A review by kitvaria_sarene
The Garden of Stones by Mark T. Barnes
3.0
I wish I could give this one more than three stars, as it had a lot of things liked. Especially the big amount of magic, fantastical elements, different kinds of creatures and imagination really had me hooked!
But sadly the story itself never really gripped me. While I liked the characters, I had a hard time focussing on the plot, and often caught myself drifting off, and having to go back a chapter and repeat it. This is something that rarely happens to me, and it is annoying as hell.
The plot was a bit slow, the names of things sometimes were to similar to easily tell them apart, and there was a lot of explaining that seemed to only expand the worldbuilding, without furthering plot or character building. Also there is a TON of politics in this one. I do like politics in fantasy, if they are smoothly embedded in the story - but if it feels like reading nonfiction, I start to drift off.
It felt like the author tried to put in way too much into the one book! So many characters, so many new ideas, so much politics, worldbuilding, so many subcultures, splinters of different magic users, and so on... I'm always told Gardens of the moon has a steep learning curve - if you think that you obviously haven't read garden of stones yet.
So if you like it complex, with a really epic world and a big cast - you should definitely give it a try and see how you like it.
If you want it fast paced and an easy read - this is not the one for you.
But sadly the story itself never really gripped me. While I liked the characters, I had a hard time focussing on the plot, and often caught myself drifting off, and having to go back a chapter and repeat it. This is something that rarely happens to me, and it is annoying as hell.
The plot was a bit slow, the names of things sometimes were to similar to easily tell them apart, and there was a lot of explaining that seemed to only expand the worldbuilding, without furthering plot or character building. Also there is a TON of politics in this one. I do like politics in fantasy, if they are smoothly embedded in the story - but if it feels like reading nonfiction, I start to drift off.
It felt like the author tried to put in way too much into the one book! So many characters, so many new ideas, so much politics, worldbuilding, so many subcultures, splinters of different magic users, and so on... I'm always told Gardens of the moon has a steep learning curve - if you think that you obviously haven't read garden of stones yet.
So if you like it complex, with a really epic world and a big cast - you should definitely give it a try and see how you like it.
If you want it fast paced and an easy read - this is not the one for you.