yiannid's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
simo517l's review against another edition
4.0
REally good book, but somewhat insane when ti comes to make head and tail in it. Can definitely be hard to follow, but this is the beginning to amazing series, so try to hold out for the next book, Deadhouse Gates, to see if this is something for you
vigneshs's review against another edition
4.0
This is one of the scariest and interesting books that I've ever read yet. Everyone I talked to before starting this book scared me with explaining how difficult the book is to read and understand properly.
Maybe because this is a first book in the series, I didn't had many difficulties on reading or understanding this book. I just made my mind to move with the flow. The author knows what to give and when to give to the readers and I trusted the author. This made my reading more interesting.
Sure, there are many places that I felt lost and I needed confirmations and such; but I was following some podcasts and discord groups to help me on this. The writing style was also an difficult thing to get to at the beginning. Then I gone through with the flow.
The story was not at all an easy one to digest. I normally read 100 pages per day but with this one, completing a chapter needed many breaks in between. It needed more concentration and reading between the lines but for such a good book, it is perfectly ok for me to get through.
I don't want to say the usual things on my review like synopsis, characters and storylines. Most of us already knew that but I understand one thing now, that THE STORY IS JUST GETTING STARTED.
Please read the synopsis, Non Spoiler reviews and understand the complexity before starting this book. No book was for everyone.
The 4 stars is because of the much less actions. They speak highly and mighty of many people's in this book. But the actions won't justify that strength. I think it will be justified on the next books but let's see.
Maybe because this is a first book in the series, I didn't had many difficulties on reading or understanding this book. I just made my mind to move with the flow. The author knows what to give and when to give to the readers and I trusted the author. This made my reading more interesting.
Sure, there are many places that I felt lost and I needed confirmations and such; but I was following some podcasts and discord groups to help me on this. The writing style was also an difficult thing to get to at the beginning. Then I gone through with the flow.
The story was not at all an easy one to digest. I normally read 100 pages per day but with this one, completing a chapter needed many breaks in between. It needed more concentration and reading between the lines but for such a good book, it is perfectly ok for me to get through.
I don't want to say the usual things on my review like synopsis, characters and storylines. Most of us already knew that but I understand one thing now, that THE STORY IS JUST GETTING STARTED.
Please read the synopsis, Non Spoiler reviews and understand the complexity before starting this book. No book was for everyone.
The 4 stars is because of the much less actions. They speak highly and mighty of many people's in this book. But the actions won't justify that strength. I think it will be justified on the next books but let's see.
truthlessofcanada's review against another edition
3.5
Gardens of the Moon is the first book in this absolute unit of a series. It was also one of the most confusing books I have read.
Ambition is not a dirty word. Piss on compromise. Go for the throat.
Since my experience reading this book had some really clear pros and cons I am going to go back to the Pros and Cons format for this review, but first let's talk about what kind of reading experience you can expect from Gardens of the Moon.
I think one thing that is a little bit unique, is that generally the level of darkness in a fantasy books correlates with how much magic there is. I have no idea why this is, but it seems like the books trying to be more gritty, also tend to make magic play a small roll. This book is quite gritty and dark, and also one of the most magic filled fantasy novels I have read. I would compare this to ASOIAF, but if we were reading it during the time of Ancient Valyria. Going into this book you can expect magic to play a huge roll in events, but tone wise for it to be close to a grimdark novel. I don't think I would call it grimdark, but I can see why people would call it grimdark.
The next thing to expect is a huge amount of PoV characters. I don't think this book has way more named characters then a lot of fantasy series I have read, but the story is much less focused on one or two characters like most epic fantasy is. Erickson PoV swaps like it is going out of style. He also has a style of third person limited where the narrator will sometimes know thing that the character you are following doesn't and it will sometimes leak into a more third person omniscient type story, and you will get thoughts from people who aren't the narrator.
Alright time to get to those pros and cons
Tell me, Tool, what dominates your thoughts?'
The Imass shrugged before replying.
'I think of futility, Adjunct.'
