Review copy provided by the publisher—Tor Books—in exchange for an honest review.

Cover art illustrated by Steve Stone

The God is Not Willing by Steven Erikson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Series: The Witness (Book #1 of 3)

Genre: Fantasy, Epic fantasy, Military Fantasy

Word Count: 191,000 words

Pages: 496 pages (Hardcover edition)

Published: 16th November 2021 by Tor Books (US) & 1st July 2021 by Bantam Press (UK)

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The God is Not Willing made me sad. It might be time for me to admit everything in the Malazan universe beyond Malazan Book of the Fallen is not for me.

“Longing. Look for it, in every crowd, and you will find it. Paint it any colour you choose: grief, nostalgia, melancholy, remembrance, these are but flavours, poetic reflections.”

If I were to go back to the past and tell the past Petrik that The God is Not Willing would disappoint you, the past me wouldn’t have believed it. And yet, it happened. Since the release of The God is Not Willing, I’ve been saving the book to read on rainy days. This was one of those books I prepared in case I needed a great book to read because I was confident I would love the heck out of it. Currently, out of 3.6k ratings, The God is Not Willing has an average rating of 4.62 on Goodreads. That is insanely high, and MANY Malazan Book of the Fallen fans loved this book. Some have even mentioned they could start their journey in the Malazan Empire by reading The God is Not Willing instead of Gardens of the Moon despite this being the beginning of a sequel trilogy to the ten books in Malazan Book of the Fallen. And as a diehard fan of Malazan Book of the Fallen, no one is more hurt than me for not liking The God is Not Willing. Also, although technically you can follow the main story, I think there were still too many necessary contexts, backgrounds, and details from the main series required to fully understand the novel. At the very least, I think you have to read Malazan Book of the Fallen up to the fourth novel: House of Chains.

“The stupid knew better than to look into their wake. The wise could not help it and so suffered greatly. This was humanity’s great divide, and many a time, Damisk had envied the stupid and all the obstinate incomprehension he saw in their eyes and faces. In the end, it takes wisdom to scream.”

The God is Not Willing is the first book in The Witness trilogy, and it takes place a decade after the end of The Crippled God, the final book in Malazan Book of the Fallen. However, the main storyline in the novel focuses on the aftermath of Karsa Orlong’s actions in House of Chains. Many years have passed since three Teblor warriors brought carnage and chaos to the small lakeside settlement of Silver Lake. While the town has recovered, the legacy of that past horror remains, even if the Teblor tribes of the north no longer venture into the Southlands. One of those three Teblor warriors, Karsa Orlong, is now deemed to be a god, albeit an indifferent one. In the high mountains, where dwell the tribes of the Teblor, a new war leader has risen. Scarred by the deeds of Karsa Orlong, he intends to confront his god, even if he has to cut a bloody path through the Malazan Empire to do it. Higher in the mountains, a new threat has emerged, and now the Teblor are running out of time. The long-feared invasion is about to begin. And this time it won’t be three simple warriors. This time thousands are poised to flood the lands of the south. And in their way, a single legion of Malazan marines are on the march towards Silver Lake, responding to intelligence indicating the tribes beyond the border are stirring. The marines aren’t quite sure what they’re going to encounter but, while the Malazan military has evolved and these are not the marines of old, one thing hasn’t changed: they’ll handle whatever comes at them. Or die trying.

“Lad, the most powerful constant is stupidity. Nothing else comes close. Stupidity kills all the animals, empties the sky of birds, poisons the rivers, burns the forests, wages the wars, feeds the lies, invents the world over and over again in ways only idiots could think real. Stupidity, lad, will defeat every god, crush every dream, topple every empire. Because, in the end, stupid people outnumber smart people. If that wasn’t true, we wouldn’t suffer over and over again, through generation after generation and on for ever.”

The Witness trilogy was designed to be Karsa Orlong’s trilogy, and it might just be the reality by the end of the series. But if you’re like me and think Karsa Orlong will have a lot of appearances, I should let you know now that he did not appear in The God is Not Willing. As I said, many parts of The God is Not Willing circulate around the repercussions of Karsa’s heinous crimes in House of Chains. There’s a huge chance we will witness Karsa Orlong more frequently in the second and third books of The Witness trilogy, but not in The God is Not Willing. And theoretically, The God is Not Willing really should’ve been a book I enjoyed. It felt easier to read compared to Malazan Book of the Fallen or The Kharkanas trilogy, and Erikson’s prose remains strong as always. It is not as non-stop as The Kharkanas trilogy; if you love reading Erikson’s philosophical musing on life, stupidity, humanity, and war, you will still get them in abundance in The God is Not Willing. However, for me, everything about The God is Not Willing did not feel as rewarding as I hoped for several reasons, and this is something I noticed since I read The Kharkanas trilogy.

