Gardens of the Moon

This series is famous, or infamous, among fantasy fans.

It is said that these books are difficult, and for many people, these books are therefore a formidable opponent. I have only one response to this: don't let it bother you.

Gardens of the Moon is not difficult in the sense that the language used is complex. It's also not difficult due to complicated theories (as in the case of Neal Stephenson).
Yes, there are many characters, but that's the case in many (fantasy) series. And, this is actually the crux, Erikson simply starts somewhere in the middle of a history of an empire. At least, that's how it seems. This empire is the Malazan Empire. No background is given, nothing is explained. The prologue just starts, and as a reader, you can only let yourself be carried along in the story that Erikson is telling you. And you must trust that things will become clearer as the story progresses.
If you, as a reader, find this annoying, then this book can indeed be perceived as “difficult.” Difficult to deal with, difficult to understand, and especially difficult to accept.

I have no problem with this at all. Imagine the Roman Empire, which was immense at its peak. It encompassed countless peoples. There were local rulers, generals, intrigues, wars, assassination plots everywhere. All at the same time. Now, just imagine that you are focusing on a specific event in that vast history and span of the Roman empire. Movies and books do this all the time. It helped me a lot translating this attitude towards this book.

From the beginning, Erikson gives you the feeling that you are part of an immense epic story, even if your view of it is still very limited. On one hand, a high-level chess game unfolds where various individuals are moved around the board like pawns; on the other hand, Erikson also shows the human side.
Everything slowly converges as if it were a kind of comedy. Independent storylines intertwine, with coincidences that sometimes seem like a “deus ex machina.”
This might be a point of criticism from my side. If this were a stand-alone book, the author might have taken some shortcuts in certain respects. A deus ex machina plot device has never been my favorite. So, I also trust that some things will be woven into the story as the series progresses.

For me, after the first read, this is a 4 to 4.5-star book.
It's possible that this could increase or decrease as more of the Malazan world becomes clear.

It feels like you're starting the book in the middle of the story. The characters and places are not properly introduced and there is no attempt to make you care about them. They also all sounded the same. Before you kill someone or destroy some city, make us care about them.

The author clearly have a message to transmit, a big world with a meaningful story. He just does not present them in a readable way. The whole thing is a mess of poorly constructed stories, with no cohesion and no reason to be emotionally interested in them.

Annoying features of the book
- Prologue: they can be interesting and might help to set up the mood of the book. I've seen prologues more interesting then the whole book by a wide margin, thus a misleading way to start the story. Then there is the ones that feels like an excuse to tell a bad short tale, one where you don't have to worry about describing your characters, nor to make sense for the reader, because it is assumed that after reading the book you might have a clue about the importance of what just happened. This prologue falls into the second category.
- Excerpts of other books: each chapter starts with a citation of a supposedly famous book inside the fictional world. Another mood setting tool I believe, again this sometimes might work. It did not work for me in this book, they were too long and boring like a history textbook excerpt. Or just a senseless poem.
- Start with a side-story: and if the preface, maps, list of characters, epigraph, lament (whatever that is) wasn't enough to NOT start the story, the first chapter doesn't do it either.
- Lots of thrown in proper names and/or made up words.

Reading other comments, people tend to agree with my opinion. The book starts slow, bad, confusing, the prose is not great, there are problems with his exposition. However despite of that, he gets 5 stars because if you manage to get pass that, you are rewarded with a deep, complex and satisfying story.

My favorite comments:

“The book is not well written; specifically, it is bad prose written by someone who is very intelligent, but lacks an ear for poetry, or in fact, language in general ... the sentences are disjointed in a kind of technical way that often left me rereading them because I had somehow missed the sense in them as I grappled with their structure.”
Ben

“... There's no story to speak of... it is just a collection of scenes and events that occur in the same “world”. None of it makes sense...“
Becky