'Do all Imass think about futility?'
'No. Few think at all.'
'Why is that?'
The Imass leaned his head to one side and regarded her.
'Because Adjunct, it is futile.
Pro #1:
In my opinion the number 1 strength of this book by far is atmosphere. When a godlike super powerful being enters a scene I could almost feel their presence through the page. Erickson even makes relatively small scale fights seem epic, just by the way he wrote them.
Con #1:
The most obvious con is just how confused you will be while reading it. A lot of the time you will read something, not know what is going on, and you just have to move on and accept the confusion. I think I got less and less confused for the first 550 pages, and then the last 100 I started becoming more confused again. I think this has a bit to do with the story, and a bit to do with the writing. At time I wonder if Erickson was being deliberately obtuse. For example have a tendency to go back and forth between using someone title and their name, and you don't get any wind up period to learn the world so a lot of the time you kinda have to figure it out by process of elimination.
Pro #2
This one is obvious, worldbuilding. The world in this book is huge, unique, and feels like it has a lot of depth. Not much more to say that that. The cons take more words to explain then the pros, so it might feel like more of this review is negative, but overall I did like the book.
Con #2:
I am not a fan of the way magic was used in this book. To me a lot of the time it was soft magic used in the way that is the biggest weakness of soft magic. An example would be that there are multiple very very powerful beings on either side, however I have no context for which is more powerful. So it is really hard to feel danger when it is unclear whether the super powerful being I am cheering for can just kill the ones I am cheering against. This bothered me a few times in this book.
Pro #3:
The scheming. This book had a lot of political maneuvering and scheming, and in general I thought it was very well done. Sometimes it is hard to tell how good the scheming is because I don't fully understand what is going on, but in general I would rank this pretty close to my favorites in terms of how well done the political scheming is. It also wasn't clearly one person outsmarting everyone else, everyone scheming seems to be one step ahead sometimes, and one step behind sometimes, so I didn't know who was going to come out on top. One nitpick for this is that for one conflict someone I know almost nothing about turned out to have the best scheming, which wasn't particularly satisfying.
Con #3:
There is a fight between 5 dragons and an ancient god, and it fucking cuts away for most of it. WHY THE HELL DO YOU THINK I DON'T WANT TO SEE THAT
Pro #4:
Time for a petty thing I liked. The names for really badass characters are great. You hear the name Calidan Brood and you know he is a badass, same with Anamander Rake.
Convergence,” Tool said. “Power ever draws other power.
Alright time for the things I am mixed on.
The biggest one is the characters. I can sum up my thoughts about them in a couple sentences.
Most of them are interesting, I am not at all invested in the fate of any of them. The final act of this book had no potential to hit me in the feels, because I wasn't really invested in the fate of the characters, I was interested, but not invested. One reason for this is that the vast majority of the characters in this book seem to have unclear motivations, I don't really know the goals of a lot of the people in this. One thing I thought it did do very well was very old characters felt ancient, this is normally a con for me, because I have yet to see someone do it as well as Jim Butcher. I could see Erickson giving Butcher a run for his money here, the people who are thousands of years old feel like people who have lived for thousands of years.
The other is the plot progression. Some things really came out of nowhere, Something I know nothing about just happens, without giving me any kinda setup of why it should happen. I think the plotting here in 1 way was very good, in that it did a great job of bringing multiple plots together in an intricate way. However the setup and payoff was lacking a decent amount of the time.
Overall the combination of some truly epic scenes, a initial 150 pages I didn't care about at all, a small does of deus ex machina, some great scheming, and some just absolutely epic scenes get's the opening book of Malazan a
7/10.
Ambition is not a dirty word. Piss on compromise. Go for the throat.
Since my experience reading this book had some really clear pros and cons I am going to go back to the Pros and Cons format for this review, but first let's talk about what kind of reading experience you can expect from Gardens of the Moon.
