining away the children. In my head it doesn’t work for either of them, but especially it doesn’t work for Mappo. It sees like a very sudden and dramatic shift in his character and I was wondering if you could explain what led you down that path and if you feel that it’s consistant?

Thank you.
I was wondering, if the warrens are K’rul’s blood, is chaos his flesh and bones? And what of the Abyss (or the Void, or whatever you call it)? Finally, you once said of your writing set in the world of Wu (in an interview about your Star-Trek book) that it was just “writing for money”. Have you grown tired of this world? If so, that’s a shame. But as it stands, it is one of the greatest written works I have ever read. And I would gladly buy anything else you wrought.

Hi Steven.

I did a road trip down the U.S West Coast this summer – Tehol Beddict was a great travel buddy. Thanks!

I have two questions –
(a) do you ever see yourself leaving the Malazan world for good and focussing entirely on non-Malazan projects?
(b)don’t suppose you’re doing any UK readings any time soon?

Cheers.

Dear Steven,

When Tavore was asked “how long?”, she answered “the day House Paran lost it’s only son”. I have interpreted that she took up her course when Ganoes forsook his family to join the military and she had tried to do her best to win back her brother that she adores. Am I close? Since she adores Ganoes so much, I am surprised that she chose to depart alone in the end. I wonder what makes her change?

My second question is why Kruppe did not play a major part in helping the crippled god? He had merely given the bow and arrows to Torrent for him to kill Olar.

Lastly, will we ever get the chance to know the true identity of the mule?

Once again, thank you for your wonderful series.

Best Regards

No question this time around (I believe I am all out of those), just want to say thanks for writing this series, it was a pretty important part of my formative years and beyond.

Hello everyone and congratulations to all of you who have hung in there right through to the series end. It was quite a journey for me and, hopefully, the same for you. When I look back on how and where and when it all began, I could not have imagined the effect The Malazan Book of the Fallen would have on so many people. That said, every author dreams of such a future, one in which what one writes has meaning for other people. But such notions are always vague, obscured by all the intangibles of something that hasn’t happened yet.

One of those intangibles is the invitation that arrives, beginning in a tentative trickle and then becoming a steady flood, for the author to converse with his or her readers, which at first seems daunting, only to then become essential. I feel so privileged to have the opportunity to engage with you all, via this screen and TOR.com, as well as via your emails to me through StevenErikson.com. While I may not be able to respond to each and every one of you (I’d never get any work done), be assured that I appreciate your reaching out to me.

These days, the Malazan Book of the Fallen hovers in my wake – to glance back over a shoulder is to see it looming behind me, a mountain I already climbed, its shadow thrown out over me and for miles ahead. It may well be a shadow I never emerge from. You know, this damned series should probably have been my last work as an author, assembled as a final sounding note to a long career. Instead, it started it.

Shit. ‘Cause here’s the thing: what do I do for an encore? Is one even possible? That series bled me dry. It took every emotion within me and pounded each one into submission. Writing it felt like more than one lifetime: it felt like hundreds of lifetimes, all crowded into a single place and a single time, crunched and compacted but not one losing a single detail of its veracity. In that way, I died and was reborn a thousand times in these ten novels, and I wonder now how many times a single soul can go through that, without losing something, without the colours starting to fade.

And that’s the shadow. And it’s also why I try to avoid glancing back over a shoulder. So, I’m proud of Forge of Darkness. I’m satisfied with what I’ve done to date on Fall of Light. I expect Walk in Shadow to conclude the trilogy as it should. I spin round the rim of Willful Child, a part of me desperate to plunge into that vortex of absurdity again, and yet again. It beckons like a lifeline to some new iteration of me as a writer, less of the weary dismissive wave than the gesture of something close to defiance.

Compassion is a plea. I voiced it through ten straight novels. Of that (and as I see that virtue die day by day around me, in that depressing deluge of despair and stupidity we call the News), I have nothing left to give. Now don’t take that as self-pity. It isn’t. It would be without the existence of the Malazan Book of the Fallen (for me, that is). But the series does exist, and in it I said everything I had to say, in as many ways of saying it as I could. That voice has run its course. And I know, for good or ill, that it was the best I could do, and if that isn’t good enough, then nothing is.

And maybe that’s another part of that shadow. The whispering thought: maybe nothing is. Good enough, I mean. A notion leading me back, yet again, to my ongoing reconciliation with failure. Compassion as a plea is actually a complicated idea. It demands so much of the reader (and so many rejected the request, as was and is their right, and for me, no harm no foul) and then, when the reader accepts, it demands still more of them. Sure, the plot says ‘engage your brain for this: you’ll need it’ but the story says ‘now engage your feelings, and yes, if I can, I will make you cry, and grieve, and, hopefully, come out the other side feeling strangely elated, with life shining a bit brighter than it did before.’ It’s a big ask, because it wants your trust, and the only trust I could offer in return was this promise: It will work out in the end. We will end up in a place, open and solemn and brimming with love. Because (and this is so obvious and so simple it hurts to say it) you can’t know compassion without love. Of course, the only way for me to say that was to assure you all that I knew what I was doing, and where I was going. But sometimes that’s not enough.

There was no primer on how to read this series. Maybe there should have been one. But the only primer I came up with was Gardens of the Moon, the novel itself. Talk about piling on, huh? That said, it was also my primer.

My deep appreciation goes to Amanda and Bill. Between the two of them, only Bill knew what he was getting into. So kudos to Amanda, especially since she hated the first few chapters of Gardens of the Moon. I always looked forward to her surprise, her responses to the unexpected – it’s easy for re-readers to forget, but each scene and each novel was written to an audience that did not know what to expect, lending a purity to its response (and this is most relevant regarding Hetan’s hobbling and her rebirth, but of that, more later). At the same time, yes, I did my best to make sure there was enough meat on the bones for re-reads.

And for Bill, thank you for plunging right into theme and subtext, and for assuming that I knew what I was up to (believe me, I never got that at Iowa!). My ideal audience is the one whose radar is inclined in that direction, and who holds to that faith in an author, unless and until proved otherwise – and it seems you held to that faith all the way through (barring a few hiccups on my part, mea culpa and all that), and each time you ventured into that territory, it was so gratifying to see other readers chime in. There have been some great discussions and debates throughout this (Re)Read.

