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squigglyavo 's review for:
Gardens of the Moon
by Steven Erikson
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
slow-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
One of those books where you just trust the author to bring everything together at the end. It takes reading up to about 60% to get some understanding of the bigger picture in this world, but then the story takes off at a great pace. The world looks interesting, and I feel there's so much more to be covered that just reading one book will not do this story any justice.
One thing that did strike me about the way Steven Erikson has chosen to write this book - there are no unrealistic conversations among the characters for the benefit of the readers, unlike in some books where they start throwing in details that should be known to everybody in the world just so the reader can follow along. Instead, we see things happening from multiple angles, and are trusted to figure out the details like putting together pieces of a puzzle. While I enjoyed that, the confusion this approach generates for a majority of the book is the reason why I'm knocking off a few points in my rating. Even after putting together the pieces, parts of the puzzle are clear, but much of the puzzle remains incomplete. I think I would rate this much higher on a re-read, once I've read the rest of this series someday.
One thing that did strike me about the way Steven Erikson has chosen to write this book - there are no unrealistic conversations among the characters for the benefit of the readers, unlike in some books where they start throwing in details that should be known to everybody in the world just so the reader can follow along. Instead, we see things happening from multiple angles, and are trusted to figure out the details like putting together pieces of a puzzle. While I enjoyed that, the confusion this approach generates for a majority of the book is the reason why I'm knocking off a few points in my rating. Even after putting together the pieces, parts of the puzzle are clear, but much of the puzzle remains incomplete. I think I would rate this much higher on a re-read, once I've read the rest of this series someday.