So maybe this means I can revisit the Malazan series once I finish Bakker's behemoth; but for my money (and knowing that I've only read the first two books in the Malazan series), I find Bakker's premise more interesting and his writing more enjoyable, as over the top as it is. This is definitely the darkest high fantasy I've ever read.
i wouldn't necessarily judge erikson by the first two books, the next three are probably his objective peak writing-wise (he admits himself the first book's comparatively pretty weak). i get why some would prefer bakker though - he's even more philosophical, even more perverse and fucked up, probably more modern and original in his concepts. he's created some of the most singular characters and most vivid images i've ever come across in anything, and the tone is unlike anything else. i especially get why anyone who's more drawn to ideas than emotions would prefer him.
the reason i love erikson even more is that his books feel more invested with meaning than anything else i've read. every individual act, every gesture, every shared gaze, it all matters so much in those novels, the way it must've done in the distant, superstitious, god-fearing past i suppose. i'm a pretty apathetic, desensitised person and that series made me feel connected to its world in a way i'd always craved to connect to my own. i find a lot of wisdom and pathos in the characters' existential plights and musings, but also in erikson's understanding of the relationships between past and present, the spiritual and corporeal, myth and reality, individuals and the collective, etc, and how his world and its machinations are organically built out of that understanding. this is true of bakker too to an extent, but while he's an extremely intelligent guy i do think his philosophising can get indulgent or digressive at times, rather than arising naturally from the story.
i also love that erikson doesn't offer a linear story with a start and end so much as dumping us in the middle of a vast, extremely multi-faceted history the author (an IRL archaeologist) has mapped out meticulously in his head (along with ian cameron esslemont, who deserves a portion of the credit). each individual in erikson is fully formed with a history that reaches way beyond the pages, but each typically begins as a mystery to the reader, a potentiality from which power, values, flaws, burdens, complex lore etc gradually emerge as each adds his/her own layer to the story (this is also true of bakker to an extent but erikson pushes it further). i much prefer this approach to the usual slight variations on traditional types, or GRRM's way of beginning in cliché and then having those clichés be subverted, which feels easier and cheaper to me.
i'm also fond of his sense of humour, which ranges from soldiers' gallows humour to shakespeare-indebted witticisms to pure silliness, but rarely seems ill-fitting nor reduces characters to gimmicks. i only mention that because it feels like a lost art in fantasy sometimes, a genre which tends to take itself a little too seriously.
