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spentcello's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.25
Being an overhyped book seems hard. I find it difficult to separate my disappointment into what was from missed expectations and what was actually sub-par. I can see why people like Gardens of the Moon and perhaps I would have liked it years ago, but I want more in a book than just action, a whole lot of cool monsters and way too many characters. Really, much the same as how I felt about Game of Thrones.
Lots of people praise Erikson's world-building, but I disagree. The world felt artificial and skeletal, lacking almost all expression of culture. A society cannot exist in a cultural vacuum, and language, art, music, customs, political systems and morals all feed into each other. This book is devoid of most of these elements, and the slim pickings that are there are generic and uninspired. There was no distinction between any of the different races/cultural groups except for the headline "warrior society" or "nomadic society". As Erikson says in his introduction, an author shouldn't always spell it all out for the reader, but I would add that an author should have some consistency, and the lack of any expression of distinct culture (or even peripheral inferences) is inconsistent with having distinct cultural groups in your book. There are some very limited references to some cultural elements (mainly to do with the Rhivi) but they all rely so heavily on stereotypes that Erikson may as well have not bothered.
Delving down to the character-level, there is not any sort of sensible psychological integrity in the characters. There are so many of them, that making them distinct would be a Herculean task, however, it would be nice if their decision making wasn't quite so unbelievable - often in the form of being so ridiculously superficial. I felt entirely disengaged with the characters because I just couldn't accept them as coherent, instead, they were all cardboard stereotypes making the necessary decisions to put them in the right spot for some cool event later on which invariably featured some spontaneous cool monster. The dialogue is also laughably poor. If a character finds a locked door, you can be sure that the next line is "I found a door", you can also be sure that the line after that is "It's locked". I got over my annoyance with this about halfway through by just skating over most things in quotation marks because most of the dialogue doesn't need to be there anyway.
I'm aware that to some extent I'm judging this book on what it's not intending to be. If you are interested in sprawling adventure in a violent land filled with exciting monsters without much moral challenge and for some reason want this in book format instead of just playing Skyrim or Elden Ring or DnD or any other similar fantasy RPG, then this book will probably be quite enjoyable. However, if you're like me, and you're looking for a little more to draw you in, you'll likely be disappointed.
Lots of people praise Erikson's world-building, but I disagree. The world felt artificial and skeletal, lacking almost all expression of culture. A society cannot exist in a cultural vacuum, and language, art, music, customs, political systems and morals all feed into each other. This book is devoid of most of these elements, and the slim pickings that are there are generic and uninspired. There was no distinction between any of the different races/cultural groups except for the headline "warrior society" or "nomadic society". As Erikson says in his introduction, an author shouldn't always spell it all out for the reader, but I would add that an author should have some consistency, and the lack of any expression of distinct culture (or even peripheral inferences) is inconsistent with having distinct cultural groups in your book. There are some very limited references to some cultural elements (mainly to do with the Rhivi) but they all rely so heavily on stereotypes that Erikson may as well have not bothered.
Delving down to the character-level, there is not any sort of sensible psychological integrity in the characters. There are so many of them, that making them distinct would be a Herculean task, however, it would be nice if their decision making wasn't quite so unbelievable - often in the form of being so ridiculously superficial. I felt entirely disengaged with the characters because I just couldn't accept them as coherent, instead, they were all cardboard stereotypes making the necessary decisions to put them in the right spot for some cool event later on which invariably featured some spontaneous cool monster. The dialogue is also laughably poor. If a character finds a locked door, you can be sure that the next line is "I found a door", you can also be sure that the line after that is "It's locked". I got over my annoyance with this about halfway through by just skating over most things in quotation marks because most of the dialogue doesn't need to be there anyway.
I'm aware that to some extent I'm judging this book on what it's not intending to be. If you are interested in sprawling adventure in a violent land filled with exciting monsters without much moral challenge and for some reason want this in book format instead of just playing Skyrim or Elden Ring or DnD or any other similar fantasy RPG, then this book will probably be quite enjoyable. However, if you're like me, and you're looking for a little more to draw you in, you'll likely be disappointed.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Violence, and War
Moderate: Fire/Fire injury and Colonisation
Minor: Genocide
nightstitch96's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Violence, and War
Moderate: Colonisation
Minor: Animal death
thepurplebookwyrm's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.25
Reading vlog: https://youtu.be/d4fAamkop3M?si=23OsmFaB-4JjqZSx.
Here's an extremely belated review of Gardens of the Moon (and bits of Deadhouse Gates, technically).
