Reviews - Gardens of the Moon

3.33k reviews for:

Gardens of the Moon

Steven Erikson

3.85 AVERAGE

gilmargirl's review against another edition

3.25

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

This book is very confusing and sometimes hard to get through when you first read it, but I imagine it improves a lot on re-reading after you've gotten through more of the series

dottienic123's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

jadelaporte's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

afullzip's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous challenging dark slow-paced

natashamuse's review against another edition

3.0

I'm not a professional book reviewer by any means and I don't like the Goodreads rating system so take the following with a grain of salt and a mote of book dust.

The Good: The writing was rich, with many details and important info woven into much of it. The author doesn't hand-hold you through the book. No one is really a newcomer to the world or what's happening in general, so thankfully there are no conversations like:
"Warren? what's that?"
"Oh, well, imagine, if you will, another dimension... here, let me use this tube to explain it to you..."
Okay, sure, a part of me likes those info-dumps but it usually sounds more like instructions to a game than great writing, and you'll rarely see it pop up as anyone's favorite quote.
I liked the weird world he created. It felt lived in and real. Not like I know what a world in which it exists would actually be like, but you can tell Erikson thought about it. Too often I read about these fantasy worlds that have magic and yet somehow it doesn't affect daily life in any way.

The Middle: There sure were a lot of characters. I didn't dislike them. But they also felt somewhat distant and didn't seem to have a whole lot of depth to them. And I didn't always understand what drove them beyond "I'm supposed to be doing this."

The Bad: I definitely rolled my eyes a few times when we got into paragraphs littered with The Obligatory Heavy Fantasy Names. Lots of odd consonant combos broken up with apostrophes that are clearly meant to Mean Something but didn't really.
As good as the writing was, I was confused at times. And when everything seems important, it's hard to know which important thing to hold on to and which won't come until later.
There were a few random elements sort of thrown in at the end which made an already too-full final third of the book way overstuffed. And while a lot of the pieces did come together in a satisfying way, there were an equal amount of unanswered questions.

So there is a lot to like about this novel but it does rest heavily on the "it's only the first of ten in a series and you need to read more to fully appreciate it," defense that all the Malazan fans are quick to bring up as an answer to most questions people have about it. So I guess part of the rating I'm giving this relies on the follow-through I've been promised exists.