This is not to imply that I am disappointed in readers who read just for the prospect of being entertained, or propelled along a plot or storyline. I’m not disappointed at all, probably because I laid traps for you time and time again, pits for your unwary headlong rush – the plunge intended to make you feel whether you wanted to or not. With luck, you stepped into a few of those. If I was a god, I’d throw you into every one of them, but I’m not (lucky you!).

Now, here’s my usual overlong preamble, before getting to these questions. So, here we go…

One last note. Willful Child has just come out both in the US (and Canada) and the UK. It’s something of a … uh … departure. I needed to kick some crap out of the way (still do), and let loose (yeah, more of that, too). Recall my mentioning those ambitions of mine as a young writer? Well, I may be marginally wiser, or at least more realistic, these days. I’m certainly older. But for all that, the child inside remains. It’d be awesome if Willful Child not only did well, but ended up on film or television. Thing is, it’ll take hype for that. Fan-based hype. So, I’ve got my fingers crossed here. If you have fun reading Willful Child, let it be known!

Cheers
SE

38 comments

1. Hungry_For_Hands
view all by Hungry_For_Hands | Wednesday November 05, 2014 12:20pm EST
Hi Steven, I was wondering if you could talk a bit about Hetan’s revival and reunion with Tool. We had quite the lively discussion a few weeks back. What were your thoughts and motivations for bringing her back? Some felt that something was slightly off; that you could really feel the weight of the author, so to speak. And some felt that it lessened or cheapened Hetan’s experience in DoD. Others loved the revival and embraced the happy ending for that family.

SE: I recall StudiousLock providing a most succinct defense of my decision in this matter (worth going back and looking for it). That argument pretty much hit the nail on the head. As I mentioned above, this was written with a new reader in mind: the hobbling has already delivered its impact, its wounding, and to my mind if I left it alone, in order to deliver yet another poignant point about the brutality of humanity, then it would have felt for me gratuitous – not dismissing the very real notion of bearing witness and not turning away (which still holds as my motivation for writing the hobbling scene in the first place), but in the sense of one of my personal rules of fiction. I’m responsible for everything I write in a story. Not some fictitious, invented character. Me. The guy sitting here at Corner Stone Café in Victoria on a grey Saturday afternoon. What I write I then need to answer, for myself, to myself. And I need to answer it in a way that others will witness. The scene of Hetan’s rebirth was foreshadowed by Hood in Toll the Hounds, on the day of his appearance in Darujhistan, as he walked the city. It was foreshadowed in what he decided, with respect to a minor, unimportant city guardsman. In his voice I said: No. Not this time. If I am to have the power of life and death over these people, then damned if I won’t use it. This once. With this one man. I restore a life because I have the power to do so. Don’t like it? Tough shit. Well, as a writer writing those words, feeling the rush of that sentiment (the entire ‘I’m going to save this guy’ scene was spontaneous. I didn’t know it was coming. I expected the poor bastard to die), and then experiencing the high that came with that liberation, I knew then that I now had justification to do it at least one more time, with the most heinous of crimes committed against a character. I’ve often noted that Toll the Hounds is the series cipher. The cipher is this: the creator has the power to create and to destroy. And this power will be used. In this ten volume series of stories, he will test his own morality, by every compass imaginable. Which way will he fall? Into death or into life? Join me and let’s find out, shall we? In Toll the Hounds, Kruppe tells you that none of this real, and adds, it’s more real than anything else.
I saved Hetan because she, Toc, Tool, and all of you deserved it. I guess we know now which way this creator fell.

2. Kulp
view all by Kulp | Wednesday November 05, 2014 12:22pm EST
Steven, During the Q&A for the last book, I asked about Blistig and how much of his arc you had planned out before you started writing. At the time I had only read the series once, and reading the Crippled God again along with this reread really changed how I saw Blistig and his reactions to Tavore and the rest of the Bonehunters. It made him much more sympathetic because he’s representative of how a “normal” person would handle the extreme conditions put on the Bonehunters. My question is this: we don’t actually get a closing scene with Blistig like we do with other characters. We don’t see him either apologizing to Tavore or embracing her. Was this a deliberate choice on your part? Did you want to leave Blistig’s resolution ambiguous at the end of the series? Or did you just run out of pages to fit everything in? As a side note, I want to thank you for writing this wonderful series, it is by far my favorite fantasy series ever. And thank you for allowing this re-read to occur, and thank you for your personal participation, it has been such a treat for us fans. Thanks so much.

SE: If Blistig is the ‘everyman’ point of view, the ‘normal, reasonable man’s very cogent objections to not knowing, not trusting, not quite believing … then is he not your representative in this series? I left Blistig’s response blank (even in my mind) because I did not know how my audience would respond to the series. If I think on him now, somewhere in the shadows of those final scenes, I see him give a grudging nod, and surely that’s enough. At least, it is for me.

3. Steve Everett
Wednesday November 05, 2014 12:26pm EST
actually more of a comment and apology. Several years (2006/07?) ago I recognized you in a bookstore on Granville St (Vancouver Canada), when you entered through the front and were racing to the back door. I pulled you aside and commented on your books, explaing what I liked and what I didn’t. I hope I didn’t seem too rude or obnoxious in the process as you were very gracious in listening to my comments. Your books are not light reading, they require both pause and reflection to fully understand the story you are telling so thank you very much for relating the stories of the Fallen

SE: I was at a bookstore in Vancouver? Indeed a rare occurrence. I’m not enamoured of that city, to be honest. I’m not even enamoured of this province. But I live here anyway. Go figure. As for explaining what you didn’t like, well, please accept my apologies, because I am fairly certain it all bounced off. That’s not to say I didn’t listen. I did. But I also didn’t agree, if you see what I mean. A writer hits and misses. It’s just how it is. I learned that pretty early on. Granted, through our public work, we invite others to come up to us and tell us what they liked and didn’t like, and so as a general rule of course I’ll be as gracious as possible: alas, it’s a wall swiftly raised to fend off the unintentional assault on our self-esteem and self-worth, and only rarely does something get through the defenses. Since I don’t recall the incident, it’s safe to say I survived your critiques, so you have no need to apologise. Glad you enjoyed the series.