I think one thing that is a little bit unique, is that generally the level of darkness in a fantasy books correlates with how much magic there is. I have no idea why this is, but it seems like the books trying to be more gritty, also tend to make magic play a small roll. This book is quite gritty and dark, and also one of the most magic filled fantasy novels I have read. I would compare this to ASOIAF, but if we were reading it during the time of Ancient Valyria. Going into this book you can expect magic to play a huge roll in events, but tone wise for it to be close to a grimdark novel. I don't think I would call it grimdark, but I can see why people would call it grimdark.
The next thing to expect is a huge amount of PoV characters. I don't think this book has way more named characters then a lot of fantasy series I have read, but the story is much less focused on one or two characters like most epic fantasy is. Erickson PoV swaps like it is going out of style. He also has a style of third person limited where the narrator will sometimes know thing that the character you are following doesn't and it will sometimes leak into a more third person omniscient type story, and you will get thoughts from people who aren't the narrator.
Alright time to get to those pros and cons
Tell me, Tool, what dominates your thoughts?'
The Imass shrugged before replying.
'I think of futility, Adjunct.'
'Do all Imass think about futility?'
'No. Few think at all.'
'Why is that?'
The Imass leaned his head to one side and regarded her.
'Because Adjunct, it is futile.
Pro #1:
In my opinion the number 1 strength of this book by far is atmosphere. When a godlike super powerful being enters a scene I could almost feel their presence through the page. Erickson even makes relatively small scale fights seem epic, just by the way he wrote them.
Con #1:
The most obvious con is just how confused you will be while reading it. A lot of the time you will read something, not know what is going on, and you just have to move on and accept the confusion. I think I got less and less confused for the first 550 pages, and then the last 100 I started becoming more confused again. I think this has a bit to do with the story, and a bit to do with the writing. At time I wonder if Erickson was being deliberately obtuse. For example have a tendency to go back and forth between using someone title and their name, and you don't get any wind up period to learn the world so a lot of the time you kinda have to figure it out by process of elimination.
Pro #2
This one is obvious, worldbuilding. The world in this book is huge, unique, and feels like it has a lot of depth. Not much more to say that that. The cons take more words to explain then the pros, so it might feel like more of this review is negative, but overall I did like the book.
Con #2:
I am not a fan of the way magic was used in this book. To me a lot of the time it was soft magic used in the way that is the biggest weakness of soft magic. An example would be that there are multiple very very powerful beings on either side, however I have no context for which is more powerful. So it is really hard to feel danger when it is unclear whether the super powerful being I am cheering for can just kill the ones I am cheering against. This bothered me a few times in this book.
Pro #3:
The scheming. This book had a lot of political maneuvering and scheming, and in general I thought it was very well done. Sometimes it is hard to tell how good the scheming is because I don't fully understand what is going on, but in general I would rank this pretty close to my favorites in terms of how well done the political scheming is. It also wasn't clearly one person outsmarting everyone else, everyone scheming seems to be one step ahead sometimes, and one step behind sometimes, so I didn't know who was going to come out on top. One nitpick for this is that for one conflict someone I know almost nothing about turned out to have the best scheming, which wasn't particularly satisfying.
Con #3:
There is a fight between 5 dragons and an ancient god, and it fucking cuts away for most of it. WHY THE HELL DO YOU THINK I DON'T WANT TO SEE THAT
Pro #4:
Time for a petty thing I liked. The names for really badass characters are great. You hear the name Calidan Brood and you know he is a badass, same with Anamander Rake.
Convergence,” Tool said. “Power ever draws other power.
Alright time for the things I am mixed on.
The biggest one is the characters. I can sum up my thoughts about them in a couple sentences.
Most of them are interesting, I am not at all invested in the fate of any of them. The final act of this book had no potential to hit me in the feels, because I wasn't really invested in the fate of the characters, I was interested, but not invested. One reason for this is that the vast majority of the characters in this book seem to have unclear motivations, I don't really know the goals of a lot of the people in this. One thing I thought it did do very well was very old characters felt ancient, this is normally a con for me, because I have yet to see someone do it as well as Jim Butcher. I could see Erickson giving Butcher a run for his money here, the people who are thousands of years old feel like people who have lived for thousands of years.
