Gardens of the Moon (Malazan, Book of the Fallen, book #1), by Steven Erikson, has left me in a strange place as far as opinions are concerned. On one hand, it’s not the type of book that I normally enjoy. If you’ve read my past reviews, it should be evident that I struggle to enjoy any book that lacks a concise and linear plot. In short, I don’t do soap operas. On the other hand, I did enjoy it at times.
Normally, I like to start my reviews by summarizing the plot and main characters, but with a book like Gardens of the Moon, I can’t really do that. For one, there are truckloads of characters, most of which I lost track of, and two, I don’t really know the plot. There is something about a deceased emperor and a new empress, which I believe (eventually) ties the assorted characters together as they choose factions in a coming civil war. Assassins and humanoid gods are everywhere, each possessing varying degrees of aptitude, and a lot of wizards show up (and subsequently die but maybe don’t); one such wizard lives in a flying castle and is like a thousand years old, which is pretty dope.
What I can say about the characters is that I knew next-to-nothing about their personalities. The cast is large, and the author invests few words in describing their inner thoughts and motivations. In addition, dates and names are frequently invoked as part of the narrative, which makes the reading experience feel like a history textbook. I understand that the plot is meant to retell a history, so that isn’t out of place, but I don’t read fantasy books just to watch someone build a world; I want to invest in the characters and their struggles.
Subjectively, there are some flaws in the storytelling that did start to wear on me. Primarily, the author frequently employs what you might call alternate realities (dreams, magical planes called warrens, the afterlife, literally the inside of a sword). I found this to be extremely discordant, as I was constantly wondering which parts of the story were “real”, and which parts were occurring somewhere else where it maybe didn’t matter if anyone died. Additionally, new plot elements are seemingly thrust upon the reader with no warning, such as the dragons mentioned in the title. At one point, an ultra-powerful undead guy is summoned up and battles those dragons, and the whole scene feels pretty arbitrary. Also, there was a demon that died almost as fast as it appeared. By the end, it became a regular occurrence for characters to demonstrate some sort of power or knowledge that wasn’t mentioned until it was needed, as if the revelation itself should wow the reader, when mostly it just felt like the author wrote their way into a corner.
At ten books (and 3.3 million words), I probably won’t continue with the Malazan series. It’s simply far too long for me to sustain interest. Heck, I didn’t even make it to the end of Harry Potter. If you like books that focus on storytelling as a series of events, then you will probably enjoy Gardens of the Moon. If you prefer your books to focus on the characters and their inner experience (as I do), then you will be disappointed. That said, the characters are not one-dimensional, but rather, they never felt familiar.
As far as the commandments go, I refuse to accept that any story needs to be ten books long, especially when the opening chapter contains a paragraph about a weathervane (4th and 5th). It also repeatedly stomped all over the 8th, as mentioned in paragraph four of this review.
The narrator of the audiobook, Ralph Lister, provides a decent performance, with one exception. In my opinion, his women all sounded like some bizarre combination of sleepy, haughty, disinterested valley girls. In his defence, I don’t think most men could do much better.
