Gardens of the Moon

The Malazan Empire attempts to tighten its hold on the few remaining Free Cities. But soldiers, assassins, and mages each have their own unique perspective and agenda to play out. When gods and civilizations long past enter the fray the lives and souls of all are in peril. The varying characters battle for survival and domination in this epic fantasy where the reader is drawn into a world of deceit, intrigue, wonder, and war.

I haven't read any epic fantasy in a while. I often look at other people's book reviews and lists for fantasy to read however. This is one that pops up on contemporary fantasy as highly regarded. Overall I found Steven Erikson's Gardens of the Moon did not live up to the hype. And I think it has to do with the hype. There are so many fantasy readers that get so caught up in the details and scope of the story. Yes, Gardens of the Moon was complex and intricate. Yes, the scope of the story and it's interwoven characters was mesmerizing. I just don't think that makes it into a great book automatically. Overall I would say it deterred from it. Erikson is an amazing writer. Some of my favorite ideas on characters were realized in this book. But just because the story is epic doesn't mean you need to have twenty characters that you hardly know at all. I need characters that I know. Half the time someone was mentioned and I forgot who it was, and I read this consistently. I couldn't remember who was on which side, and how people knew each other. I like complexity, and I realize this is the first book in the series, but it just seemed all the culmination led to nothing. My biggest problem would be the fact that though there might be three or four antagonists, the major one in this book wasn't revealed, destroyed or even mentioned until the second half of the book. And they were around for only a few pages, with little description. There's plenty of alluding to more sinister people coming, but will they also have very little description? I want to keep reading the series because there is so much tension and turmoil building. Erikson is fairly good at that. But I can't read ten more books like this to finally get to that conclusion. The players discussed in great length at the beginning weren't mentioned in the end, and I had a hard time not reading with great haste towards the end. I probably won't read any more of these books unless I'm feeling like I need a ten book saga into this world.

I would reward Erikson on an amazingly unique and epic book. The magic, and deep themes running through the universe all seem completely worked out and thought through, which is a complaint about many other fantasy writers. Erikson is definitely for a mature audience, in complexity and intricacy, if not for content. I would recommend this book only to the devoted epic fantasy enthusiast. 7.5/10