Steven Erikson, my personal hero

I'm a couple of hundred pages into Forge of Darkness now, and I have to say it's definitely restored my faith in personal hero and inspiration extraordinaire Steven Erikson. What he can do with his characters, his worldbuilding and his turn of phrase I have yet to come across from any other author. China Miéville is very close.
After a bit of a letdown towards the end of his Malazan Book of the Fallen I can say he has fully restored my opinion of him as the foremost now living author in the genre. It's intriguing and demanding at the same time, never just a comfortable read but, I would say, almost entirely always a more than satisfying experience.

I can see why some consider his writing a 'heavy' read, but I don't think you would get as fulfilling a ride if it wasn't for great vistas, philosophical interior/exterior debates and believable characters.

I am not psyched about nearing the end of this, the first of his Kharkanas trilogy. Hope he can keep up with his usual high-pace writing!

A friday like any other

Not much to report, been a long day at work but I've got the Cold Commands with me and will get some short reading done before training tonight. I've been working hard at staying away from the second season of the Game of Thrones tv-series. As much as curiosity has me piqued, I rather enjoyed the Tuesday-Night-Whiskey-And-Game-of-Thrones-orama from season one and look forward to completing the second season in one sitting with good friends and good drinks. I can make do with books in the meantime.

I noticed Tor has released an excerpt of Esslemont's Orb, Sceptre Throne (well, yesterday) which sparks some memories of good reading in the Malazan universe. I look forward to reading it, but where once I would throw myself at the chance to dive back into the lands of the Free Cities, and Darujhistan in particular, I now look at the pile of books that I still haven't gotten around to reading and feel like it can wait a while longer. The Crippled God, with it's inconclusiveness, satiated my hunger while at the same time letting me down a bit. I've been reading Erikson's Malazan novels nigh on 11 years now starting out with Gardens of the Moon after graduation in -01. I'm sure I'll get around to Esslemont's continuation in time, but the urgency isn't quite there as it was before. And I'm fairly certain it's not just the fact that Esslemont's writing is radically different from Erikson's. I quite liked both Night of Knives and Return of the Crimson Guard, and can't say I have a problem with his writing per se, but I just feel like the whole world has so many loose ends that the suspicion is slowly creeping up on me that what seemed a Kellanved/Dancer-esque masterplan has fallen far shorter of what it promised to be when they set out.

Might just be that I haven't re-read the novels for the last two installments in the series so I'm a bit out of touch with where I started. But at the moment there are entirely too many new faces to acquaint myself with so any rennaisance will have to wait a bit longer.