Memories of Ice (Malazan Book of the Fallen #3) by Stephen Erikson

Oh man.

I got 40% of the way through, which is 500 fucking pages by the way, to this section on “The Children of the Dead Seed” that was the straw that broke this camels back.

Just no.

I debated whether I wanted to explain what “The Children of the Dead Seed” are because it is disgusting, but I will for.. well nobody’s benefit, except maybe Future Alice when I inevitably forget all about these books and want to remind myself why I hated them.

So, one of the seemingly fucking endless factions/armies in this book is a cult called the Tenescowri led by this person called the Pannion Seer, and made up of peasants (I think survivors or refugees from another war) that he purposely keeps starved and mad. They survive by eating their own dead and they repopulate the army through what they call a “ritual” which is performed by the “Women of the Dead Seed,” basically women reduced to mad shrieking banshees. These women rape “unbelievers” at the moment of their death to impregnate themselves.

For fucks sake.

At this point, remaining goodwill for the author evaporated, and I could see Malazan for what it is – these are just Trashy Grimdark books cloaked in pretentious writing. The author and his fanboys might not like it when it gets call this (my fiancé included!), because it’s art about “hope and compassion” but honestly I’ve heard a lot of the Warhammer 40K audiobooks my fiancé listens to and it’s not that different! Same vibes to me it’s just 40K has the dial all the way up to 11 and Malazan is more like a 4 most of the time.

There was no need for Erikson to go so far with Children of the Dead seed! Absolutely no need. War is depraved and abhorrent enough without having to add a violent abusive cult that ritually rapes dying men, for shock value. I can only think that because the Malazan armies are also awful he felt he had to come up with something more extreme and evil to provide a clear “bad guy” and reason for all the continued fighting.

I don’t think that’s smart, or even good writing.

Anyway, now I got “The Children of the Dead Seed” off my chest I must try to get this review(?) onto some kind of track, because they were just the last nail in the coffin! I have plenty of other complaints about this book (buckle in), and the series as a whole, most of which I touched on in my previous reviews for Gardens of the Moon and Deadhouse Gates but became too much of a heavy load by book three.

The journey so far…

So to recap how I was feeling about this series when I started this book, I gave Gardens of the Moon an unbelievable 3.5/5 Stars! Looking back now that feels like a book from a completely different series. If you do any research on this series you will see the fanboys on the subreddit, forums and Goodreads reviews, saying that that book is the “worst” in the series and I can see now it’s because it’s the least “Malazany” due to its lack of boring military stuff. There are the Bridgeburner soldier characters but they’re alone in hiding and are not doing army stuff. It also has a different vibe – it didn’t feel as bleak and oppressive as the other books, and it has some fun wacky shit like the possessed puppet. Plus it’s also not 1000 fucking pages long.

Then book two was Deadhouse Gates and getting through that thing is the very definition of a reading slog. It started really well, I remember being into it for the first quarter or so because I actively enjoyed the Felisin storyline and Fiddler.

But, it’s a whole new setting with a vast new cast of characters (with very similar names) that is hard work to keep track of, and eventually, all the good parts gave way to incredibly tedious Duiker POV sections that focused on the military stuff. I was so bored by this I found it impossible to focus and took to having to read chapter summaries to make sure I had understood what was supposed to be happening!

While crawling through Deadhouse Gates I took to periodically Googling the book every time I was losing the will to live. I found plenty of posts from people having the same struggle as me and they were repeatedly told that yes it can be kind of a drag but the ending is going to be worth it, and that also you have to read to Memories of Ice because that is The Best One and where the series starts to come together. So I did finish Deadhouse Gates, and Reader, the ending was not worth it. The ending was fucking annoying because I just didn’t care! Any emotional engagement I might have had had been bored out of me for 900 pages (which honestly is the headline for my review).

I still wanted to give Memories of Ice a shot, because of repeatedly reading that advice on the series, because these are my partner’s favourite books and I thought maybe the second book was just a blip. I was warned by a friend who has read all the series, and by Bookstooge in the comments on my review, that actually the next book is going to double down on the military stuff and the things I’ve found frustrating so far… and yeeeeah they were right!

Memories of Ice is not The Best One

I thought I had a greater chance of enjoying this book because it returns to the characters I had enjoyed in Gardens of the Moon and I might actually have some background for once. Well yes some main characters are back – Whiskeyjack, Paran, Toc the Younger, Tool, Quick Ben, Anomander Rake – but there is also an absolute fucktonne of new named characters and I’d say maybe 90% of those are just squaddies who completely blur together and have no distinguishable characteristics (except that one guy who wears a stinky shirt made from his dead mother’s hair).

I didn’t care about these people and their endless conversations. There were far too many of them, they had names that were too similar, some were male and some were female but that didn’t matter because they all sounded and acted like the same character. I couldn’t keep track of which company they were in because it’s all so samey.

I reckon a good 1/3 of the 40% of book I read is chapters of these characters that feel completely inconsequential. Every time I got to one of these sections it would kill any interest I might have had in other POVs, which is extra painful because the further I got in the less there was to be interested in. In fact now I’m trying to remember anything I found interesting in this book!

Unbelievably, it actually had me missing Deadhouse Gates, because I did like the Felisin stuff in that one, whereas Memories of Ice has nothing for me.

Silverfox, I hate everything about it

Initially, I was most engaged with the Whiskeyjack POV because that did – for once – have some exposition in it, and there were scenes bringing together characters I’d liked from the first book but… but… Oh God why did he do this with my beloved Tattersail.