Writing, structure and pacing:
I found Erikson’s prose decent to good, overall. It did the job, felt eloquent or even somewhat inspired at times – I did write a couple of quotes down in my reading log – and that's about it.
I did have an issue with the pacing of Gardens of the Moon, as I generally do when stories coast along at a rather leisurely pace only to go 'balls to the wall wild' with action in their final sections. I’m not saying that never works for me, but it seems it’s just not my preference, especially with stories that don’t really do it for me on other fronts...
The book also tended to have chapters on the longer side of things, which I wasn’t a big fan of either, especially, once again, since I wasn’t particularly invested in the plot in any case. Every chapter, additionally, featured several different points of view, a narrative choice I normally like. But here, unfortunately, the transitions between them weren’t always the smoothest.
Character work:
The character work, such as it was in the pages I read, was fine overall. It was decent to good in a couple of instances, and alright to kinda bad in some others. Paran, for instance, did not make sense to me in terms of character motivations, or rather the shifting thereof... and no, I didn’t find the “but mayhaps godly manipulations murr” excuse good enough. Another character just up and changed her mind about something that had been established as pretty fundamental to her identify, and worldview, before she died, and I just couldn’t quite buy it. Then again, when you have so many different characters, right out of the gate, and all vying for screen-time in every single chapter, it isn’t so surprising that you wouldn’t devote enough time to properly fleshing all of them out, especially if you also have to introduce, then juggle 10 different world-building elements…
I’m not a character-driven reader, no, but the fact I didn’t really care about any character, nor even find most of them particularly interesting at the outset, didn’t help. I did like Tattersail (outside of the 'instalovy' schtick with Paran)… and Crone, the old as fuck magical Raven, was based. Yes, my favourite Malazan character is a bird, make of that what you will. #SheWasTheRealMVP
A point of firmer criticism, that mildly overlaps with world-building: the fact this story features old, and I mean extremely old, think ancient, beings, some of them godlike, with ‘speaking roles’… actually broke my immersion a little. Convincingly portraying non-human animal minds is difficult to pull off. Portraying alien, eldritch or godlike minds, is extremely difficult to pull off. It can be done, but holy shit is it rare – in my limited experience. It’s all the harder to do when you have them sit down for a fireside chat and speak like what essentially amounts to a slightly odd or aloof human being – yes, looking right at you, Anomander Rake. That kind of character, in my humble opinion, should (most of the time) be spoken of, observed by others, not spoken to.
Theming elements:
I honestly didn’t read enough of the greater story to have any strong opinions regarding the series’ overarching theming. What threads, or crumbs I picked up seemed to be concerned with the rise and fall of empires, and civilisation; its nature, its pitfalls, etc… The nature of power, or godhood – in a, ahem, rather JRPG-reminiscent sense – might’ve also been bopping about in there.
None of these crumbs were bad as such, but what I managed to gather on my… uhm, reading plate, shall we say, didn’t particularly engage or appeal to me, given my personal theming preferences, or the way these were peppered throughout the pages I read. Perhaps it would all eventually amount to something I could in fact appreciate to some extent, but: a) doubt, and b) life’s too short, and there are too many other books out there to justify expending this much effort to get to something my brain could only potentially vibe with in these ones.
World-building:
I didn’t hate what bits of world-building I got in the bits of Malazan I read. In fact, those are the bits I liked the most, by far. The problem is, I didn’t get enough of them to compensate for my utter lack of interest in the broader story, and what I got, wasn’t delivered in a way that really worked for me.
What I read of Malazan, in my opionion, suffered from conflating complexity, with depth, and from conflating quantity, with quality. It’s basically a version of the ‘too many things, too soon’ problem, in my book. I am not saying there is no depth to the world-building as a whole, but from the little research I’ve done into the series, it does seem like there won’t be as much depth of information, and immersion in this series as I’d like, as I’d need for this series to become a new favourite, or to simply, once again, justify expending additional effort to continue reading it.
On the positive side of things: I found the magic intriguing, though not mind-blowingly fascinating either. The sketches I got of theological and mythological world-building were decently compelling as well. The 'Tiste Andii' did have that cool factor to them, but they also just screamed... drow elves to my visual brain. There were giant bug mounts, neat, and a book, or series, always gets a point, from me, for having solid corvid representation. The shamanic, Neanderthal-esque undead dudes were kinda neat as well.
