Gardens of the Moon

My first experience with Malazan was a success!

I think a lot comes with balanced expectations with Gardens of the Moon. I felt prepared and because of that, I was never lost and the characters and magic and worldbuilding never felt too much for me. There were a lot of great characters that I found very interesting, particularly Tattersail, Whiskeyjack, Anomander Rake, and Paran. Erikson is better with characters than I expected; the characterization is just more subtle than some authors.


I think if I had picked this book up knowing nothing about it, it would have felt like there were a lot of deux ex machina and ill-defined magic, but knowing how fleshed out everything is with time, this didn't bother me.

There were no storylines I didn't really like, and other than a few confusing lines in the climax, I was totally on board with figuring things out as I went.

9/10 and I'm excited to see where Deadhouse Gates takes me!