http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/MalazanBookoftheFallen

Anomander Rake, from the Gardens of the Moon collectors edition.

"Now these ashes have grown cold, we open the old book. These oil-stained pages recount the tales of the Fallen, a frayed empire, words without warmth. The hearth has ebbed, its gleam and life's sparks are but memories against dimming eyes - what cast my mind, what hue my thoughts as I open the Book of the Fallen and breathe deep the scent of history? Listen, then, to these words carried on that breath. These tales are the tales of us all, again yet again. We are history relived and that is all, without end that is all."

Advertisement:

The Malazan Book of the Fallen is an epic fantasy series by Canadian author Steven Erikson. The series is famous for its Doorstopper tendencies, for having Loads and Loads of Characters (the Dramatis Personae usually contains several hundred characters, and even then does not include numerous incidental ones), its deliberate use of Lost in Medias Res and for introducing an anthropological and geological perspective to the Fantasy genre. The series' main influence is The Black Company by Glen Cook.

The Malazan Empire is yet in its infancy, but it has already seen its first betrayal. Surly, Master of the Claw, has assassinated Emperor Kellanved and his closest companion, Dancer, and taken the throne under the name Laseen, continuing the Empire's policy of ruthless expansionism, though she is continually mistrusted. Almost immediately, the new gods of the Shadow Realm, Shadowthrone and Cotillion, launch a plot against her, but stumble into a web of far grander plans among their fellow Ascendants. So begin the Tales of the Malazan Book of the Fallen, a grand tragedy told from the perspectives of dozens if not hundreds of characters across three arcs, each beginning on a distinct continent.

Advertisement:

On Genabackis, the decade-long Malazan campaign of conquest is slowly coming to a bloody end, but Laseen's paranoia of plots against her leads her to orchestrate the decimation of the Bridgeburners, the most famous military unit in the Empire, sending the armies to the brink of revolt. On the other end of the Empire, the Seven Cities subcontinent is gathering for a religiously mandated uprising known as the Whirlwind, and as the war unfolds, it becomes clear that the inexperienced noblewoman Laseen has inexplicably chosen to put down the rebellion is much more than she seemed at first sight, with unknown motivations and an unknown agenda she will stop at nothing to realize. Meanwhile, far away, on the continent of Lether, the six tribes of the Tiste Edur have united after millenia of internal warfare to protect themselves against the Kingdom of Lether, driven to inappeasable expansion by its radical capitalist economic system.

Advertisement:

As events progress, these conflicts start interweaving, and throughout it all, rumours of peoples thought extinct or myth returning can be heard, as a broken god driven mad by millenia of torture launches his plan to break free from his chains and deliver vengeance.

The universe in which the story takes place is a shared creation of Steven Erikson and Ian Cameron Esslemont, with the Malazan Book of the Fallen considered to be the main sequence. The following books have been written in the setting:

The Malazan Book of the Fallen

The Kharkanas Trilogy

The Kharkanas Trilogy Forge of Darkness (2012) Fall of Light (2016) Walk in Shadow (TBA)



The Witness Trilogy

The Witness Trilogy The God is Not Willing (2019)



Tales of Bauchelain & Korbal Broach (novellas)

Blood Follows (2002)

The Healthy Dead (2004)

The Lees of Laughter's End (2007)

Crack'd Pot Trail (2010)

The Wurms of Blearmouth (2012)

The Fiends of Nightmaria (2016)

Novels of the Malazan Empire (by Ian Cameron Esslemont)

Path to Ascendancy (by Ian Cameron Esslemont)

Dancer's Lament (2016)

Deadhouse Landing (2017)

Kellanved's Reach (2019)

This series provides examples of the following tropes:

Badass Abnormal: Ascendants in a nutshell, who are nearly immortal, get more power than before ascending, and can even become gods, if will they'll get worshipers. The Avowed of the Crimson Guard were already formidable fighters and mages but the Vow seems to have turned them into something beyond that. In Assail it is revealed that they accidentally recreated the T'lan Imass ritual and became undead as a consequence. They do not posses all of the T'lan Imass abilities but are highly resistant to magic.