But that brings me to another issue: the temporal scope of this story. It is huge; this isn’t intrinsically a problem, but it kinda breaks for me when expressed through actual, living characters who are either absurdly old, in an unconvincing fashion, or who seem to have an awareness and understanding of the past that strains credibility. Although I guess if you can talk to creatures that were bopping about 50k years ago, that would in fact help with fleshing out your history books, sure. I also had an issue with the narrative distance in Gardens of the Moon: it felt like it was trying to go both for a mythical or actual fictional history vibe à la Silmarillion or Fire and Blood, and a more intimate, immediate character-focused story vibe, à la LotR or the main series of ASOIAF. And it failed to satisfyingly reach either for me.
I didn’t find the story’s linguistic world-building particularly good. It wasn’t terrible, but there’s nothing for it, I was bugged by that one, singular city-state named Dharujistan. And as a friend pointed out to me, a weirdly high number of characters in Gardens of the Moon (and Deadhouse Gates) had janky object names, for some reason. I also found the books’ epigraphs majorly wasted in terms of world-building potential. They were just way too opaque, and self-referential for first-time readers.
And finally, just a small thing I noticed: there was a rather strange dissonance between the stated to be more or less sex-egalitarian world of Malazan, and the still kinda gendered perceptions of a lot of its characters, especially when it came to lustful observations. Something just didn’t quite add up for me there, given my understanding of things like patriarchy, gender, feminist theory, etc… I’m sure this won’t bother most readers, and I want to be clear this isn’t something I found offensive, or problematic, just more so something that I felt didn’t really make sense from a greater world-building perspective.
Additional remarks:
There’s nothing for it: the RPG origins of, and influences on Gardens of the Moon (and presumably the rest of the series) were very obvious to me past a certain point. When I got to that duel between Anomader Rake and that Demon Prince thing, I didn’t feel 'ze epicness'... I giggled, because it felt like reading a Dark Souls boss encounter, and whilst that shit is epic when you play it, it, somehow, just does not work for me in novel format. I was also reminded of Final Fantasy XVI and the Elder Scrolls, which is why I maintain: this story would work a thousand times better, for my brain, as an actual RPG. Or even a graphic novel, maybe.
Ultimately, I just found myself thoroughly disinterested in the story’s plot, and characters, and not engaged enough by its world-building, or theming. Malazan, or rather the bits of it I tried, bounced right off of me; the vibratory harmonisation between text and brain that makes a story click for me never occurred, and I must thus, alas, DNF the series.
Here's an extremely belated review of Gardens of the Moon (and bits of Deadhouse Gates, technically).
Writing, structure and pacing:
I found Erikson’s prose decent to good, overall. It did the job, felt eloquent or even somewhat inspired at times – I did write a couple of quotes down in my reading log – and that's about it.
I did have an issue with the pacing of Gardens of the Moon, as I generally do when stories coast along at a rather leisurely pace only to go 'balls to the wall wild' with action in their final sections. I’m not saying that never works for me, but it seems it’s just not my preference, especially with stories that don’t really do it for me on other fronts...
The book also tended to have chapters on the longer side of things, which I wasn’t a big fan of either, especially, once again, since I wasn’t particularly invested in the plot in any case. Every chapter, additionally, featured several different points of view, a narrative choice I normally like. But here, unfortunately, the transitions between them weren’t always the smoothest.
Character work:
The character work, such as it was in the pages I read, was fine overall. It was decent to good in a couple of instances, and alright to kinda bad in some others. Paran, for instance, did not make sense to me in terms of character motivations, or rather the shifting thereof... and no, I didn’t find the “but mayhaps godly manipulations murr” excuse good enough. Another character just up and changed her mind about something that had been established as pretty fundamental to her identify, and worldview, before she died, and I just couldn’t quite buy it. Then again, when you have so many different characters, right out of the gate, and all vying for screen-time in every single chapter, it isn’t so surprising that you wouldn’t devote enough time to properly fleshing all of them out, especially if you also have to introduce, then juggle 10 different world-building elements…
I’m not a character-driven reader, no, but the fact I didn’t really care about any character, nor even find most of them particularly interesting at the outset, didn’t help. I did like Tattersail (outside of the 'instalovy' schtick with Paran)… and Crone, the old as fuck magical Raven, was based. Yes, my favourite Malazan character is a bird, make of that what you will. #SheWasTheRealMVP
A point of firmer criticism, that mildly overlaps with world-building: the fact this story features old, and I mean extremely old, think ancient, beings, some of them godlike, with ‘speaking roles’… actually broke my immersion a little. Convincingly portraying non-human animal minds is difficult to pull off. Portraying alien, eldritch or godlike minds, is extremely difficult to pull off. It can be done, but holy shit is it rare – in my limited experience. It’s all the harder to do when you have them sit down for a fireside chat and speak like what essentially amounts to a slightly odd or aloof human being – yes, looking right at you, Anomander Rake. That kind of character, in my humble opinion, should (most of the time) be spoken of, observed by others, not spoken to.
