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A review by velvettwink
Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson
3.0
3.5 Stars
Upon finishing The Realm of the Elderlings, I decided to read more backlist fantasy epics and I am going to interchange between Malazan and WOT.
I went into Gardens of the Moon with no understanding of what this series would entail and there were positives and negatives for the first novel.
With this just being the first instalment I can already tell the vastness of this world, with different races, religions etc. The character work while disorientating at first with all the flipping from different POV's, had me attached by the end. Specifically with Sorry and Tattersail. You can definitely tell Erikson has a background with anthropology with the level of detail in this world and its characters.
I listened to this on audio and the performance was immaculate!
My difficulty with this first book is just how disorientating and overwhelming it is at times, mainly due to Erikson just plopping us in the world and letting us figure out what is going on as we go through the pages. He does not give you any sort of help and there were certain scenes where I finished reading and did not necessarily know what had happened due to having no backstory. This does seem to be a very common criticism and is probably the reason why readers say this series is meant to be re-read.
All that being said, this is definitely a series FULL of intrigue and I cannot wait to continue this as it is widely recognised that the series just gets better from here.
Upon finishing The Realm of the Elderlings, I decided to read more backlist fantasy epics and I am going to interchange between Malazan and WOT.
I went into Gardens of the Moon with no understanding of what this series would entail and there were positives and negatives for the first novel.
With this just being the first instalment I can already tell the vastness of this world, with different races, religions etc. The character work while disorientating at first with all the flipping from different POV's, had me attached by the end. Specifically with Sorry and Tattersail. You can definitely tell Erikson has a background with anthropology with the level of detail in this world and its characters.
I listened to this on audio and the performance was immaculate!
My difficulty with this first book is just how disorientating and overwhelming it is at times, mainly due to Erikson just plopping us in the world and letting us figure out what is going on as we go through the pages. He does not give you any sort of help and there were certain scenes where I finished reading and did not necessarily know what had happened due to having no backstory. This does seem to be a very common criticism and is probably the reason why readers say this series is meant to be re-read.
All that being said, this is definitely a series FULL of intrigue and I cannot wait to continue this as it is widely recognised that the series just gets better from here.