4. meyna
view all by meyna | Wednesday November 05, 2014 12:27pm EST
Hello Mr. Erikson: Thank you for joining us here. I first just want to say that after Tor released the ebook omnibus of the complete MBotF, I started imagining a massive, coffee-table sized physical omnibus and thinking I would pay a high price for it, though it is probably infeasable. But, I really wanted to ask about how your work as an anthropologist has affected your view of history and how that view shows in your writing. Throughout the Malazan Book of the Fallen we see observations about history constantly being lost, and this trope culminating with the unwitnessed Bonehunters. Brys tells Tavore in the end that they were not unwitnessed, but Tavore responds with: “We shall be forgotten. All of this, it will fade into the darkness, as all things will.” While some characters like Tavore accept this, some, like Samar Dev, lament it: “History, she realized, was mostly lost. No matter how diligent the recorders, the witnesses, the researchers, most of the past simply no longer existed. Would never be known. The notion seemed to empty her out somewhere deep inside, as if the very knowledge of loss somehow released a torrent of extinction within her own memories-moments swirling away, never to be retrieved. She set a finger in one groove etched into the stone, followed its serpentine track downward as far as she could reach, then back up again. The first to do so in how long?” Your writing seems to show that you recognize the incomplete picture that history paints. Anthropological work can uncover very interesting things about history, but there are so many facts lost, so many emotions missing, and so many convergences unrecognized. Do you accept this or lament it as you follow your anthropological endeavors? I ask because I am currently training as an archaeologist, but I feel suffocated at times when I consider how incomplete every picture of history that I study is. I fall into the lamentation camp, and it is difficult to accept. I am grateful to have had the chance to read the rich history of Malaz which, among many other great things, gives a glimpse of the strong interconnectedness of the world and its inhabitants across immense scales of space and time. Though I do envy the elder gods who have witnessed the world since effectively the beginning, I recognize the futility of that desire. At any rate, I want to thank you, Mr. Esslemont, all of your gaming buddies, and everyone else involved in bringing this incredible story to us all.

SE: Do I lament all that is both lost and will never be recovered? Yes, but I also temper it with ‘even if we knew, we’d still not learn from it.’ That probably sounds too cynical. Anyway, it’s that absence, the countless blank slates marring the narrative we so long for when it comes to the past (ours, the world’s), that in turn invite your imagination. What you don’t and can’t know, you can invent. For every truth hidden away you have the riposte of common sense (something undervalued in archaeology, as I’m sure you’re discovering, simply because common sense is not a ‘scientific’ notion, verifiable only in the stupidity of its absence). Anthropology desperately wants to be a science: it embraces the scientific method in the recording of and the analysis of human culture, past and present. Then it gets carried away, applying statistical techniques of data-gathering to ensure the removal of researcher-bias in the endeavor. Which is, most of the time, stupid. I’ve stuck a shovel in the ground at a randomly generated locale, finding nothing since I was on a steep slope, while knowing that thirty meters away, down on the old oxbow, ancient people camped, butchered animals and generally lived thousands of years ago … none of which I could recover. Some report on the survey was generated, of course, saying that nothing of cultural significance was found in that area. So, stupidity yields a lie. Big surprise, and yes, as you say, frustrating and suffocating. As a new archaeologist, you can of course challenge all that. You can apply common sense to excavation, survey and analysis. But before you do, take a deep breath, acquire a thick hide, steel your resolve, and buy a tank. As a last note, be on the lookout for absence-of-evidence = evidence-of-absence. It’s a pernicious argument in your chosen discipline (and here’s the most absurd example I’ve noted of late: identical skeletal remains of hominids found on the coast of N. Africa just opposite Gibraltar, and in Gibraltar itself: the conclusion? These peoples walked to the land visible across the strait, and they did it via all of the North African coast, up through the Middle East, and then back west along the south part of Europe. Why? No evidence of boats from that time period, of course. It’s too early. But why is it too early for boats? Because we have no evidence of boats. But … but … oh, never mind).

Lamentation is fine, by the way. It’s a reasonable response, all the more valuable to your soul for the virtue of it being a genuine and honest feeling. Walk the ruins and ponder…

5. djk1978
view all by djk1978 | Wednesday November 05, 2014 12:37pm EST
Hi Steven, I might come back with more but there’s one thing in tCG that I’d like to ask about. Generally speaking you haven’t presented us in this series with a lot of nameless and faceless redshirts. The enemy is usually known and has a voice. In the last book there does seem to be a group which has no PoV which is uncharacteristic. It’s the Kolansii armies that the Forkrul Assail direct. I guess it’s deliberate since these armies are compelled by the voice of the Forkrul Assail but does that relegate them to brainwashed automata? It appears that it does. Is it then a mercy that they go willingly to the slaughter in battle? Could you lay out some thoughts from your perspective on this? While nothing for me will ever replace the experience of my first foray into fantasy with the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, this series for me is incomparable to anything else I’ve read in fantasy fiction. It is one of my all time favorites now and I applaud the work you and Cam have put into this world. Thanks!

SE: There’s only so much room, both in the story and in my beleaguered skull. That said, the notion of righteous justice can be a blinding one, an unthinking one, an inflexible one. In its thrall, people do the most horrendous things…

6. Fiddler
view all by Fiddler | Wednesday November 05, 2014 01:29pm EST | amended on Friday November 07, 2014 10:26am EST
Hello Steven, In tCG the truth comes out that Tavore is a Talon, and did she inherit this position? This explains a lot on her connections with Shadowthrone, and especially Cotillion. Also, in Throatslitter’s POV in DoD, we knew that there was another Talon within the 14th, because he had seen signs. And how she was able to find Baudin and assign her to get Felisin out of the Otataral minecamp back in DG. I have three questions about this: 1. Was Tavore’s father a Talon? It would explain how she got the keenest military minds to visit House Paran and have them reenact historical battles against her, thereby sharpening her military mind. Another point of interest here would be that both Throatslitter and Baudin were recruited into the Talon by their Fathers/elders. 2. Tavore revealed to Blistig why he was being kept around (to preserve the truth on what happened with the Chain of Dogs and at Aren), and that he had been shielded from assassination attempts. Was this Tavore herself doing that, or did she involve Throatslitter in this, through the signs (instructions?) that he mentioned in DoD? 3. Was Tavore the Head of the Talons, and her father possible before her? I ask this because her Talon was made of gold, and the one Baudin wore wasn’t, and because she kept it in a wooden box with the Paran family crest on it. As usual, thank you for your time and effort in answering our questions. -Fiddler

SE: Everything you suggest sounds very plausible. Let’s go with it.