The other is the plot progression. Some things really came out of nowhere, Something I know nothing about just happens, without giving me any kinda setup of why it should happen. I think the plotting here in 1 way was very good, in that it did a great job of bringing multiple plots together in an intricate way. However the setup and payoff was lacking a decent amount of the time.
Overall the combination of some truly epic scenes, a initial 150 pages I didn't care about at all, a small does of deus ex machina, some great scheming, and some just absolutely epic scenes get's the opening book of Malazan a
7/10.
hylian_pirate's review against another edition
4.0
I always heard that Gardens of the Moon is one of the most daunting books in the fantasy genre and the people are right. If this was a book that was released recently and I bought it on a whim, I don't think I would have finished it. The fact that this is the first book of one of the most (if not the most) highly-acclaimed series is the reason I stuck with it and even enjoyed it. Expectations always play a major role.
Erikson and Esslemont have created a massive world. I would struggle to come up with a world that has more characters, continents, races, or gods. Part of the confusion is how all of this is thrown at you with no preamble and you have to learn a new word in every paragraph while keeping track of the plot. This book is written like an advanced calculus book while you are still learning addition and multiplication. This feels nice sometimes (Stockholm syndrome?) and it's like the author is not babysitting me with every little new idea.
Coming to the plot, this does not start with a simple coming of age story. It starts in the middle of an Empire's conquest. The second chapter is the conclusion of a 3-year-long siege battle. The story is told through the point of view of many characters and it jumps between them constantly which is something I very much enjoy and provides a nice amount of variety. The scale here is epic and monumental. You will find mages, dragons, demons, assassins and so much more. It's pretty amazing.
The characters of the Malazan world are very gray and you would struggle to decide on who's good and who's evil. It's also very hard for me to point a finger at some characters and say these will stay for all of the 10 books. They all feel like windows from which we can look into the world. Any of them is expendable for the sake of the story. The characters are still great but they're not the focus of the story.
Now that I have passed the trial of the first book, I can't wait to continue the series.
Erikson and Esslemont have created a massive world. I would struggle to come up with a world that has more characters, continents, races, or gods. Part of the confusion is how all of this is thrown at you with no preamble and you have to learn a new word in every paragraph while keeping track of the plot. This book is written like an advanced calculus book while you are still learning addition and multiplication. This feels nice sometimes (Stockholm syndrome?) and it's like the author is not babysitting me with every little new idea.
Coming to the plot, this does not start with a simple coming of age story. It starts in the middle of an Empire's conquest. The second chapter is the conclusion of a 3-year-long siege battle. The story is told through the point of view of many characters and it jumps between them constantly which is something I very much enjoy and provides a nice amount of variety. The scale here is epic and monumental. You will find mages, dragons, demons, assassins and so much more. It's pretty amazing.
The characters of the Malazan world are very gray and you would struggle to decide on who's good and who's evil. It's also very hard for me to point a finger at some characters and say these will stay for all of the 10 books. They all feel like windows from which we can look into the world. Any of them is expendable for the sake of the story. The characters are still great but they're not the focus of the story.
Now that I have passed the trial of the first book, I can't wait to continue the series.
vivi9's review against another edition
4.0
I was really skeptical of this book at first. I had heard it was confusing, had too much worldbuilding, and was entirely too pretentious, and to be fair it was all these things. But man did I end up loving this book. Erikson's character work was amazing. I loved every single character even if we only had four paragraphs with them. The magic system was so mysterious and intriguing; I constantly wanted to know more. The politics between the Ascendants and the Gods were all compelling. Quite frankly there are few things I didn't like about this book. But by far the crowning jewel was Anomander Rake, and I can't wait to learn more about him in the following books.
ryan_pardue's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
suey's review against another edition
4.0
Giving it four stars for the amazing world building. Some of it was a bit complicated for my weak brain, but I enjoyed trying!