[SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE MBOTF]

Welcome to our first actual episode on Gardens of the Moon, wherein we tackle the insanity that is the fall of Pale, the prologue, and how utterly dislikeable Ganoes Paran is. Lee's one-sided beef notwithstanding, Pale is a fairly enjoyable (if, again, utterly insane) opening to Gardens, with a few kinks to be ironed out in the rest of the book & series.

Links to stuff mentioned:

AP "A Critical Dragon" Canavan's various videos on Gardens' prologue:

Analysis of Mother's Lament, Dialogue in the Prologue, Analysis of the first paragraph

Quartermaster Pores' many essays on the Malazan Military. As examples, we add here: Ranks & structure, and the military's disposition pre the Fall of Pale.

Flicker kel Tath's excellent essay on Paran's deal, and an expansion on the selfsame essay by michhoffman.

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[Spoilers MBOTF] Come one, come all, to our Malazan rereader's rereadalong (better title pending). As the title suggests, we are tackling the Book of the Fallen from a rereader's perspective, and as such will be spoiling the series extensively (true to our word, we've done so from the very first episode). This episode is more of an intro of sorts, tackling the (part atrocious, part pulpy, part wonderful) covers and the otherwise great prefaces of Gardens of the Moon, ere we get into the meat of things with the actual book proper.

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The cover gallery for Gardens which we've thoroughly excoriated.

Shoot us an email with questions or the like: [email protected]

Would you prefer YouTube? https://www.youtube.com/@smileyspodcast

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Pending the start of our reread, we figured it'd be an interesting point to give a brief recap of the history of Malazan, how it came about, and what it is about, anyway, in a spoiler free manner. From the series' RPG origins to movie scripts to ten-book publishing deals, Malazan is storied both within & beyond its pages.

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The link to Blackdog Blues, as promised.

Shoot us an email with questions or the like: [email protected] you prefer YouTube? https://www.youtube.com/@smileyspodcast

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As promised, more episodes!

The hope is that this reread — by rereaders, for rereaders — will carry us until Walk in Shadow comes out, or we lose access to the internet; whichever comes first.

Join Lee & Mora in this (very spoiler-filled) reread of Steven Erikson's magnum opus (you wouldn't catch me dead saying that; Kharkanas is Erikson's magnum opus, but I hope this catches the algorithm), the Malazan Book of the Fallen, through a rereaders' lens. We'll approach the book with the hindsight of ten books and then some, and try — and most likely fail — to confine the spoiler scope to just the ten books, but we can't make too many promises.

If that sounds exciting, join us - we're here for the long haul (our projected finishing date is somewhere in 2037).

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Socials!

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Join the r/Malazan Discord: https://discord.gg/V8EwKkdzv9Want schedule updates? https://bsky.app/profile/smileyspod.b...Wanna buy us a drink? https://ko-fi.com/smileys

The end, at last. The book ends with a promise - there will be justice - and so it's only fitting that our podcast series on Kharkanas ends with a similar promise; there will be more episodes.

The marriage is done. The war is over. The storm has passed; elation. Sorcery burgeons upon the dawn of a new world, heralding a new era; let us see what they make of it.

Draconus has done all this before. The tapestry unravels, Rise Herat spirals, Mother Dark releases her - incredibly righteous - anger, the battle is lost, the standard is struck. Rise paints an invariably different picture of the battle compared to Henarald & Wreneck, and what are we to make of that?

There will be peace. And our socials in the description. Eventually.

The battle rages around us, ghosts are afoot, dragons very well might descend on the battlefield, sorcery is unleashed - and the climax of the battle, the various character moments, the last stands, are played out - in an oh so pointless manner - over the board of a wargame between a child who would be an adult & an adult who would be a child. Powerful stuff.

We march to war at the unveiling of sorcery. Things are coming to a head, ghosts waltz through the streets, the jigs are up on the betrayals, and yet, we view the world through the lens of a child. What are we to make of this? Find out with us.

A quick interlude in the betrayals & depression that abound the last episode, we have Prazek & Dathenar discuss & dissect poetry. And then more depression & betrayals, as you do. But the interlude was more than welcome!

In any case, we're but two chapters from the end - the excitement is palpable.

Please be a dear & pretend I've linked our socials here; we appreciate you more than we can express.

In what is possibly one of our longest episodes to date (the recording took damn near three hours!), we reach the beginning of the climax of Fall of Light. Betrayals abound, philosophy is uttered & mangled, sorcery manifests, love, ghosts, oh my!

I'd love to plug our socials here, but we've not used them in eons, so just imagine I've put them here.