“The present age is only unique because you live in it. When you die, you cease to care about that age. And you know this. Which is why you don’t care about anything past your own life. Why should you? It follows, quite reasonably, that every generation is righteous in cursing the one that precedes it. Namely, yours. And the vicious fighting withdrawal that is your own conservatism – this bitter, hate-filled war against change – is doomed to fail, because no age lasts for ever. One follows upon the next and this is an inescapable fact. So step aside. Your day is done. Any regression into childish tantrums makes a mockery of wisdom. The age dies with you, as it must, and you now show its face to be that of a mewling child who can no longer hold on to what has ceased to exist. Synthraeas”

Here is how I look at the circumstances. Based on my reading experience, it feels precise to say my emotions treat Malazan Book of the Fallen as the golden age of Steven Erikson’s epic and unforgettable storytelling. Unfortunately, every book published in the same world since then that I have attempted, both by Erikson and Ian Esslemont, felt inferior and a struggle to read. In the case of The Kharkanas trilogy, I liked Forge of Darkness enough, but I could not finish Fall of Light. For Esslemont’s involvements, Night of Knives was horrible, Return of the Crimson Guard was another victim to the pile of DNF shelf, and the same notion goes for A Dancer’s Lament. To put it simply… I cannot bring myself to love all the other books outside the main series. No matter how much I wanted, everything felt smaller in scope and underwhelming in quality. The God is Not Willing may be more accessible to read, but it did not have the grand epic scope and various memorable characters encountered in Malazan Book of the Fallen.

“To be believed in is an obligation. Only by heeding that obligation are you made worthy of that belief.”

I know… I know… We have Rant, Damisk, and Stillwater in The God is Not Willing. And I will agree their voices and narration were the most distinct of all the characters. Rant’s tragic and destructive background made it easy to care about him and his development. Stillwater was undoubtedly the best character in the Malazan Marines in this book. But for Damisk, even though he was engaging at first, I feel like Erikson is using him as a platform to unleash a barrage of philosophies, and it ended up drowning the pacing and narrative of the book. Also, an issue that has appeared in the last few books of Malazan Book of the Fallen was multiplied here. Lack of distinct voices in the characters. This situation was tolerable in the Malazan Book of the Fallen because it was balanced and surpassed by myriad other legendary main characters. I cannot say the same here. Stillwater aside, and maybe Spindle, all the other Malazan marines are practically impossible to differentiate. It was like they were all the same characters with different names.

“It was good to have people like that looking out for you. The kind who went through life quietly, sincerely and consistently.”

It took two weeks (and skimming the middle section) for me to succeed at finishing The God is Not Willing. This is not a good statistic and feeling. At 190,000 words, The God is Not Willing is even shorter than Gardens of the Moon. And yet… it took me the longest to finish. In comparison, the eighth installment in Malazan Book of the Fallen, Toll the Hounds, clocked in at almost 400,000 words, and it took me less than a week to read. I frequently correlate how quick I can finish a book to how engaged and invested I am with the book I am reading. And these stats should display the massive differences. I guess we are left with one big question. Is this where I say farewell to the remaining books in the Malazan world? Honestly, I am still not sure. I love Malazan Book of the Fallen very much. It is one of my top favorite series of all time, and there is a potential I will grow to enjoy the books outside the main series after I complete the full reread of Malazan Book of the Fallen. On my reread up to Memories of Ice, I continue to be a diehard fan of Malazan Book of the Fallen, and I know I will finish my reread of the series eventually. So… who knows? Maybe after that is done, and The Kharkanas trilogy and The Witness trilogy are both completed, I will try them again. I cannot deny a part of me felt tired during my readthrough as I thought: “I have to read these books again just to refresh my memory someday when the sequels are published.” Until these are fulfilled, with sorrow, I say my heart remains exclusively in Malazan Book of the Fallen.

“To live is to lose the faith you were born with to a thousand cuts, each year bleeding into the next. The eyes of the innocent see a world very differently from what you and I see. To know this is to revisit one’s own loss, eye to eye with sad reflection, and to feel once more that dreadful ache in your chest.”

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