Malazan Book of the Fallen/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Arc Fatigue: The Tiste Edur and Jade Giant storylines.
  • Base Breaker: Karsa Orlong.
  • Canon Sue: Every third character is said to be this.
  • Complete Monster: Bauchelain and Korbal Broach.
  • Crazy Awesome: Karsa Orlong, Iskaral Pust, Tehol & Bugg, Second Seguleh, Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, propably all sapers...
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance: Karsa, whose tribal culture considers rape and pillage as a Rite of Passage.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Cotillion and Udinaas are quite popular.
  • God Mode Sue: How some fans see Karsa.
  • High Octane Nightmare Fuel: Everything about the Dying God.
  • I Knew It!: Some fan speculation held that the final book would portray the Crippled God as a sympathetic victim, and end with his liberation and healing. This is exactly what happened.
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • Felisin Paran.
    • Rhulad Sengar. Yeah, he's technically an Evil Overlord and has done some inarguably bad things- but just look at the rest of this list. You've got to feel sorry for the poor guy. He needs a hug. And possibly, a therapist.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • A particularly obvious example, Sirryn Kanar in Reaper's Gale seems to exist solely to cross it repeatedly.
    • Mallick Rel convincing High Fist Pomquarl to abandon Fist Coltaine to die outside the walls of Aren. Particularly vile since Coltaine was less than five hundred metres away, the garrison was more than strong enough to rescue him and Coltaine had just spent the last few months leading 30,000 Malazan refugees across a desert to safety.
    • If that's not bad enough, Rel crosses it again only a few pages later when he betrays Aren to the Army of the Apocalypse, resulting in 10,000 soldiers being crucified and left to die.
      • And the absolute worst part? He's a Karma Houdini, and when his plan fails he convinces everyone that he was the hero who defended Aren and that Coltaine and the Wickans were the true enemy. After Laseen's death he becomes Emperor of the entire Malazan Empire.
  • Older Than They Think: The series owes a considerable debt to The Black Company.
  • The Scrappy: The Mhbye in Memories of Ice. Depending on who you ask, Karsa Orlong and/or Kruppe as well.
    • Also, Nimander and Felisin.
  • Take That: In The Crippled God (no spoiler) one character is having a smoke and idly wonders if there is any meaning to the habit. She recalls a scholar, no name given, who claimed it had to do with man's mastery of fire and such. She decides that the scholar was just trying really hard to justify her habit, and that tying the habit into philosophy was just really weird. The series features many similar examples; Steven Erikson has a decidedly snarky sense of humour at times.
  • Tear Jerker: Itkovian's death.
  • Too Cool to Live: Itkovian.
  • Wangst: So bad it results in Angst Dissonance for many readers. The Tiste Andii explicitly have Wangst as their Hat... although they are not more wangsty than everyone else...
  • What an Idiot!:
    • Pretty much sums up everyone's behaviour around Kallor. First they let the psycho into their army, then they mock and belittle him. Brilliant move, people.
    • Sorry/Apsalar. Multiple people have pointed out to her that abandoning Cutter wasn't a great idea. Anyone who's moderately perceptive can spot either of their broken hearts pretty much immediately.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds:
    • The Crippled God
    • Even more so, Korabas.
    • Rhulad Sengar. It's hard to not to sympathise with him, after his mind starts to slowly break apart because of his deaths... and deaths of his loved ones. Also Udinaas, his only friend, betrays him - or so he thinks...
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