7. Rick Bennett
Wednesday November 05, 2014 01:37pm EST
Hey Stephen! Thank you for the series, you probably hear this all the time, but you and ICE have given my reading nerve so many fantastic moments, countless laughs and scares! Thank you both so much! Two quick questions, how difficult is it to plan and then write the battles, each one has been fantastic, varied and breathtaking. Did you need like a diorama to act it out? Lastly editors, do you pick people that have no attachment to the series or the same editors that follow you through the series? I only ask because if you asked myself (a fan), I just would not be able to do it! Purely for selfish reasons as I’d want to see the finished article when its done! Whereas those with no attachment I’d imagine wouldnt mind knowing how it all plays out. Again thank you for the journey!

SE: I tend to map out battles rather than create dioramas (which sounds like a lot of work and a bit awkward to take with me to the café when I’m about to write the scene). The key to writing battle scenes is to remember the third enemy – the environment – and to stay focused on details relating directly to very specific points of view. Too many history books recount battles from that passive, distant, quasi-objective perspective so favoured by historians. They can make the most exciting engagement appallingly dull. The personal perspective always works best, especially since its awareness is so limited, so truncated by chaos, that as the writer you need only hint at the bigger picture.

Editors … I don’t pick my editors if by editors you mean those who work for the publishers. But if you mean my advance readers, why yes, I do torture them by dribbling chapters their way every few months, and yes, they seem to like being tortured. Put that way, it’s all sounding weirdly twisted…

8. CallMeMhybe
Wednesday November 05, 2014 01:46pm EST
Hi Steven, Thanks as always for taking the time to answer our questions. 1. The loose end that got to me most was Draconus and the twins’ search for the Errant. Do you have any plans to pick up this tale where it left off in the Karsa trilogy or elsewhere? 2. Can you give us any updates on your progress on Fall of Light? Have you been able to resolve the structural difficulties posed by the War on Death? 3. Speaking of Fall of Light, is Amazon’s listed release date of September 2015 correct or can we hope for something sooner?

SE: Ignore the release dates. I think I have resolved the War on Death storyline in Fall of Light. It’ll all be there. At the moment, I’m closing in on completing the civil war story line, which will leave me with completing the War on Death storyline. It proceeds, if at a measured pace.

9. Canadian_Tehol
Wednesday November 05, 2014 01:49pm EST
Hi Steven, Greetings from Toronto. I am a big fan and have read every book in the series several times. The level of detail and twisting and entwinning story lines have completely changed my expectations of fantasy literature – for the best. While there are a few lose ends through out the series that have yet to be tied, the only one that has kept irking in the back of my brain is ‘Who is Ruthan Gudd’. Are you planning on revisiting this character and providing more back story around his past with Draconus or why a T’lan Imass bowed to him and called him “elder”. Any more info you can provide is greatly appreciated. Canadian_Tehol

SE: By the completion of the Kharkanas trilogy, you should be able to work out who Ruthan Gudd is, or was, when he didn’t use that name, and wasn’t called that by anyone, and he had no idea who or what he would become, or even when, nor what would happen when he did. Become Ruthan Gudd, that is. All we know is that he did, and that he went by another name before becoming known by the name you know him by, and by.

10. Tabbyfl55
view all by Tabbyfl55 | Wednesday November 05, 2014 02:01pm EST
Did you and Cam plan your last names so that you’d be next to each other on the bookstore shelves? If so, I like it.

SE: Entirely coincidental, but yeah, I like it, too.

11. WeilderOfTheMonkeyBlade
Wednesday November 05, 2014 02:48pm EST
Hi Steve Firstly, I finished the Crippled God a few days ago, for the first time. And yes, about twenty minutes after putting it down, whilst having my breakfast, I started crying :) First question – and this is one thats been bugging *pauses to grin* me for a while. Does Tavore know that she killed Felisin? I cant wait to do a reread to find this out – something she said when she met Ganoes just made me think that she did. 2. This has been said before, but, who the hell is Ruthan Gudd? I mean, teasing us is enough, but this is torture. He’s just so fricking awesome. 3. Is Badalle like a Tanno Spirit Walker, with her sorcery? 4. (Now, I have to appologise for being greedy) Did the other survivng marines and heavies go to Smiley’s with Fiddler at the end – do they all spend their time hangning out there. (I reckon Hellian wouldn’t mind that) Finally, I just want to thank you for writing the BEST series ever. Seriously, so good! They’ve kept me entranced for two years, and I reckon they will for a long time still. They’ve also inspired me, a 17 year old, to write – I’m on my fourth book :) They’re a mix of Malazan, First Law and Bernard Cornwell. Lovely, bloody military fantasy. Also, what’s your opinion on the band Caladan Brood??

SE: So many questions and so little time! The loose ends shall remain loose until such time that strings are gathered and knots made. Or not. The fates of the characters are for you to invent. More directly, no, Tavore did not know, does not know. Yes, Badalle is a lot like a spiritwalker. Glad to hear you’re writing and best of luck.

Strident stuff, that music by Caladan Brood, huh?

