The God is Not Willing

The God is Not Willing
Series	Witness Trilogy
Publisher	Bantam Press (UK) Tor (US)
Released	1 July 2021 (UK) 16 November 2021 (US)
Pages	496 pp
ISBN	978-1787632868 (UK) 978-0765323590 (US)
Followed by	No Life Forsaken

The God is Not Willing is the first book in the Witness Trilogy, Steven Erikson's sequel to the Malazan Book of the Fallen series.

The story takes place 10 years after the events of The Crippled God, and while telling the story of a new group of characters, features the legacy of Karsa Orlong and others.

Erikson hopes the book will provide an entry point into the Malazan world for new readers who have not read any of the previous Malazan books.

Publisher's summary

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, Karsa Orlong, is now deemed to be a god, albeit an indifferent one. In truth, many new cults and religions have emerged across the Malazan world, including those who worship Coltaine, the Black-Winged God, and -- popular among the Empire's soldiery -- followers of the cult of Iskar Jarak, Guardian of the Dead.

A legion of Malazan marines is on the march towards Silver Lake, responding to intelligence that indicates the tribes beyond the border are stirring. The marines aren't quite sure what they're going to be facing 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.

Meanwhile, in the high mountains, where dwell the tribes of the Teblor, a new warleader 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...

It seems the past is about to revisit Silver Lake, and that is never a good thing...

Front matter

Dedication

For dragging me online, and for the friendship, this novel is dedicated to Lenore Kennedy

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to my advance readers, Dr A. P. Canavan, Baria Ahmed, and Mark Paxton-MacRae; and to my agent, Howard Morhaim, and my editor, Simon Taylor. Special appreciation goes to my fans frequenting the Steven Erikson Facebook page, and to all the YouTubers now discussing all things Malazan: you delivered the shot in the arm when it was needed the most.

Maps

Northwest Genabackis - Late Empire

Steven Erikson's hand drawn map

Editions

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Publisher	Format/Edition	First published	Pages	ISBN-10	ISBN-13	Notes
United Kingdom — The God is Not Willing
Bantam	Hard cover	July 2021	496	1787632865	978-1787632868	First edition
Bantam	Trade paperback	July 2021	496	1787632873	978-1787632875
Bantam	Mass market paperback	xxx	xxx	xxx	xxx
United States — The God is Not Willing
Tor	Hard cover	November 2021	496	0765323591	978-0765323590
Tor	Trade paperback	November 2023	496	‎0765323664	978-0765323668
Tor	Mass market paperback	September 2022	640	0765363445	978-0765363442

Plot Summary

The following summaries contain spoilers
Please access individual chapter summaries via the Chapter infobox

Epigraph

What to make of this? The Lord of Death is dead. The Sire of War rests silent in a broken crypt. Light and Dark have fled into Shadow, and Shadow dreams of sunlight. Houses lie abandoned. Heralds cry out unheard; masons sift dust through numb hands; mistresses wait alone in the night. Queens weep and kings stumble. All the world is in flux, truths dying with every breath spent and every word uttered.     An old woman walks a corridor, lighting candles one by one, but the hollow wind steals every flame in her wake.     But now I see arrayed before me a new field of battle, greeting dawn with heavy silence. Soon, in the fraying gloom, the darkness shakes apart to reveal two armies facing one another. Banners flap like wings, the ranks plume and steam; the rising sun makes a strewn treasure of weapons and armour.     Then rises a single figure between the foes, spire of flesh and obdurate will, iron-boned yet shattered of visage. He is no one's champion, yet everyone's god. He is the warrior's red blessing, yet the lover's sweet kiss; he is witness to every corpse, and the maker of children. He is history's gilded prow, rearing fierce through the spume, yet dwells at ease in the space between barrow and menhir. He is heavy footfall and he is feather touch; cold stare and fleeting glance. For him, all is surrendered; for him, all is sacrificed. In his name nations fall; in his name, gods will kneel. If empires burn, blame him not, nor again in the moment the lover turns away. To witness is to begin to see. To see is to begin to know. To know is to recoil. Yet he stands fast, unarmed, the Unwilling God, the Helpless God, the Stayer of All and None.     The foes do not move. The sun unfurls its golden light across the surface of the world. Will this be a day of war? Let us see... Hanascordia Visions of the Last Prophet Third Karsan Apocrypha (Darujhistan, in the Year of Feral's Challenge)

