In the last installments of my Kharkanas essays, I talked about Renarr's capacity to act as a choral element within the novel, and gave a broad overview of the codified oppression within the language & social stratification of Kurald Galain through the lens of Renarr's prostitution.

Here, I wish to examine what I have termed, "Urusander's Problem". It's the issue at the core of his character that he struggles with for effectively the entire series so far, and the manner in which the book prov

I came into Anbennar decently late relatively speaking - when Rahen abruptly ended at Bhuvauri & the Command was just plastered there, when the Rianvisa tooltip was something along the lines of "we must lose everything we gained" & was contingent on you losing the disaster before it gets to end [i.e., if your nation wasn't appropriately "ruined," the disaster never ended, and the game wouldn't tell you this], when most mission trees just gave claims with some lore tooltips, when Arbaran's heir chance idea was named "The Seed is Strong" with tooltip "There's absolutely loads of us" (which I'm not sure if it's still in the game, but it was positively fucking hilarious).

All told, fa

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The poem itself

I know I said I'd stick to a weekly schedule but life around New Years tends to get complicated. I'll try & make up for lost time this week however. Oh, also, Happy New Year everyone!

If I ask this of you...

There will be peace.

There will be justice.

There will be truth.

First things first.

"There will be peace" & "there will be justice" were both recurring motifs in Forge of Darkness and Fall of Light respectively. In Chapter One of Forge of Darkness, Gallan wonders if:

So it turns out Walk in Shadow begins with a poem. Let's talk about that poem. You can find the entire thing here, and it is quite old (over 3 & a half years old by now), but I think it's interesting enough to warrant a deeper look at it. And, well, there are projects I need to procrastrinate on.

I'm also painfully aware of Steve's penchant to publish excerpts on Facebook, then not include them in the finished book - that's a risk I'm willing to take.

Massive shoutout to u/TRAIANVS and their [Walking the Cracked Pot Trail](https://www.reddit.com/r/Malazan/comments/18x3kup/walking_the_cracked_pot_trail_1_a_linebyline

Hello everyone. Welcome to what is apparently checks notes the third installment of Kharkanas essays I've been writing. Huh.

Anyone who's kept up with any of my essays or other projects on Kharkanas knows I don't have much love for the institutions of Kurald Galain, but I never did quite get into why I don't like them.

This essay isn't quite about that. It's much more focused & centered (somewhat) on a specific subset of individuals. But nevertheless, it does approach the subject of institutional oppression, and the inherent flaws in the Tiste civilization.

Now, a quick heads up. This essay is split into two parts: Part One deals strictly with real-life history, and Part Two deals with

This is Part Two of what ideally will be a longer series (maybe) on a bunch of Kharkanas characters I'd like to talk about. Why not.

You're going to want to check out Part One since this is a direct continuation of that.

Part One

With no more ado, let's get into it. It's a long one.

In the last part, I left you by saying that Renarr functions as an ideal spectator within Fall of Light, and this is me elaborating - at length - on what that means.

Part Three: The Ideal Spectator

In Forge of Darkness, Renarr

Been a long time since I made one of these. Hope everyone is doing well.

This is Part One because the complete essay is about 45,000 characters (Reddit's character limit is 40,000), which climbs to 60,000 (about 11,000 words) if you include things I've cut. And while I know there's a subset of people nerdy enough to read that in one sitting, but I'll give you some slack.

Part Two will come out soon (probably tomorrow) & will be posted here when it's done.

So, with no further ado, let us talk Greek Choruses, dramatic & theatrical elements, and characters acting in such a capacity in Kharkanas.

Part One: The Role of a Chorus in Tragedy

The Chorus in Greek Tragedy

The Chorus

This essay took a really long ass time to write, for numerous reasons. As such, it's been revised, rewritten, dropped, rewritten again, and so on - you'll notice points being belaboured, words being used time & again, it's not terribly pretty. Motivation hasn't been the highest of late, but I needed to finish this.

With no more ado, let's take a look at what the adage "Kallor did nothing wrong" stands for, what kind of reading it promotes, and (ideally) what it tells us about the rest of the series.

Important side note: I know what the title says, but this essay series only concerns itself with the prologue of Memories of Ice. It's long enough as it is, and I can't go line by line for ev

Last I saw a post like this, it was July 2016, I hadn't heard the words "Malazan" uttered in any context whatsoever, and Fall of Light pretty much bombed. Since then, there have been more than the original sixty-three Kharkanas fans (among which I do not, alas, count myself). So to those who have come since (or even from those who were here from the beginning), what do you expect from WiS?

​

I have opinions on the matter, but I'd be much more interested to see a more general consensus. Hit me.

[Yes, this post does comply with community guidelines; believe me, I checked.]

Hello friends, and welcome to the first of what is hopefully not the last of our installments of a pub/tavern trivia quiz on the Malazan books.

Joined by the Malazan mods (Mora - u/kashmora, Wes - u/Suxbois_420, Nate - u/ladrac1, and GB), in what is quickly becoming an annual tradition, we speed through a great deal many questions (many of which I'm shocked that people remember, because I sure as hell didn't). This particular quiz is centered strictly on the Book of the Fallen, albeit we do mention characters recurring in other novels (e.g. OST) a couple times.

While the whole thing was low stakes (as a pub qui

That Fiddler Take

Every good esssay starts with people citing their sources & acknowledgments, or so I've heard. Who am I to dissent from tradition?

Acknowledgements

I wish to extend my gratitude to, first & foremost, AP Canavan (of A Critical Dragon fame) for his immense help (directly or indirectly) over the years. I pray you forgive my horrid abuse of literary & narrative terminology.

u/Niflrog, of Niflrog's Folly, for the entertaining discussion & debate over perhaps one too many beers.

u/zhilia_mann, for their invaluable friendship, seemingly endless wisdom, dilligence in moderatin

​

I'm totally not capitalizing off the success of the last one, not me, no sir

A few notes to start with.

This is not necessarily new (hence why it's updated) but I added a few more and now I feel confident enough in posting this here. You can find the old one & surrounding discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dust_of_Memes/comments/17m70ac/the_malazan_theory_iceberg/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

As with the

It's late. I've nothing better to do. And I need to get this out somewhere; might as well be here. It's haphazard, it's messy, bear with me.

Now, I call this "explanation" (Hood make it so) lame because it discards most of the metaphysics of what's going on, chalking it up to "metaphor." If anyone has a better explanation of what in bloody hell the Hold of Love is, do let me know.

The explanation itself could reasonably start from the epigraph - Faces of Fear - and it's a damn good poem; I'm not going to actually get into the analysis here, but perhaps someone savvier might be able to.

So, in the broadest strokes imaginable, what happens in this scene?

• Toc rides to find Hetan's b

I (Think I) Know Who Three Is

TL;DR: Three is (possibly) one of the Shi'gal Assassins of Moon's Spawn

About a year ago, Steve did an AMA, and one of the questions I levelled at him was regarding Three's identity. You can find his answer here, but it's hardly flattering (for me).

So, Three isn't Skillen, nor is she connected to the Matron at Morn. Grand.

Completely through stream of consciousness, I remembered a few things about Three. Her introduction scene in Chapter Six:

‘Who are you?’ Rant asked. Her hand was so soft, so warm.

‘I am unsure. I may have forgotten

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https://preview.redd.it/tmlr11r4lyxb1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=2bc9eebd71d749726cd253d9add0a02c83f8ca9e

Gathering theories for a Pt. 2 if need be.