12. SamarDev
view all by SamarDev | Wednesday November 05, 2014 02:59pm EST
Hi Steven, thanks again for joining us, and for giving us this series! Before asking a question, I’ll share a good memory. I think the end of the series is a good place to share it, as it is how I ‘met’ it. Apart from Tolkien in my teens, I had always read a lot but no fantasy. Until I discovered tMBoTF, I think somewhere in 2006/2007. I remember my boyfriend suggesting me GotM, standing on his bookshelf. I started reading, didn’t understand any of it (warrens?!?), but was utterly fascinated. So after I finished it, I sat silent for about five minutes, and started all over again. That helped and afterwards I was hooked and never let go anymore. Thanks to this reread I discovered more fantasy-series on tor.com (the usual: Martin, then Jordan, then Rothfuss). I all liked them a lot, but there is something about first love that’s special :-). And apart from that, your books definately have the depth other series are missing. But, here my question. In the Crippled God it becomes clear that the Malazan Book of the Fallen isn’t ‘just’ about all the Malazan soldiers I’d expected to fall during the series, but also the Book of the Crippled God. So, a subtitle with double meaning, and one that’s very fundamental to the whole series. After you finish the book, your work as writer is done and the book is out into the world. Where it might get translated. And that is where I wonder how you think about that. Are you involved with the translations, so they will do right to your idea’s? Or do you have to (or want to) ‘let it go’ and trust the translations will be alright? That might go amiss. For example, some years back, pending the publication of tCG, the Dutch publisher decided to reissue the series with a new undertitel: Game of Gods (Spel der goden). And Memories of ice became Under the spell of the desert (In de ban van de woestijn). As I read all books after DG in English, seeing that undertitle after finishing tCG I couldn’t believe my eyes. I couldn’t imagine you agreeing “yes, now you suggest it, that sounds like a better undertitle for my life work”. So: are you involved with the translation of your books; and what do you think of translations like these which (in my opinion) do your work no justice?

SE: Translations are out of my hands. I have no control over any of that: nor can I determine the quality of those translations. As for reworking titles, yeah, they can be all over the place. English is not a very literal language, compared to many others, and so new iterations are often necessary when it comes to titles (English is heavy on the connotative).

13. travyl
view all by travyl | Wednesday November 05, 2014 03:06pm EST
Hi Steven In the reread is was often discussed that the series is about redemption … Why was Mallick Rel not punished? Why not at least a comment, that he hates his position as emperor? And in that light: Thank you for Ono’s Toolan’s ending. And Olar’Ethils. Ganoes Paran was at the very beginning and in the end, but we left him pretty much outside of the story after his becoming Master of the Deck. Did you always plan it that way, or did you think him too powerful to still be a focus character?

SE: Read Cam’s novels for more on Rel. As for Ganoes Paran, well, the storylines I elected to follow left him on the sidelines as you say, but I knew he’d be back, and where he wasn’t, Tavore was. It was the best I could do in terms of balance and commitment.

14. PorusReign
view all by PorusReign | Wednesday November 05, 2014 03:31pm EST
Hey Steve I’d like to thank you for not dying and for finishing the MBOTF. A little mordid (and selfish) perhaps, but this was a real concern from book 6 onwards. I would have had to turn to Ouija boards to find closure. When playing the original game did you know you were going to write such a large series? At what point were you aware? (Did the knowledge affect how you played?) When did the theme of compassion come to the fore? Was it prevelent whilst you were playing? How did it develop? Once you started writing did any characters surprise you? Do things you didn’t want them to do or expect them to do? Or did these ‘surprises’ all play out in the role playing? Are there anymore PS Publishing novellas due? Thanks for all your work and contributions, for staying involved and for finishing this series.

SE: After book six? Why then? Was there something in that book that made you think I was more inclined to keel over, than before its publication? Anyway, while gaming, we weren’t necessarily thinking of a large series of novels: we were just tracking the trajectory of a massive story. It wasn’t until later that I ran a group knowing that they were part of the specific events to come in the novels. Regarding the theme of compassion arising during the gaming, well, I suppose it did, but more as a consequence of being a GM who forces moral quandaries on the players, which I was in the habit of doing. They soon learned to never trust the easy choice. I don’t think the knowledge of impending fictional versions of the campaigns affected the gameplay, since I run a very narrative, dialogue-heavy, often action-less style of game. I do my best to make it as much a game about ideas and how to live than anything else. No loot quests from me, ever.

Characters often surprise me, and so did players. All part of the fun.

I’ve promised Pete Crowther at PS a new Bauchelain and Korbal Broach novella as soon as I’m done Fall of Light.

15. Twosteps
Wednesday November 05, 2014 04:10pm EST
Thanks for a writing a terrific series. It’s really opened my eyes about how much better Fantasy series can be. Should our take away be that Tiam is in fact a D’ivers, (Since she sembled in the final book from nearly all dragons) and since her blood was the catalyst for Soletaken…she is in effect the link between the two?

SE: That’s a good take away, better than the local Chinese restaurant we used to use here in Victoria. Last time everything arrived cold and we’re only three blocks away from the place.

And it took an hour and a half.

Hello,

Really enjoyed the series. It gave me a lot to ponder both in relation to your fantasy world but to the real world questions you raise in the story. Here is one related to your fantasy world: Given that Hedge roams around as a ghost who can conjur up Cussers at will for a bit, is it possible for someone to be a Soletaken / D’ivers company of sappers and if so would they be the strongest thing in the malazan world?

Thank you for taking the time to answer this very serious question.

Thank you sir for a master class in the nature of compassion.

I picked up Gardens of the Moon in ’99 and once Deadhouse Gates was published and read, realized I was witnessing something truly rare and remarkable.
Each time I re-read the series (every two years or so), something new is gleaned, and previously held notions are yet again up-ended.
The finish of the series left me humbled, thoughtful and satisifed, but with one niggling question left unaswered.
Why Whiskeyjack?
The flora and fauna of Wu are not ours – the naming conventions are not ours, yet here is this anomalous name.
The question was so niggly that it left me waiting through the entire series for the other shoe to drop – and it never did. Yes, I DO have a touch of OCD, thank you very much.
If you have any pity at all, put me out of 14 years of misery – did you just like the sound of the name or were you making a sly reference to a certain pesky demi-god who lurks around your boyhood home?