Read 13% 3:17/26:03

Executive Summary: This is not a book for the faint of heart, or the first time fantasy reader. Mr. Erikson makes you think, and READ. No skimming allowed. Every word can be important. It's certainly not for everybody, but if you stick with it, I think most people will find their efforts greatly rewarded.Full ReviewThis is a case of, you were right Good Reads recommendation engine. Why didn't I listen to you?Shortly after joining good reads last year and putting all my books in, I checked out the recommendations page. This book was prominently listed based on several of my shelves. I read the description, and some of the reviews, and wasn't too impressed and moved on.Fast forward about 6 months and a few of my newly made GR friends were making a group to do a series re-read. A few others decided to join in as first timers. I was convinced to give the series a try.I'm glad I did. I can't say how I'll feel after all 10 books, but after the first one, I'm hooked!The group is probably a large part of my enjoyment. I can see this book being very hard to read by yourself. There were a few parts that confused the hell out of me, that were explained to me by people who had been there before.I'm very much a go with the flow and enjoy the ride type of reader. I'm OK if things don't make sense right away, so long as I get there eventually. Everything that confused me at the start was cleared up by the end. I'm not 100% if that was all book, or our great group discussion, but it doesn't matter.The book certainly has left me with a lot of questions to be answered, but that's to be expected as the start of a 10 book series.Mr. Erikson is an excellent writer. His descriptions, characters and language are all top notch. My only (minor) complaint would be that he sometimes seems intent on showing you just how good his vocabulary is.The highlight for me is the character development. This book involves some very powerful people. And just when you think “wow, what a badass”, someone more powerful shows up. I don't know if Dues Ex Machina possible when the gods themselves are part of the cast.He also paints a very grey picture. One or two chapters in, I started to feel I knew who was “good” and who was “bad”. Five chapters in, I had to re-evaluate my initial assessments. I wouldn't be surprised if 2 books in, I re-asses them again.Mr. Erikson introduces an interesting magical system with his use of Warrens. Unlike Brandon Sanderson who gives you a lot of detail and rules about how magic works, at least through 1 book the details are quite murky.All and all, a great start to the series. It's a 4, but it's a very high 4, and the ending almost pushes it to a 5 for me. I'm already looking forward to continuing on with [b:Deadhouse Gates 55401 Deadhouse Gates (The Malazan Book of the Fallen, #2) Steven Erikson https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1385272744s/55401.jpg 3898716] in two weeks.

Entertaining, but I need more information.

This book was pretty good but incredibly confusing. Erikson introduces so many components of his world and proceeds to explain none of them. Despite the confusion, I was entertained. I have heard that this is the worst of the series, and if that's the case then I look forward to reading the rest.

Gardens of the Moon est le premier roman du cycle de fantasy Malazan Book of the Fallen de Steven Erickson, publié pour la première fois en 1999.

Bled dry by interminable warfare, infighting and bloody confrontations with Lord Anomander Rake and his Tiste Andii, the vast, sprawling Malazan empire simmers with discontent.Even its imperial legions yearn for some respite. For Sergeant Whiskeyjack and his Bridgeburners and for Tattersail, sole surviving sorceress of the Second Legion, the aftermath of the siege of Pale should have been a time to mourn the dead.But Darujhistan, last of the Free Cities of Genabackis, still holds out - and Empress Lasseen's ambition knows no bounds.However, it seems the empire is not alone in this great game. Sinister forces gather as the gods themselves prepare to play their hand...

On m'avait prévenu que le début peut être ardu, et l'auteur lui-même reconnait dans sa préface que le premier tiers du premier roman est un juge de paix : soit le lecteur continue, soit il abandonne. Dans mon cas, j'ai continué avec plaisir !

Le récapitulatif des personnages et le glossaire ne sont pas de trop, mais j'ai trouvé cela passionnant dès les premières pages. L'univers est complexe, et on devine qu'on n'en perçoit qu'une partie. Le récit est dense et met en scène une multitude de personnages tous intéressants, chose rare me concernant dans un roman polyphonique.

Je ne pourrais pas résumer ici tout ce qui se déroule dans ce gros roman de plus de 700 pages, mais l'auteur nous propose un récit épique et captivant autour d'une guerre de conquête d'un empire qui tente de s'étendre sur un nouveau continent. Evidemment, tout le monde n'est pas prêt à se soumettre à l'armée colonisatrice.

Il m'a fallu environ une semaine pour avaler ce pavé, mais j'ai adoré du début à la fin et je suis déjà prêt à repartir à la découverte de l'univers de Steven Erikson avec le deuxième tome de cette saga.

My first foray into the world of Malaz, and I guess it lived up to my expectations. I was prepared to be confused, and I was right. Steven Ericsson, like William Gibson, makes his readers work for their enjoyment. I did not pre-judge the book, and the more I read the clearer everything became. A thoroughly enjoyable reading experience.

It's dense. I started listening to the audio book, stopped almost halfway through when I realized I didn't know who most of the characters were or what was going on. I then picked up the Kindle version of the book and re-started it. That helped a lot. After reading the entire book, I went back and re-started the audio book and listened to it again. The narrator is excellent. If you are reading an electronic version, don't do like I did and only realize there is a glossary of characters, locations, and other terminology at the end of the book when you get there. Bookmark it and flip to it as needed for reference. It would have been really helpful had a realized it was there earlier. The DLC Bookclub podcast was also very helpful as they read through and summarized several chapters each week so after reading through them, I'd listen to the episode that aligned with the chapters I'd just read, which would help clarify some points and draw connections. Despite my struggles at getting through this first book, it was worth the effort. I'm invested in the world and characters. Although epic and long, it is not as “talkie” as the Game of Thrones series. There is plenty of epic action throughout. I'm looking forward to digging into book 2.

