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A review by neon_gregory_evangelion
Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson
4.0
More like a 9/10 but Goodreads hates half-stars for some reason.
This book has a reputation for its complex world-building, insurmountable amount of characters, and strange structure, and while the book certainly lives up to all that and more, it’s not nearly as impenetrable as I suspected. For the first few chapters, it’s easy to be lost, but not soon after you develop a rhythm that lets you easily traverse the world of Malazan until you are completely invested in each and every character.
Erickson defines the characters by their motivations first and their emotions second. This allows for the emotions to hit even harder when they peek through. Although there are but a few instances of romance and emotional tenderness, I was shocked how swooned I was by those instances. Here are characters who live beyond the pages of this book; we are invited only to glance at their lives for a brief 657 page-long journey.
If you can’t tell, I really enjoyed this book, which makes me all the more heartbroken by how long it will take me to continue the series: I simply lack the mental fortitude to study accounting AND read the stories of Malazan at the same time. But the day after I pass the CPA, I’ll be reading book 2 in this series with hungry eyes, eager to see how Erikson will continue to surprise me.
With world-building as complex as Dune and dream sequences that feel ripped from a David Lynch movie, this book almost felt tailor-made for me. Confusing, exciting, sweeping in scale and emotion. I had a good time
This book has a reputation for its complex world-building, insurmountable amount of characters, and strange structure, and while the book certainly lives up to all that and more, it’s not nearly as impenetrable as I suspected. For the first few chapters, it’s easy to be lost, but not soon after you develop a rhythm that lets you easily traverse the world of Malazan until you are completely invested in each and every character.
Erickson defines the characters by their motivations first and their emotions second. This allows for the emotions to hit even harder when they peek through. Although there are but a few instances of romance and emotional tenderness, I was shocked how swooned I was by those instances. Here are characters who live beyond the pages of this book; we are invited only to glance at their lives for a brief 657 page-long journey.
If you can’t tell, I really enjoyed this book, which makes me all the more heartbroken by how long it will take me to continue the series: I simply lack the mental fortitude to study accounting AND read the stories of Malazan at the same time. But the day after I pass the CPA, I’ll be reading book 2 in this series with hungry eyes, eager to see how Erikson will continue to surprise me.
With world-building as complex as Dune and dream sequences that feel ripped from a David Lynch movie, this book almost felt tailor-made for me. Confusing, exciting, sweeping in scale and emotion. I had a good time