PS – Thank you as well for Willful Child. I have been rationing it out on a chapter by chapter basis, and managed to keep the snickering fairly quiet until the last paragraph of page 258. At that point I apparently suffered a cognitive break, and suddenly the entire book had been re-cast in Gary Larson-Vision.
Oh dear…..

39. Wilbur
VIEW ALL BY WILBUR | FRIDAY NOVEMBER 07, 2014 06:50PM EST
Dear Steven,

I have only two minor questions about this series.

Ha ha! That is joke, this has to be the combination of most enjoyable and most confusing and most sprawling set of books ever written. If you had a book written by Jack Vance in the style of Mary Renault about a world envisioned by Robert Silverberg and in the spirit of Graham Greene and edited by Neal Stephenson and funded by Eric Ambler, I still doubt it would be as complex and consuming.

And as a result, the volume of curiosity and unknowns and unnoticed answers in my head is too large to plumb for just a few questions.

Thanks again.

SE: Okay, this will have to be my last session on this Q&A, as I have a novel to write!

40. worrywort
VIEW ALL BY WORRYWORT | FRIDAY NOVEMBER 07, 2014 07:17PM EST | AMENDED ON FRIDAY NOVEMBER 07, 2014 11:00PM EST
1) What happened to poor old Gethol? Even TCG didn’t like him very much?
2) Do you have an endgame in mind for the Bauchelain & Korbal Broach novellas or will it remain a series of (excellent) vignettes, for lack of a better term?
3) Can you postpone the Karsa trilogy just a little and insert an Ormulogun/Gumble quintet of novels beforehand?

SE: Yeah, poor old Gethol. I picture him sitting in a tower somewhere, bored rigid. As for an endgame for Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, yes, there is a final story to this set of novellas (there will be nine in all). As for postponing Karsa, it seems I’m doing that without the benefit of Ormulogun and Gumble, given how long Fall of Light’s taking!

41. kjtherock
VIEW ALL BY KJTHEROCK | FRIDAY NOVEMBER 07, 2014 08:37PM EST
It would be nice to see a Bauchelain and Korbal Broach novella to see how K took to ice. Just wanting to thank you and Ian for this series. I loved how it makes you think.

SE: ‘K took to ice’? Huh?

42. BDG
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 08, 2014 02:39AM EST
No question this time around (I believe I am all out of those), just want to say thanks for writing this series, it was a pretty important part of my formative years and beyond.

SE: Thanks, BDG, for all your commentary on this re-read. Glad you found the series rewarding.

43. Anomander_Purake
VIEW ALL BY ANOMANDER_PURAKE | SATURDAY NOVEMBER 08, 2014 05:08PM EST
Hey :)

This is my first time posting a question on the end-of-book Q&As, and I just don’t have the words to express how meaningful the book series had been to me these past few years. I have some questions I would like to ask (I apologize in advance for any grammatical errors, English isn’t my native language):

1. Cassane (@18) beat me to it, but I would really like to hear about the semblance of identity between you and the Crippled God, which you’ve stated in-book as the author of the Malazan Book of the Fallen. I have found it both deeply troubling and oddly beautiful. I think it the most compassionate thing you as the writer could have done, in your own way accepting the Crippled God as your creation just like all the other characters. But on the other hand, your implied acceptance of all the truly horrendous things he had done is horrifying…

SE: Well, yeah, he did some horrifying things. Wounded souls do that (just look around). For me, writing is all about climbing into the skins of other people, other mind-sets, no matter how uncomfortable that may turn out to be. I know we’re hammering away at the notion of compassion, but that’s where such feeling starts, isn’t it? And this is what happens to a reader who falls into a story and its characters: it takes them places they never expected to go, with emotions they never expected to experience. And it’s the same for me.

2. Having been a fan of fantasy literature for over two decades now, and I have found your books to be surprisingly refreshing and accurate when it comes to portraying female characters. Most books either glance right over them (Tolkien comes to mind) or portray them so stereotypically that I find it impossible to take them seriously. I’m mostly thinking about Tavore here, but it is relevent to each and every character in your books: for the most part Tavore is not feminine at all, and is almost gender-less, but even so something womanly breaks through at odd times. Being a mother figure to her army and the children of the Snake, for instance, or her embarassed wish that the statue depicting her in Letheras be beautiful. I would really appreciate it if you could elaborate on that.

SE: Elaborate on Tavore or on the portrayal of women? If the former: Tavore was and remains for me one of my favourite characters to write, to a large extent because she was all about holding back, revealing as little as possible, while a cauldron churned inside (culminating in that scream, which I’ve known was coming for most of the series – can you imagine how that felt, keeping her bottled up for scene upon scene? Enough to drive mad virtually every character around her – and many of you readers, besides. I’ll touch more on this with a later question.

If the latter, then yes, there was deliberation and intent in how women would be portrayed in the Malazan world. It has its construct, having to do with magic as a discipline and non-gender-specific hierarchies of power, but it also had a lot to do with the dismissive treatment of women among (male) fantasy writers, particularly when they choose the quasi-Medieval Eurocentric setting (with all its inherent assumptions on permissible roles). It’s not even something that’s gone away. It persists, and it remains pernicious. Once you’ve assumed a patriarchy, you’re stuck with all the other bullshit that comes with it. Once you’ve assumed a patriarchy, you’re making a statement about ‘normality’ regardless of the world you’re writing about. You’re assuming that things will fall out this way because it always has fallen out this way: but that’s a huge (and sexist) assumption to begin with, since it posits no profound cultural impact to things like magic, dragons, undead, gods and goddesses. That’s just lazy. But more to the point, it’s systemic sexism, pervading even our escapist literature (meaning for just over half the human population, it’s no escape at all, is it?). That strikes me as both unfair (but not in a patronizing sense) and criminal (in a moral sense). It was no accident that Tavore, the leader of the Bonehunters, was a woman, and a confounding one at that. It’s no accident that she was also a lesbian. It’s no accident that she was plain, instead of breathtakingly beautiful. It’s no accident that what she presented to others gave virtually no hint of her internal life, her hidden landscape, and, more poetically, her secret garden. Simply put, it’s not for us to know (and by ‘us’ I mean ‘men,’). Is that frustrating? Well, not to me. I’m with Springsteen on this one: no greater wonder can exist for a man – and by that I don’t mean pedestals or worship or objectification. I mean respect, and delight in the emotion it engenders. Tavore was hand’s off for me because I had no place in her garden. I loved that. I still do. And when she asks if her statue will be beautiful, I know my own answer. Oh yes, she will be beautiful.

