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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3395 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 13, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I'm reading the new Malazan Karsa book: No Life Forsaken and I noticed something strange. The foreword is dedicated to Youtube book streamers and Booktok explicitly. This feels oddly tacky and off-putting. I never really thought of Steven Erikson in that light. Anyone know if this is some new weird parasocial thing authors are doing? Or is Erikson a trailblazer.

Huh that feels quite weird for Erikson yeah. I didn't know about that. Excited he's finally publishing the Karsa trilogy though. I love Malazan have read it a few times now.

The first book was good but the themes felt far more heavy handed than his previous works. I'm hoping this second book isn't so... degraded? idk the exact feeling.

Keep us posted. FWIW I felt the Karsa parts, while cool, we're the most morally degraded of the whole series. Well perhaps besides that one part with Toc the Younger... blech.

Different kind of degraded. You are talking morally degraded, and yeah Karsa has super foreign morals. I agree with the Erikson blogpost on the purpose of writing him is, to really bring into the perspective the narrative of "Noble Savage".

I meant degraded in terms of tropes/quality. The first book had this almost preachy take on modern social issues wrapped up into the plot that felt distinctly heavy handed in a way that a high quality author like Erikson should be above. It is also fundamentally at odds with my understanding of his general literary style: he writes civilizations with the dispassionate style of an archeologist(which he is). There's no: "this is right" "this is wrong" only "this is a socio-cultural permutation that could exist, lets explore it in a story". He has overarching themes, but the pro-immigration/pro-refugee stance was so off kilter, so black and white, and so pronounced that it felt like a departure.

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