Book One: Knuckles

Epigraph

As the helpless and wounded and young fled, it is said a line was made behind them, across the narrow cut of the pass. Twelve Teblor adults, bearing whatever weapons they could find, each took their last link of broken chain and hammered spikes through it, deep into the rock. Now bound by ankle shackle to the length of their chains, there they would stand against the ferocity of the slavers and their enforcers, the pursuing army seeking to regain its wealth in flesh. It cannot be verified, of course, if this in truth occurred. What can be said, however, is that the flight of the liberated Teblor succeeded, thus bringing to an end the institution of slavery in the Malyn Province of Malazan Genabackis, which in turn saw the fall of the final hold-out of this wretched trade in flesh. Valard of Tulips did make a curious recount in her Geographa 'ta Mott, however, of the eponymous Teblor Pass, a mere three years later, noting the presence of a bone ridge in a certain line, there at the narrowest section of the trail, while upon the downward slope was found a deeper scatter of other bones. As if, she wrote, 'a thousand men had died fighting a single line of defenders.' It should be noted, as well, that Valard, being a devout Mystic of Denial, would have been entirely ignorant of both the Slave Rebellion of Malyn, and the local legend of the Stand of the Spike. Gaerlon's History, Vol. IX The Great Library of New Morn

Book Two: Starwheel

Epigraph

Make my ending a whisper. Let yours be a shout. Fisher kel Tath

Book Three: Roots of Stone

Epigraph

Today, we become spokes of the wheel. Elade Tharos, Warleader of the Teblor

Trivia

• In October 2017, Erikson announced on his Facebook page that this book would be his next published Malazan work. In order to work on the book, he announced he was temporarily putting aside his work on Walk in Shadow, the concluding volume of the Kharkanas Trilogy.
• Erikson discussed his work on the book in an essay called Life on Thin Ice: Updating my Progress on The Witness Trilogy.
• Erikson expected to write the majority of the novel on a newly purchased Gemini PDA similar to one he had used to write several earlier Malazan books. Ultimately the ergonomics of the new device did not work out and the author completed the book on a laptop.
• At least some of the book was written at the Little June coffee shop in Victoria, B.C., Canada.
• It was not until after writing the first 80 or 90 pages of the novel that he realised he had actually written the opening of the second book in the series. "I realised I was leaving too much backstory" and had to start over. Getting started on the book "took a little longer than expected, but at the same time, once it's done, I've got 80 pages of the second novel already done."
• Erikson completed the first draft of the novel on 28 February 2020. After the copy editing process was completed at the publisher, the manuscript was returned to Erikson by 21 December 2020 so he could begun his own review of the document on 29 December 2020. Since Erikson's writing process incorporates the primary editing into the preparation of the initial manuscript, he was able to quickly complete his review and return it to the publisher on 3 January 2021.
• Regarding the themes of the novel, Erikson says, "I asked myself before I started the novel: What is the role of a soldier? And then I set about exploring that. And, of course, the immediate answer would be, you know, protect your nation, fight wars, etc., etc. But I wanted to go a little bit past that and explore the notion of acting in service to something greater than oneself. And so that is what this first novel is certainly exploring." He says another sub-theme is "cultural appropriation because...all kinds of new religions are springing up ten years after the events of the ten books, and they're being plucked from everywhere, and they're just being adopted all over the place, because that is what cultures do. If they don't, they're dead. They are a dead culture. They need to appropriate, to adapt, and absorb aspects and change...Which is not to actually denigrate the complaints of cultural appropriation, because there are some very, very valid complaints with that respect."
• Regarding the audiobook version of his novels, Steven Erikson says, "Mostly, I'm not consulted on pronunciations, etc. That said, I did work with the reader for The God is Not Willing and by all accounts she was terrific."
• In preparation for writing The God is Not Willing, Erikson says he "had to go back to some of the books and read some stuff, like the opening to House of Chains and things like that. And, it was a strange feeling, because I looked at it and said, 'I think I was a better writer then than I was now. And that's a hard thing to deal with...'"
• Erikson says the title of the book "is a weird one, isn't it?...is it even grammatical?" but says it just "insisted that it be there." As of November 2021, he had not yet decided on the titles for the second and third books in the Witness series. This is different from the Malazan Book of the Fallen series and the Kharkanas Trilogy where he had decided on all the titles in both series even before he began writing.
• Erikson created a mock up cover for the book that became the basis for the final cover illustration by artist Steve Stone. In the process, Erikson kept sending notes to Stone asking him to "beef up" the central female figure on the cover. "She's got to be bigger. And I don't mean just tall, she's got to be a substantial figure up there. And I almost sense I was really twisting his arm on that one," he laughs, "because he kept coming [back where] she was maybe gaining half an inch each version."

Cover gallery

Spanish cover

Italian cover

Czech cover

External links

• Ten Very Big Books podcast - The God is Not Willing - A Conversation with Steven Erikson
• Chat with Steven Erikson on The God is Not Willing - Green Team of the Legendarium
• Spoiler Chat: The God is Not Willing with Steven Erikson and Philip Chase - A Critical Dragon

Notes and references

List of abbreviations • Paginations • How to reference an article