3. When choosing names for characters which are apparently “meaningless” in English, is there any symbolism implied behind your choice of naming? I’m thinking of Tavore here again: Mount Tavore in Israel/Palestine is an ancient symbol of strength and promise in both Judaic and Christian mythology. Was hers – and others’ names – planned, or is this just coincidence?

SE: There are no such thing as coincidences.

Again, thank you so much for such wonderful books. I have truly fallen in love with them, and the only resentment I have towards you is for the very real possibility that I may never read anything as good as this book series.

44. Cassanne
VIEW ALL BY CASSANNE | SUNDAY NOVEMBER 09, 2014 02:31AM EST
Another thing I keep wondering – how does it feel to be talking to people who call themselves after your creations? Fiddler, SamarDev or Anomander for example. Is it distracting, fun, vaguely annoying? Or do you not register it like that?

SE: Oddly enough, I don’t register it like that, or at all, even. It’s nice.

45. Estel
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 09, 2014 12:05PM EST
Hi Steven,

First of all, thanks (both to you and Ian) for this wonderful universe and this absolutely enchanting story of the fallen and the witnessed.

Now, the questions,
1) How long has it been since events of the unchaining of the Crippled God and rechaining of Korabas, when the epilogue with Fiddler fishing on Malaz isle takes place?
2) Who is the emperor of the Malazan empire (if it still exists) during the above mentioned scene?

Also, an unrelated question,
3) From Ian’s 6th book Assail, can you share your thoughts on the identity of the Tiste Andii whom Fisher named Jethiss?

Thanks once again and hope you have a great day.

SE: About a year, and the emperor mentioned is Mallick Rel (who, it turns out, isn’t half bad as an emperor). Regards Cam’s novel, no, I cannot possibly comment.

48. Jerkface
MONDAY NOVEMBER 10, 2014 04:35PM EST
Hello,

Really enjoyed the series. It gave me a lot to ponder both in relation to your fantasy world but to the real world questions you raise in the story. Here is one related to your fantasy world: Given that Hedge roams around as a ghost who can conjur up Cussers at will for a bit, is it possible for someone to be a Soletaken / D’ivers company of sappers and if so would they be the strongest thing in the malazan world?

Thank you for taking the time to answer this very serious question.

SE: You pose a terrifying possibility. Recall that the Malazan Army tried with entire companies of sappers, only to find that they blew each other up too often and usually at inopportune times. I would imagine your D’ivers sappers to be shortlived (but amusing).

50. Shrike
MONDAY NOVEMBER 10, 2014 10:19PM EST
Thank you sir for a master class in the nature of compassion.

I picked up Gardens of the Moon in ’99 and once Deadhouse Gates was published and read, realized I was witnessing something truly rare and remarkable.
Each time I re-read the series (every two years or so), something new is gleaned, and previously held notions are yet again up-ended.
The finish of the series left me humbled, thoughtful and satisifed, but with one niggling question left unaswered.
Why Whiskeyjack?
The flora and fauna of Wu are not ours – the naming conventions are not ours, yet here is this anomalous name.
The question was so niggly that it left me waiting through the entire series for the other shoe to drop – and it never did. Yes, I DO have a touch of OCD, thank you very much.
If you have any pity at all, put me out of 14 years of misery – did you just like the sound of the name or were you making a sly reference to a certain pesky demi-god who lurks around your boyhood home?

PS – Thank you as well for Willful Child. I have been rationing it out on a chapter by chapter basis, and managed to keep the snickering fairly quiet until the last paragraph of page 258. At that point I apparently suffered a cognitive break, and suddenly the entire book had been re-cast in Gary Larson-Vision.
Oh dear…..

SE: Yes, his name derives from that bird, which would occasionally haunt our camps on digs. That said, there was no deliberate blending of attributes or characteristics between that bird and the character in the books. It was just a name we used. It was briefly problematic when I first sold Gardens of the Moon, but not as problematic as Hedge’s original name (Prairie Dog). I yielded on the latter to keep the former. ‘Hedge’ by the way proved a much better name for how his character played out, moving well beyond the original derivation of hedge-hog…

51. lycophidion
VIEW ALL BY LYCOPHIDION | MONDAY NOVEMBER 10, 2014 10:25PM EST | AMENDED ON TUESDAY NOVEMBER 11, 2014 04:09AM EST
Hi Steve,

Two apologies, to start. First, that this question transcends CG. And Second, that I haven’t yet had a chance to do more than scan your Jensen essays, which I know deal with this question.

So, this comes back to a major subtheme of your series: the environment. One of the aspects of this series that I greatly appreciated was your reflection on our multifaceted environmental crisis and the ways in which social and environmental crises intertwine and environmental crisis, human exploitation and environmental exploitation go hand in hand (at times your elaboration became, er… rather “crude”).

Thus, you point to a seemingly irresolvable contradiction. There are those who maintain that this contradiction is “in our blood,” so to speak, that our very opposable thumb, as it were, placed us into an irreconcilable contradiction with Mother Nature. Jared Diamond and Paul Martin, for example, argue that “primitive” humans caused the extinction of Pleistocene “Megafauna” (and there are others, such as Grayson and Meltzer (2003) who argue that it was climate change that doomed North American saber-toothed cats and the like). What does seem clear is that our in our current social order, every advance in technology and production to accumulate wealth seems to point to further environmental degradation. And this was played out throughout the Malazan series, perhaps most directly with the Letherii.

Your characters do offer a number of solutions. Karsa would, Pol-Potishly, eliminate cities and technology, and perhaps take Wu back to a pre-pre-agrarian society. And, of course, there are those in our own society who suggest the same. The Assail and the Wolf God-following Perish (well-named) promised to remedy this situation by eliminating the human side of the equation, entirely. And, yes, I’ve heard similar opinions in some environmentalist quarters (actually brings to mind the radical “Reds” in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy). And then Tehol had some reforms in mind, if I remember correctly, in DoD and CG.