Gardens of the moon by Steven Erickson
I picked up this book as part of the Read along on Mike's book review YouTube channel and likely never would have gotten around to it if not for that.

Many People have found this book at least to be confusing and difficult to follow the story line. I will say that I can understand why that is the case. While I did not find it too difficult to follow there are a lot of characters to follow so keeping track of who is doing what can get confusing at times.

This is a world at war with the malazan Empire and one city (Darikjostam) is left for the Malazan empire to conquer and only one stands in his way Lord of the moon's spawn Anomander Rake

It seems however the Gods are also getting involved in the war as well and have their own plans and agendas

The magic system is pretty basic, sorcerers, allomancers, sorceresses etc.. and I found the world of Malazn to have a very dark shadowy feel which I love! The Shadow hounds particularly peaked my interest and I have no doubt that they will make an appearance in other novels of this series as well

My only real nitpick is the Jaghut Tyrant. The payoff for this characters story arc was not really there in terms of the set up for me, lest I get into spoilers I will leave it at that

I will have a full video review on my YouTube channel in the next few days https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkUMtTLktLQ9BrbI0LRJVdg so check that out if you want

GotM is the best fantasy novel I've read in a long time, perhaps ever. I'm overjoyed that there are 9 more to go.

Some thoughts on what I heard about the series vs what I read:

- The first chapter was a bit overwhelming, and the language felt clumsy and confusing - I had to read a few sentences more than once to wring meaning out of them - and that fit what I'd heard. And it cleared up after the first chapter and is not at all representative of the rest of the book.

- People said Erikson throws a million characters at you and they're hard to keep track of. Pfffft. If you've read A Song of Ice and Fire, and managed to keep even half of the characters, families and relationships straight, GotM is a cakewalk.

- I'd heard that much of the world is obscure and unexplained. It is (so far). This is a GOOD thing. Tedious, multi-page info dumps (I'm looking at you, Mr. Jordan) are not how anyone speaks, and they're, well, tedious. Erikson explains enough to make sense, but not enough that you feel like an expert on this bizarre world you've just stumbled into, and has left me with quite a few nagging questions that keep me avidly reading.

- Specifically, the magic system. We all love a good magic system, and usually, some wise mage coincidentally lectures another character about how it all works, so we readers know. Here, magic is brutal, complex, and mysterious, and we see it happen, but rarely is it explained. There's obviously a system behind it, but it's not laid out in detailed exposition for us in the first book. I have QUESTIONS. Again, this is good.

- The story does indeed jump around a lot. This isn't “Chosen One and plucky companions seek McGuffin to save the world from Bad Guy”. It's a complex story, told masterfully, with dodgy good guys and sympathetic bad guys, where winning often means doing bad things for good reasons, and even after the victory, there's not much happily ever aftering. In this sense it's the most realistic, adult fantasy I've ever read.

- As a roleplayer, I was delighted to hear this all came about from a game Erikson was running, and I so very much want to play in this world. And that's the only thing that sucks about Malazan - there are no gaming materials for it. Considering the GotM came out over 20 years ago, this is confusing, sad and unforgivable. Okay, maybe not unforgivable, but c'mon.

Thank you Mr. Erikson, and and now onto Deadhouse Gates!

I really thought this was going to be a 4 or 5 star review, but in the end I couldn't give it that.
I loved what Erikson did with the world building. It's obvious that he constructed an amazing and elaborate world. Erikson created a great atmosphere in this book and I'm impressed how fast-paced this was. There is something happening at every single page.

However, I got really frustrated with the needless complexity as the story progressed. So the world building is both a pro and con for me. There were way too many pov's, races, gods, ... I don't immediately dislike complex books, but I feel like the confusion that was created didn't add to the story at all.

This is my favorite fantasy series of all times. I have read it many times but this is my first listen. The narrator is excellent and in no way diminishes my love for the book. Learned how to pronounce a few words and saw more of the structure of the book. So, worthwhile for more than just the enjoyment.

I read this a long time ago, around 2006 I would guess. I remember liking, but not loving it. I also read part 2 and maybe part 3.

Lately I've seen a lot of reviews and discussions that made me want to give the series another try. And I own half of the books anyway, it seems a shame not to read them.

If you had asked me what I remembered from my first read before I started the reread I would have said: a curvy female mage called Tattersail. As well as something of what happened to her. I won't say more - spoilers.

This time I really, really liked it, and am interested in reading the rest of the series.