Badass Army: When the story begins, the Bridgeburners are the most famous army of the Malazan Empire, but because of their infamous difficulties with authority and Laseen being afraid of them, they get sent off for increasingly dangerous missions, just to get them killed. In Memories of Ice only a few Bridgeburners are left alive, and even less at the end of the series. We see the birth of another Badass Army in House of Chains: The Bonehunters, who are the real heroes of the story, and under the leadership of Adjunct Tavore they survive the Raraku, Y'Ghatan, the betrayal at Malaz Island , the invasion of Lether , the ambush of the K'Chain Nah'ruk , crossing the Glass Desert and, finally, protecting Kaminsod from the Forkrul Assail army. Again, only the most badass soldiers get to see the aftermath of the campaign.

Badass Boast: Kallor has one of the best boasts in the history of boasts: 'I walked this land when the T'lan Imass were but children. I have commanded armies a hundred thousand strong. I have spread the fire of my wrath across entire continents, and sat alone upon tall thrones. Do you grasp the meaning of this?' To which Caladan Brood replies. 'Yes. You never learn.'

Badass Creed: The Bridgeburners keep it simple: First in, last out. The Bridgeburners' creed is then parodied by the Bonehunters, who self-deprecatingly repurpose it for themselves as: Last in, looking around.

Barbarian Tribe: Teblors, who are really Thelomen Tartheno Toblakai .

Cool Sword: Dragnipur, which swallows the souls of those slain by it. Mention also goes out to Karsa's bloodwood swords, made of wood and harder than stone, and Karsa's stone sword, an eight foot length of flint containing the souls of his best friends.

Cosmic Deadline: All of the books with the exception of Gardens of the Moon become veritable blood baths near the end as the story comes full circle and doomed characters are killed off.

Covers Always Lie: Steve Stone's covers for The Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach unfailingly leave off Bauchelain's forked beard and instead of Korbal Broach being a towering monster of a man, he's a short, squat fellow that looks like Uncle Fester.

Crapsack World: Seemingly everyone is at war with one another; the land is crawling with horrors that can kill people without breaking a sweat; rape, slavery, attempted genocide, and similar forms of brutality are rampant; the gods themselves are frequently jerkasses and often think of mortals as nothing more than pawns; the planet itself is being poisoned.

Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: As a general rule, if you meet someone who's weak, unassuming, and/or downright wacky, the appropriate response is to run away screaming, and don't look back. Ceda Kuru Quan is a good example. He spends most of Midnight Tides acting out of his mind, but is actually preparing a spell to wipe out an entire invading army — and nearly succeeds.

Curb-Stomp Battle: This is pretty much how the island nation of Malaz ended up becoming an empire. Its ruler recruited very powerful mages, highly skilled assassins, traded for large quantities of powerful explosives and gained the allegiance of an army of unstoppable undead. With these resources he trained an elite army and proceeded to curbstomp all the neighbouring nations.

Dance Battler: There exists a cult that worships the Gods of Shadow. As part of their worship, the adherents learn something known as "the Shadow Dance". Lostara Yil, a former member of the Cult of Shadow, thinks that the Shadow Dance is merely just some ritual until she discovers that it's very effective at killing dozens of people without much problem.

Dark Fantasy: The series takes typical War Is Hell conventions and applies them to fictional wars in a fantasy setting. Some of the atrocities the characters bear witness to (or go through themselves) are genuinely shocking.

Inciting Incident: What kicks of the Myth Arc of the Malazan Book of the Fallen is the fall of the Crippled God, hundreds of thousand years prior to the start of the first book.

Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: The Malazan Book of the Fallen has three major Rotating Arcs, a larger number of subplots, no clear individual protagonist among its Loads and Loads of Characters even for most individual books, and much less the whole ten-book series, and takes place across several continents. The complexity is only increased by the fact that it starts in media res and doles out actual exposition sparingly, leaving the reader to figure most things out by context. It does, however, eventually converge into a single central Myth Arc about the Crippled God.

Required Secondary Powers: The Eleint Soletaken are able to transform into massive dragons. However, the sheer size of their new forms means that half of their flight relies on sorcery and if their wings are damaged they need to rely almost solely on it to stay airborne.