Theming elements:
I honestly didn’t read enough of the greater story to have any strong opinions regarding the series’ overarching theming. What threads, or crumbs I picked up seemed to be concerned with the rise and fall of empires, and civilisation; its nature, its pitfalls, etc… The nature of power, or godhood – in a, ahem, rather JRPG-reminiscent sense – might’ve also been bopping about in there.
None of these crumbs were bad as such, but what I managed to gather on my… uhm, reading plate, shall we say, didn’t particularly engage or appeal to me, given my personal theming preferences, or the way these were peppered throughout the pages I read. Perhaps it would all eventually amount to something I could in fact appreciate to some extent, but: a) doubt, and b) life’s too short, and there are too many other books out there to justify expending this much effort to get to something my brain could only potentially vibe with in these ones.
World-building:
I didn’t hate what bits of world-building I got in the bits of Malazan I read. In fact, those are the bits I liked the most, by far. The problem is, I didn’t get enough of them to compensate for my utter lack of interest in the broader story, and what I got, wasn’t delivered in a way that really worked for me.
What I read of Malazan, in my opionion, suffered from conflating complexity, with depth, and from conflating quantity, with quality. It’s basically a version of the ‘too many things, too soon’ problem, in my book. I am not saying there is no depth to the world-building as a whole, but from the little research I’ve done into the series, it does seem like there won’t be as much depth of information, and immersion in this series as I’d like, as I’d need for this series to become a new favourite, or to simply, once again, justify expending additional effort to continue reading it.
On the positive side of things: I found the magic intriguing, though not mind-blowingly fascinating either. The sketches I got of theological and mythological world-building were decently compelling as well. The 'Tiste Andii' did have that cool factor to them, but they also just screamed... drow elves to my visual brain. There were giant bug mounts, neat, and a book, or series, always gets a point, from me, for having solid corvid representation. The shamanic, Neanderthal-esque undead dudes were kinda neat as well.
But that brings me to another issue: the temporal scope of this story. It is huge; this isn’t intrinsically a problem, but it kinda breaks for me when expressed through actual, living characters who are either absurdly old, in an unconvincing fashion, or who seem to have an awareness and understanding of the past that strains credibility. Although I guess if you can talk to creatures that were bopping about 50k years ago, that would in fact help with fleshing out your history books, sure. I also had an issue with the narrative distance in Gardens of the Moon: it felt like it was trying to go both for a mythical or actual fictional history vibe à la Silmarillion or Fire and Blood, and a more intimate, immediate character-focused story vibe, à la LotR or the main series of ASOIAF. And it failed to satisfyingly reach either for me.
I didn’t find the story’s linguistic world-building particularly good. It wasn’t terrible, but there’s nothing for it, I was bugged by that one, singular city-state named Dharujistan. And as a friend pointed out to me, a weirdly high number of characters in Gardens of the Moon (and Deadhouse Gates) had janky object names, for some reason. I also found the books’ epigraphs majorly wasted in terms of world-building potential. They were just way too opaque, and self-referential for first-time readers.
And finally, just a small thing I noticed: there was a rather strange dissonance between the stated to be more or less sex-egalitarian world of Malazan, and the still kinda gendered perceptions of a lot of its characters, especially when it came to lustful observations. Something just didn’t quite add up for me there, given my understanding of things like patriarchy, gender, feminist theory, etc… I’m sure this won’t bother most readers, and I want to be clear this isn’t something I found offensive, or problematic, just more so something that I felt didn’t really make sense from a greater world-building perspective.
Additional remarks:
There’s nothing for it: the RPG origins of, and influences on Gardens of the Moon (and presumably the rest of the series) were very obvious to me past a certain point. When I got to that duel between Anomader Rake and that Demon Prince thing, I didn’t feel 'ze epicness'... I giggled, because it felt like reading a Dark Souls boss encounter, and whilst that shit is epic when you play it, it, somehow, just does not work for me in novel format. I was also reminded of Final Fantasy XVI and the Elder Scrolls, which is why I maintain: this story would work a thousand times better, for my brain, as an actual RPG. Or even a graphic novel, maybe.