I loved Tattersail in the first book, she was such a cool character.. and then he fucking killed her off halfway through and had he brought back as a baby by some creepy ritual. This book deals with that. So turns out, because Tattersail was with that guy who had the head of his dead girlfriend in a bag when she died, and the dead girlfriend was also a really powerful mage and the head had a bit of soul on it or something, the child that was born has a soul mix of Tattersail and this Nightchill character that we don’t really know anything about but oooooh ominous she probably wasn’t as nice and cool as Tattersail.

This child is a rapidly growing girl called Silverfox, and she’s obviously annoying and creepy (I hate this ‘young child possessed with knowledge way beyong their years fantasy’ trope!). The young woman who birthed her – the Mhybe which is a title but in as much as I read the woman never gets a name other than this – is also rapidly aging as the child sucks her life force to grow. This is such an on-the-nose attempt to explore the theme of motherhood (extra gross when you also think about the Child of the Dead Seed) that I didn’t even pick up on it at first. It just lacks any nuance – babies suck out your life force and mothers love their children but also resent that. Wow.

If I wasn’t already hating this because Erikson ruined resurrecting my fave, and added the ham-fisted Mhybe subplot, there is also another stupid and weirdly forced dimension to this part of the story in the form of awkward romance. In the first book Tattersail and Paran had what amounts to a one-night stand. They knew each other for a few days, they fancied each other, and they had sex. It wasn’t that deep. Memories of Ice then tries to play this  some sort of incredible love connection, a grand romance… which it just wasn’t in the first book. They barely knew each other, so all the drama the author tries to stir up over how weird it is now she is a child and will their love survive, it just doesn’t work and it frustrates me no end.

This whole thing made up quite a chunk of the start of the book, and it really disappointed me. Also, I am told, the hinted plot with Silverfox and the undead bone guys never even goes anywhere and she disappears as a character in the series, so you had to read some of the off-shoot books to find her again! AHHH!

But Toc is cool, right? Right?!

Toc the Younger was cool in the first book, and he gets paired up with Tool who was also really cool in the first book… so how did these chapters end up so boring for me?

They are told from Toc’s POV and yet he seems barely there are a character, he’s literally just a viewpoint. He never really engages much or drives anything, he’s just… there. As is Tool, I felt like he was just dust most of the time and also never really did added. Lady Envy is a new character in the chapters with those guys and I found her whole sexy, dangerous, powerful lady schtick quite tiresome too. Plus this is the POV that introduces the Children of the Dead Seed.. so, yeah Toc chapters were not saving this novel for me!

The writing…

If you read any 5 star reviews, or the subreddits, you’ll find fanboys get all in a lather over how this series is work of genius, it’s a masterpiece. They appear to endlessly reread it like it’s some kind of religious text. It is so cleverly written and the Themes! The incredible Themes! Look, I’m glad they get so much enjoyment out of it (my fiancé included!)¹ but I wouldn’t apply such praise to what I’ve just read!

I don’t think it’s cleverly written! I’m sorry but Steve is not a “masterful” writer. I think the writing is intentionally difficult to read and because the author prioritises shooting for a theme over developing a plot or character, that adds a thin veneer of intellectualism that appeals to the type of people who enjoy a sense of superiority in reading “difficult books” (my fiancé included, I have said this last part to him and he can laugh at this side of his personality!).

They are difficult to read because the author wrote them to be difficult to read. I read over and over again on the subreddit that it is a series of books that you have to read at least twice to have the context you need to understand what is happening in the story. This is a series of 10 books that are about 1,000 pages each. That’s insane, and I don’t think is something an author deserves praise for!

I understand that Erikson is an anthropologist and that his penchant for endlessly adding characters without any context or depth is meant to be because that’s how it is when you’re studying history. You never can know the backstory for historical figures or some guy named in an old manuscript. Sure, that might be true but this is fiction, and not just fiction but a High Fantasy series of 10 books.

It’s crazy to me to be so focused on writing “true to life,” to the detriment of an enjoyable reading experience, when the world of Malazan seems to have no rules whatsoever! We have literal Gods as characters, demons and drags popping up all over the place, nobody important ever permanently dies and every other character has superpowers.

If I wanted to read something in this “style” then I’d pick up a real life military chronicle where I’d not have to learn 10,000 made-up fantasy nouns.

As for the Themes… I found it all so bloody exhausting to read that I can’t claim to have consciously picked up on any themes. You know I love a good theme, I love to pick apart an interesting book, I have an English degree! But nothing was stimulating in these. Erikson seems to writing to theme above all else, I get the impression he picks his theme and writes out a list of every way he can think of to explore that theme and then just uses every single one which explains the volume of copy and pasted inconsequential squaddie characters.

I need to be emotionally engaged with what I am reading, if I don’t care about the characters then the theme is lost on me.

In general, my main takeaway from these books is that Erikson sorely needed vigorous editing. There are the bones of something good (I do talk about things I liked in my previous reviews! This is why I’m so frustrated I’ve written 2,000 words about it!) but the whole thing is about 60% longer than it needed to be. I need him to cut down his list of characters, and just pick 10 to focus on to tighten up character development and the plot. Help me to understand these people and their motivations! Why are we in this endless war? How did we get here? How do we feel about that? What are the meaningful relationships? What are their personal goals? What’s at stake?

I still don’t understand the WHY of it… What is the ultimate aim for all these people in this army? What are they fighting for? Why am I fucking reading this? ²

I didn’t even mention the italicised inner monologue that are all in the same voice and never sound like a real person’s thoughts. They were so cheesy I always ended up reading these as the author inserting himself!

Phew. I think I got all that off my chest!

So yeah, don’t recommend! If you do try them and struggle with the military stuff and change in tone in book two drop the series, it gets worse from there!

1. He recently spent an obscene amount of money on special limited editions! ↩︎
2. My partner did tell me what happens in the later books and what the overall plot turns out to be and it was stupid and annoyed me even more, so very glad I gave up! ↩︎