So, here’s a question. Global warming has been a growing concern, perhaps since the early 90s, with the UN’s Framework Convention on greenhouse gases, but it really hit public consciousness with Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth in 2006 and then subsequent IPCC reports. How did your thinking on this change over this period, and how did those changes play out over the 10 books in the series?

Best,
Mike

SE: It was useful to me that I was reading a lot of this stuff (Jensen, Monbiot, Diamond, etc) during the writing of the Malazan Book of the Fallen – useful in that a lot of smart people were putting their brains to work pondering solutions (or, in Lovelock’s instance, pondering no-solution); while at the same time the growing obstinacy of the Denial camp grew ever more powerful (saw another example just the other day, when an otherwise competent person [ie he could write a grammatically correct series of sentences] stated that the human-caused climate change ‘theory’ has been put to rest by the Republican landslide in the latest elections – oh yeah, I know, that’s like saying ‘we all voted the Earth’s flat, therefore it is’ and well, the utter stupidity of that statement made my jaw drop – so, is it really presumptuous of me to broach the possibility that our species is indeed much stupider than it thinks it is? And if it is, do we really have any hope?).

As much as Karsa wants to bring it all down (so does Jensen), the reality of that solution is brutal. Jensen argues that civilization is insane, and capitalism is the commerce of individual and collective psychosis. And I really can’t disagree. Worse, it’s a psychosis now bent on suicide.

Lovelock says it’s already too late. I reached the same conclusion some time during the writing of the series. The ugly fact is that my son and his generation will live through something terrible and devastating: but what he’ll experience won’t be nearly as bad as what comes after.

If that sounds too grim, recall, I always take the long view on this (as an archaeologist, there’s really no other way of thinking). Civilizations rise and they fall. Size doesn’t matter. A lone island in the Pacific or a global one, the only difference is in the details, not the outcome. The Silent Spring on the way has nothing to do with birds. It’s to do with us. Our silence. Our absence.

That said, I have a suspicion the one percent is already planning its escape from this planet (Steve Baxter’s ‘Flood’ trilogy has a great take on this: the rich build their hi-tech boats to survive a flooded Earth, and the damned things go down anyway. They build spaceships to find another world, and the crew descends into a Machiavellian nightmare halfway there, turn around, and come home. The rich can plan all they want, they’ll fuck it up, too. Did I say ‘great’? Well, Baxter depressed the hell out of me, but I won’t argue his vision).

It’s no accident that film and television are busily exploring this social and environmental collapse right now. I don’t like the notion that the most popular fantasy works out there (barring Hobb’s rather brave stab) seem more inclined to stick their heads in the sand – to invite true escapism and call us back to a raw, young world. So I couldn’t keep it away from my series.

To conclude: I have no solutions. I expect some of us will get off this planet, but maybe not the best of us (only the most psychotic and sociopathic).

52. Tosters
VIEW ALL BY TOSTERS | TUESDAY NOVEMBER 11, 2014 12:40PM EST
No questions, just wanted to say thank you for the greatest fantasy series of my lifetime. Always a pleausre to hear your thoughts as well.

53. Journeyman
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 11, 2014 01:19PM EST
Hi Steven,

I have a few more questions regarding the character Tavore as there were many discussions generated about her by the readers. Having served in the army myself for a few years, we commanders were encouraged to bond with our soldiers to camaraderie. However, Tavore is not a typical commander. She is a loner who did not explain her actions to her direct reports. Hence, some of us have difficulty understanding how could Tavore commands such loyalty from people like Kalam, Gesler, etc. Even Gudd said he will fight for her “with all my heart”.

If I had to choose, I would follow Ganoes with all my heart but I am not so sure about Tavore.

So my question is why did you build her character in a way that does not conform to a typical commander but yet she was still able to command such loyalties from her men? What was her magical touch that some of us missed apart from her unwavering path that humbled the gods?

Thanks again.

SE: Refer back, in part, to my earlier comments regarding Tavore and what she represented. I held, for characters like Fiddler and Kalam, that some comprehension, conscious or otherwise, made them understand what it was that they had faith in, with respect to Tavore. It was, in a way, a sort of elevation, but none of these men were known for delusions, or being romantics (ie, they never patronized Tavore): instead, it was the unknown and unknowable that they elevated. In a way, this subtext is all about faith and God: Tavore remained a mystery. She confounded. She offered virtually nothing but her self-evident loyalty. And, especially, her faith – in each and every soldier under her command. She was unapproachable (even by me), and she knew things it was impossible for her to know.

Your comments regarding ‘bonding’ with your commanders assumes a situation that remains, thus far, exclusively a male domain. Male commanders, to be specific. Men gauge one another, in terms of loyalty, bonding, trust and honour, in very specific (and gender-specific) ways. I wonder how it would play out for you if you found yourself being commanded by a woman? Would you employ the same ways of measuring such things as loyalty? Especially if that woman commander did not find herself within a patriarchal structure, thereby demanding that she be more ‘male’ than her fellow male commanders and officers? Try to imagine a hierarchy without that implicit patriarchy. I did.

If ever I imagine God, it doesn’t arrive as a face, or a gentle hand, or a wise smile. It arrives as an anguished scream.

54. Kulp
VIEW ALL BY KULP | TUESDAY NOVEMBER 11, 2014 04:50PM EST
I’m not sure where you spoke about this, but at some point you mentioned redesigning your website to allow for more engagement with your fans, and to provide updates on what you’re working on. Is this still in the works?

SE: Yeah, stuff like a newsletter, etc. I should get on with that.

So, we’re done. Thanks to you all. Be well, have fun with Cam’s next books, and maybe see you for Forge of Darkness, or even Willful Child (hah! Not likely!).

Yours,

SE

No! The last two malazan books no longer appear to be scheduled for release on Brilliance Audio’s website (and don’t appear on the site at all. Are we to be left hanging with the last two?