Malazan Book of the Fallen/Headscratchers

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This Troper can't be the only one getting mighty sick of the Implied Feats of Badass in this series, right? In particular: Mael was implied to have beaten the shit out of the Crippled God at the end of Memories Of Ice and to have had "a talk" with The Errant at the end of Reaper's Gale. Do we even get to see the aftermath of these Elder God beatdowns? No. Can we at least see Mael (Anomander Rake for that matter) actually fight someone - or does all the "on-screen" violent awesomeness only belong to Quick Ben and Karsa Orlong?

  • This editor agrees. Anomander Rake should have been allowed to kick much more butt than he did in Toll the Hounds. I also spent most of Midnight Tides and Reaper's Gale waiting for some Silchas Ruin action that never really came.

Granted, with Loads and Loads of Characters, not everyone's going to get a You Shall Not Pass or Last Dance. But really, I haven't read a death that felt as tacked-on as Trull Sengar's since Lupin and Tonks in Deathly Hallows. Even Dujek Onearm got a better death... and he died off screen in his sick bed.

The number of just plain irritating characters is ridiculous. Karsa Orlong (hatehimsofreakingmuch!) and Hellian are the worst examples I can come up with, although Kruppe's pretty annoying, especially since he always wins. I hope him and Tehol stay on different continents.

  • All of those characters are awesome, and there's nothing I want more than a long chapter with Tehol and Kruppe. A whole book would be ideal, really. Seriously, if you don't like characters like Karsa Orlong (I admit, out of these guys, he's the one who does get on my nerves once in a while), Hellian, Tehol, and (especially) Kruppe, why do you even read this series? Do you just want apathetic depressed Malazan soldiers and Tiste Andii whining about how much life sucks?

Why do armies in the Malazan verse send their soldiers out to do battle in these large groups of several thousand who go marching across the landscape? I mean, we've seen there are quite a few sorcerors in the Malazans' world who can kill a thousand people with just a few blasts of magic. Add in stuff like dragon Soletakens and Moranth munitions, and a whole army could be decimated in minutes. You'd think the mighty, globe-spanning Malazan Empire, at least, would have switched to using guerilla tactics instead that don't make their armies such obvious targets for magic users.

  • How about the marines' campaign in Lether? Small unit tactics - using mages as cover - taking on an empire sounds like this to me
  • You're forgetting; only the Malazan military have munitions, they've got their own mages who are pretty powerful, able to take on Anomander Rake. Also Soletaken aren't that common, most of the people they're fighting will just be ordinary humans.
    • But many, many times we're given scenes where mages kill hundreds, even thousands of soldiers within seconds. Militaries in the Malazan world have the supernatural equivalent of heavy artillery, but (at least in the first five books) they insist on using the battle tactics of a pre-artillery world.

How was Leoman able to injure the Hounds of Darkness? I can buy that Karsa could do it 'cause he's a giant, an Ascendant, has Anti-Magic in his blood, and wields an unbreakable, ghost-possessed sword. But Leoman just seems to be an ordinary guy who's good at using flails. Remember how the Hounds of Shadow were treated in Gardens of the Moon? They were able to massacre a small army without getting a scratch, and when Ganoes Paran injures one of them, it's taken as proof-positive that some sort of supernatural power is working through him. Given that, how can their much stronger cousins be injured so easily?

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