Ultimately, I just found myself thoroughly disinterested in the story’s plot, and characters, and not engaged enough by its world-building, or theming. Malazan, or rather the bits of it I tried, bounced right off of me; the vibratory harmonisation between text and brain that makes a story click for me never occurred, and I must thus, alas, DNF the series.
Content Warnings
Minor: Gore and Violence
damjanotom's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
lighthearted
mysterious
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? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Violence, and War
Minor: Alcohol
dani_reis's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
First read: audio Oct 16 - 22, 2023
Second read: kindle with audio June 1 - 18, 2024
This book is very dense. This requires your full attention and slow digest of the information. So many moving parts. The entire book is mostly focused on world building. You don't feel a connection with any single character where if they were to suddenly die, it isn't a worry on your emotions.
The second read was much more successful with my ADHD by keeping notes and making sure I actually followed giant info dump paragraphs before moving on. Is this going to be necessary for most? No. But I know the plot, and can move onwards without completely requiring rereads to continue.
I highly recommend for those looking for an epic fantasy read and aren't in a hurry to push out another book for a number. Enjoy the book on the side of another if that's what's necessary to slow down.
Second read: kindle with audio June 1 - 18, 2024
This book is very dense. This requires your full attention and slow digest of the information. So many moving parts. The entire book is mostly focused on world building. You don't feel a connection with any single character where if they were to suddenly die, it isn't a worry on your emotions.
The second read was much more successful with my ADHD by keeping notes and making sure I actually followed giant info dump paragraphs before moving on. Is this going to be necessary for most? No. But I know the plot, and can move onwards without completely requiring rereads to continue.
I highly recommend for those looking for an epic fantasy read and aren't in a hurry to push out another book for a number. Enjoy the book on the side of another if that's what's necessary to slow down.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Violence, Blood, Murder, and War
Moderate: Alcoholism, Animal death, and Alcohol
Minor: Infidelity and Sexual content
Suicide minorlvl52_grant's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-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? Yes
4.75
This book is dense, but rad. The setting is so interesting, and Erikson's dedication to making the world feel alive and we are only witnessing one slice of it is what makes it difficult but intriguing. The reader gets thrown into a conflict with implications going back over thousands of years of history and you just need to work through it until it makes sense. I'm very excited to see what happens next with the Bridgeburners and the Malazan Empire.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Violence, and War
Moderate: Alcoholism, Body horror, Genocide, and Colonisation
chungledown_bim's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.0
Well. You're not coddled by Erikson, that's for sure. The agendas, factions, nations, species, history, pantheon(s?), rules of magic- the lore is dense. I feel the characters suffer a bit for it but they're cool, if a bit monodimensional. Still, there's dragons, explosions, lil bit of smooching, wizard battles... Shit's freaking awesome. I've heard that subsequent Malazan books get a bit sexual-violence-y so here's where I get off, having bloody enjoyed a ripsnorter of a ride.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence
Moderate: Slavery
froumts's review against another edition
challenging
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
i liked this one a lot
Content Warnings
Moderate: Gore and Violence
voelve's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
5.0
This book does not hold your hand, and you are along for a ride with rapidly changing POVs where you only have context clues to rely on to understand the structure of the world - which I love; nothing is more jarring than lore dumps from characters who live in and presumably know the world and would have no need to explain it. It's a really cool read, with fascinating worldbuilding, and I am so excited for the other nine books in the series!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Murder and War
Minor: Alcoholism
oldladysadie's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.75
I really wanted to like this book - there were multiple characters I found so interesting throughout, and I wish we could’ve learned more about them than we did.
The writing style of this book was incredibly difficult for me to sink my teeth into. The story is constructed in such a way that it isn’t always obvious who is doing what in the plot, or why - indeed, there were multiple moments of characters even pondering “she didn’t know why this was happening” or “he didn’t know why he felt compelled to do this”. And honestly? Same.
My husband loved this book and how it was told - said he liked not knowing everything and “just letting the story wash over him”. I had a miserable time, and this book is just 100% Not For Me. And that’s fine.
The writing style of this book was incredibly difficult for me to sink my teeth into. The story is constructed in such a way that it isn’t always obvious who is doing what in the plot, or why - indeed, there were multiple moments of characters even pondering “she didn’t know why this was happening” or “he didn’t know why he felt compelled to do this”. And honestly? Same.
My husband loved this book and how it was told - said he liked not knowing everything and “just letting the story wash over him”. I had a miserable time, and this book is just 100% Not For Me. And that’s fine.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence
Moderate: Colonisation and Injury/Injury detail