Gardens of the Moon - My review and thoughts

So I finally finished the last little bit of Steven Erikson's first book in the lengthy Malazan Book of the Fallen series, "Gardens of the Moon". I have to say that I was fairly intimidated by the way the book begins. The whirlwind that forces the reader to either give up and never pick the book up again or surrender to the massive amounts of detail that is necessary to get the reader caught up to the immense world that Erikson wants to show the reader. I will say that I wasn't sure if the gambit was going to pay off for Erikson as the detail just seemed to keep on stacking higher and higher and higher. But in the end, you really come away with the sense that you have genuinely discovered a not only a fabulous new writer, but also a new way of developing story. Instead of the usual motif of having the scene and the characters explained to you in great detail before the story actually begins, we are treated to a fast paced and hard-hitting storyline that serves to develop the characters around itself, rather than the story around the characters. There seems to be no real hero or heroine, no real easily identifiable protagonist, as such. And yet when you finish the book, you come away with the sense that it was the story that was the protagonist and not the characters. It was the use of the story as the protagonist that really helped me to feel that I was reading a new way storytelling, where the story needs to be told and here are the characters that will make it come alive.

Gardens of the Moon introduces us to a very clever magical system of warrens which are never fully explained and yet you still get the sense that you know them to be the sources of the various mage's power. This is the way it is with much of the various pieces that the author gives us throughout the book. At one moment you don't have a clue what they are talking about but then by the end you feel like you have a greater understanding of what is going on even though it is never completely defined. Ultimately, I think this is fairly ingenious as it allows for a greater imagination on the part of the reader. It really is up to the author to make what he is describing understood to the reader and in the case of Gardens of the Moon Steven Erikson does a great job of giving us enough detail to understand what is going on at any particular moment but also keeping the moment fresh and alive to the reader instead of locked in to whether or not what is being talked about, now, is the same as what it was when I first encountered it. It really does help with our ability to be absorbed more fully into the universe that is created by the author.

I do look forward to a more expounded reading of the second book in the series, "Deadhouse Gates" in the near future. I have a few more projects on the go that need completion and I like to genre shift a fair bit so, while I already have the book downloaded to my iPad, I will probably be getting back to it later in the week or early next week.

I highly recommend this book for any epic fantasy enthusiast. Steven Erikson has really lived up to the billing he has received and I eagerly await reading his next book in the series.

Source: http://riddledark.blogspot.com/2010/08/gardens-of-moon-my-review-and-thoughts.html