Gardens of the Moon (Malazan Book of the Fallen #1) by Steven Erikson

The Malazan Book of the Fallen series of books is my partner’s all-time favourite. He loves them so much he owns them in every format, regularly watches YouTube videos about them, and has been eagerly awaiting the chance to preorder some fancy expensive special editions. 

In the four years of our relationship, he’s read many books I’ve recommended (Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Piranesi (still my #1 recommendation with a 4/4 success rate) and 5/9 The Expanse books (I really have got to get back to that series!). He also watched all of Battlestar Galactica for/with me (rewatch for me, I fucking love it). This is all to say, it was time for me to give one of his favourites a try!

Agreeing to read this 750-page high fantasy book with a reputation for being tough for first-time readers was a big decision for me. High Fantasy is not my thing, as you’ll have noticed if you’ve followed my book reviews. I like a bit of Sci-Fi but I rarely read Fantasy. If I do it’s usually something softer and witchy, or more in the fairytale retelling realm (I adore Uprooted by Naomi Novik).  This isn’t out of an aversion for the genre it’s just those kinds of genre books don’t usually hit the right balance for my own preference for character-driven plot. What gets me through a story is emotional engagement rather than just cool shit happening.

And they’re always so fucking long. In my experience, rarely is the time spent on 800 pages of one OK book in a series worth it, when I could have read 2-3 more complete and fulfilling contemporary lit. or speculative fiction books!

There are exceptions though and I’d dearly love recommendations (and for Space Opera because I have the same problems in that genre)! The most obvious is the A Song of Ice and Fire books by George R.R. Martin which I couldn’t help but think of and compare while reading this.

Anyway, this is all to say, reading this book was an Event! And, as you can probably infer from my rating up top… I was pleasantly surprised… with several caveats.

Ok, I will get on with talking about the book now!

An exhausting & overwhelming reading experience

In a nutshell, this book is kind of frustrating! It is stuffed – perhaps too stuffed – with cool shit and my overall impression is the author is psyched and in a rush to tell me every idea he’s had without ever stopping to properly explain any of it, or letting me catch up with his words.

This makes it hard work to read, and almost impossible to keep track unless you have an excellent memory (I do not) or you’ve got some kind of reference guide!

I usually struggle with fantasy because I don’t enjoy large amounts of world-building and info-dumping, so in that regard, I was pleasantly surprised by this… But, unusually I find myself making the opposite complaint!

I think Erickson swings the pendulum a bit too far to the other way and actually I’d like some context for all these complex elements of the world and some breathing room to understand (and remember) them before the next thing is loaded on! I felt overwhelmed for the first third, but luckily I had my partner on hand so I could ask him to clarify what was supposed to be happening.

Sometimes the writing felt obtuse and could have used a better edit. There was one scene I had to read three times and still didn’t really understand what I was picturing, and it turned out the context for it was explained two sections later. All the author needed to do was name the creature whose POV we were in (we had briefly met it earlier) and I’d have been able to make sense of it!¹

Picturing it like a comic book

I got hung up by that scene because I had been making a concerted effort to paint a mental picture of what I was reading. I’m not normally a “visual” reader but thinking of this book as a novelised comic book really helped me make sense of it and stop my brain wanting things to be realistic. I think “comic book” is the best way I can describe it, or like watching the X-Men cartoon.. with approximately the same level of character development. That’s fine, it’s just not what I’m used to reading in novels!

What is character depth?

Like panels in a comic the narrative quite quickly jumps between characters and relatively short scenes, and we never spend any significant time in one spot with one character. When I was complaining about this to my partner he asked what character depth means to me, because he thinks these books have great characterisation. I struggled to articulate what I meant because it’s one of those I know it when I feel it things.

This is definitely something that is subjective and people will have different mileage on. For me, for a character to have depth I want to be shown (maybe I need to make this its own blog post at some point!):

• Any important elements from their background that explain how and why they came to be where they are, and how they feel about it, as it relates to the plot.
• Their individual strengths, weaknesses and values.
• Relationships with other characters, and if they have emotional stakes.
• Making choices that make sense for their personality, but also some that may be surprising in a way that demonstrates character growth. This should have an impact on events in the plot.

Mind the gaps

Now I’m not saying any of this is missing from Gardens of the Moon! I do think Erikson is absolutely trying to do all this. I do think he succeeds in creating characters (I think there are 10 POVs?) who are distinct, they do have different personalities and different voices, but if you try to peel off that top layer there is very little underneath to get stuck into. And for me, that’s the meat I’m looking for in a good book.

Some characters are given snippets of backstory, but it’s never much – it’s only emotionally explored in the case of Tattersail and Lorn, even then very briefly and still full of gaps (I want to know Tattersail’s truth beyond just her regret, I want to be filled in on what happened in the past from her POV). That dinner is easily one of the strongest scenes in the book, that had me gripped and it proves that Erikson can write good character scenes! But, it was a rare and this attempt at emotional detail doesn’t apply to all the main POV characters.

