A short life of the author
Steven Erikson (b. 7 October 1959), born Steve Rune Lundin in Toronto, Canada, trained as an anthropologist and archaeologist before turning to fiction. He developed the Malazan world in collaboration with archaeologist Ian Cameron Esslemont through a GURPS tabletop role-playing campaign in the 1980s — an origin that explains the world’s extraordinary density. Not to be confused with the American novelist Steve Erickson.
Life and Career
Gardens of the Moon (1999) was rejected by every major publisher for nine years before Bantam UK took it. The novel drops the reader into a world of staggering complexity — multiple continents, dozens of races, active gods, warrens of magic, and armies locked in multi-front wars — without exposition. This deliberate refusal to hold the reader’s hand is the series’ most polarising quality and its most radical formal innovation.
The subsequent novels expanded the world’s scope and emotional power. Deadhouse Gates (2000) — containing the Chain of Dogs sequence, in which a small army escorts 30,000 refugees across a continent under siege — is one of the most devastating military narratives in fantasy. Memories of Ice (2001) escalated the stakes. Midnight Tides (2004) introduced an entirely new continent and cast. The Bonehunters (2006) began drawing the threads together. Toll the Hounds (2008) — set largely in the city of Black Coral and centring on themes of redemption, grief, and compassion — is widely considered his most literary work. The Crippled God (2011) brought the ten-volume, 3.4-million-word series to a conclusion that many readers found shattering.
Erikson has since published a prequel trilogy (the Kharkanas books) and a sequel, The God is Not Willing (2021), beginning a new Malazan trilogy.
Themes and Style
Erikson writes about compassion, power, civilisational collapse, and the cost of war. The Malazan world draws on real anthropological and archaeological models: the Imass are essentially Neanderthals who made a collective choice to become undead to fight a war against the Jaghut (ice-age beings); the interplay between mortal races, ascendants, and gods reflects patterns from comparative religion and mythology.
His philosophical preoccupations — the nature of mercy, the relationship between civilisation and violence, the question of whether gods deserve worship — are embedded in the narrative rather than stated as theme. The series’ central argument is that compassion — not power, not honour, not faith — is what redeems civilisation.
His prose is dense, allusive, and demanding, with a tendency toward philosophical digression that some readers find profound and others find exhausting.
Critical Standing
The Malazan Book of the Fallen occupies a unique position in fantasy literature: it is simultaneously one of the most respected and one of the most divisive works in the genre. Its defenders consider it the greatest fantasy series ever written — more intellectually serious than Tolkien, more morally complex than Martin, more emotionally devastating than either. Its detractors find it impenetrable, over-written, and self-indulgent. Both groups are responding to the same qualities.
Key Works
- Gardens of the Moon (1999)
- Deadhouse Gates (2000)
- Memories of Ice (2001)
- Midnight Tides (2004)
- Toll the Hounds (2008)
- The Crippled God (2011)
Collecting Erikson
Gardens of the Moon (1999, Bantam UK) — the true first edition published as a UK trade paperback — is very scarce and brings $200–$600. The Subterranean Press limited editions of the series are the most collectible format, with signed and lettered copies commanding $300–$800 per volume. US editions published by Tor are more widely available.