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May 2007 Archives

Books: Steven Erikson, The Malazan Book of the Fallen

One of the things that frustrates me as an avid reader of fantasy, is the waiting for a new volume in a much loved epic.
It happened to me with The Wheel of Time, which I have been following for the past 13 years and now it has happened to me with the Malazan Book of the Fallen.

It’s been close to 4 years now since I discovered this epic, currently in it’s 6th book (the 7th is due out this year) and it ranks up there with the Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time (surpassing it in many respects), Guy Gavriel Kay’s Tigana and Song for Arbonne and ofcourse good old grandfather Tolkien.

What I most like about this series is not the massiveness of the undertaking, the huge armies, well thoughout strategies and fleshed out characters. No, what I like most is the distinct lack of black and white, good and evil polarisation.

Every character, every faction is a complex mass of motives, good, evil, compromise and determination. There is a constant double-backing, a questioning and reevaluation of the present, a striving towards understanding with an ever widening horizon. A lot of sidetracks along the way – and here I am speaking about individual characters and not the overall plot or story arc -, wrong turns, choices you can’t forgive or forget. All of it brings this fantasy epic much closer to life how we percieve and live it than a lot of fiction novels I have read.
Frightening in it’s scope, fascinating in it’s writing, one of the best I have ever read.

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Some links about Steven Erikson I managed to dig up:

There is also Starvald Demelain, the Wiki for the series.

Posted by Vassilis Rizopoulos on May 18, 2007

Books: Shaun Tan, The Arrival

I stumbled on this wonderful comic novel in the CCCB’s bookshop in Barcelona. I spent quite a bit of time just looking at the sketches, fighting the immediate urge to buy it.
It was impossible. I found this comic book simply amazing. It’s a story with no words, just sketches made to look like old faded photographs.
You know that look that the sepia effect is supposed to give to your digital photographs? On the computer it doesn’t come out right does it?
Well, Shaun Tan has succeded perfectly in conveying that old faded photograph feeling. And did it by painting a very tender story in a magical world.


It’s a story of immigration, a turn of the 20th century immigration, where people left their countries for a better future and got somewhere where they found that future and where accepted, integrated. Seen in today’s context of “fortress europe” and general xenophobia, you could say it is an overly optimistic, feel-good story. Or maybe not?
Maybe we should see it as a story of what should be. Maybe it should remind us, that we are all immigrants or descendants of immigrants.

This book speaks volumes without a word in beautiful, evocative pictures. You should definitely check it out!

Here’s the US Amazon link

Posted by Vassilis Rizopoulos on May 17, 2007