I mean you could write a whole fucking book on what amounts to some throwaway sentences regarding events Quick Ben’s past and explain how he has his extraordinary abilities! Why am I not hearing that story?! I can only assume this is to tease later books.

Some characters do have some demonstrable growth in this book. Crokus, a teenaged Alladin, arguably has the most but he is a boy who basically just works out that love is more than thinking a girl has nice boobs, so we’re still in the shallowest of waters. Lorn could have been interesting but for the huge gap between traumatising childhood events to becoming the Adjunct. How and why did she end up as Adjuct, a position she has growing internal conflict over? It’s a strange missing part of the picture of that character. I can’t empathise fully with her struggle if I am missing half the story?

The same thing with Murillo, Rallick and Coll. They’re friends, and a revenge subplot is driven by this (but we don’t actually get told that’s the reason, or even what is happening, until very close to the end!). The friendship between Murillo and Rallick felt apparent, but I never understood their devotion to Coll who we’d only seen being a layabout drunk. How did they all become friends, why does he mean so much to them that they take these risks? Without that filled in it felt inconsequential. I felt Coll’s relationship to Paran – who’d known him mere days – because I witnessed it grow, but not with the men, I guess, he has known for many years?

Tattersail was my favourite, and I felt she got the most on page characterisation but again it felt like we were saving colouring her sketch in for future books, and I found that very frustrating. Paran also got a lot of on-screen time but I felt his personality was bland (but that is on purpose) and he’s too buffeted around by the whims of gods to have any direct impact on the plot, and I never really cared for him until he made BFFs with Coll (late in the book), and I finally got emotional stakes to work with.

Superpowers with seemingly no rules

About half the characters have superpowers! If they don’t possess magic, then they have some kind of magic weapon or protection of gods! Anything can happen and anyone can do anything at any time it seems! I am not one to care much about learning the intricate rules behind a magic system, but some rules would have helped establish what the stakes are.

Super powerful beings are dropping out of the sky or popping out of the ground left and right, city levelling demons are being chucked out potion bottles like Pokémon (how the hell does that work?).. and maybe I’m momentarily worried but then the next scene someone else insanely overpowered rocked up and stopped it.. and I’m not sure what I’m meant to being caring about here?

Stuff just happens and hardly any of it is at the hands of or resolved by the POV characters. It’s all gods and immortal super beings intervening. Which would be fine, if I had an emotional stake in what the POV characters were up to.

But I did enjoy it.

It’s just frustrating that such imagination, and so much potential is in the hands of an author who really needed a better editor to help pace things. He has great ingredients, I just don’t think he got the mix quite right for my taste.

I kept thinking of A Song of Ice and Fire. That’s a grand sweeping epic but it’s character-driven and grounded in the relatable POV characters. It spends time with the people letting me understand them before the magic and the conflict ramps up. By the time we’re at dragons, prophesies, free people and white walkers I care because I’m invested in the people. That’s what keeps me reading and that’s why the pain of the several breath-taking cliff-hangers at the end of A Dance With Dragons is so hard to bear!

The cool stuff

I know most of this has been negative so let me just list what I did really like about it!

• Lots of magic! Also cool stuff like floating moon cities, talking crows and I even liked the involvement of gods. This is the most capital F Fantasy I’ve ever read.
• Also mental shit like a psychotic possessed wooden puppet which I really needed more focus because what the fuck!
• Plenty of female characters who are people. I was pleasantly surprised by the gender balance. No cringe descriptions, and barely any mention of boobs (and those that were are from a teenage boy’s POV).
• Tattersail is fucking awesome, she’s a powerful larger lady who gets all the action she wants and is a badass mage.
• The character names are fantastic and varied, and I’d love to know how he came up with them!
• Quick Ben is also a very intriguing character! I need to know his history and how he’s so powerful.
• The novel is in the moral grey area, which I really like. The Empire honestly seems solidly bad (though half our characters work for it) but Anomander Rake, while more chill, is also not greeeaat. I did really like that we start off within The Empire’s ranks but then later on the villain we have been told about shows up and starts saving people. I love it when my expectations get played with like that!

I have heard that this first book is the weakest one, and the writing has improved, so I’m expecting some of the gaps I’m frustrated by maybe get filled. I am intrigued about where things go from here so yes I am going to read the next book! And I think I might find some references guides to help me with it.

I think I have to rate this at a 3.5 star/moons. I enjoyed it, despite the flaws, and it did make me want to read more but if the other books are meant to be better I have to leave myself somewhere to go and it’s highly unlikely books with this kind of holey characterisation are going to hit the heights of 5/5 (but you never know, I didn’t think I’d like this one!).

1. I have been warned that failing to name who’s POV you are in becomes a real problem in later books! ↩︎