_Gardens of the Moon: A Tale of the Malazan Book of the Fallen_
Steven Erikson, 1999
Two line summary: Jordan's _Wheel of Time_ meets Cook's _Black Company_. If you lied either, or both, it's worth at least checking the back of the cover, on this one.
Quick rating: Good enough to get me to read 700 pages in paperback.
There are no spoilers here:
This is one of those books I seem to have been reading forever. It is a big horse-choker of a paperback. Including the glossary at the end (which I found myself flipping to quite often along the way) this is 712 pages of solid text, and it is not one of the easiest books I've read lately. Add to that that I've been incredibly busy over the last few months and took the occasional side trip into Brust or Zelazny, and.... well, I don't remember when I bought this, but it feels like I've been reading it for months.
A synopsis is pretty hard to write, but I'll give it a try anyway. There is a big ol' empire called the Malazan Empire. It is ruled by one Empress Laseen whom, as far as one can tell from this book, is most of the Roman Emperor and the occasional Mongol Khan rolled up into one quivering mass. She would basically like to own everything.
She is not a major character, but it is in this backdrop of conquest (apparently for its own sake) that the story is set. We follow, roughly, the exploits of the Empire near two cities (Pale and Darujhistan) in lands far removed from the Imperial center. From there it gets... complicated, as we're told a story through a cast of a bunch of characters-- loyal imperial agents, disloyal imperial agents, and foes of the empire (some of whom think they are neutral parties.)
Everyone has an opinion about the Malazan Empire, from the thieves of Darujhistan right up to the gods themselves, and everyone takes part.
It takes a good long while for Erikson to really hit his stride with all these characters, and begin to show how the various threads that he sets up all fall together in the end.
But, in the end, we do see the immediate success/failure of those campaigns, and so the book is fairly self-contained, even if there are multiple further volumes planned.
What's good: If you like big, sprawling, epic stories with worlds that seem to be realized at some level other than the raw plot device, the macguffin, or the "This needs to happen, so it happens," level, then _Gardens of the Moon_ has that.
If Tolkien had a depth of mythic history, and Jordan has a depth of political history, then Erikson has a depth of archaeological history to his world. Other reviews point out that his history stretches back some three hundred thousand years. This is true, but it is an archaeological history more than a political history.
Erikson has you covered on the literal "big sprawling" aspect, as this is book one of a total of ten.
If you like dirty politics and political wrangling, _Gardens of the Moon_ has you covered there, too. There are political plots hatching and counter-hatching both on the Empire side of the things, and among their enemies. Both of these are integral to the overall plot of the book, as well.
And it's in the political wrangling that the similarities to the _Black Company_ books show through as well, since one major group of characters are the members of the Bridgeburners, an elite squad of Malazan soldiers who have fallen on hard times, and whom the Empire would seemingly like to see destroyed.
Similarities to the _Black Company_ show through in the overall tone of the book, too-- make no mistake, these books are grim. We see several carnages along the way, and we aren't shielded from them. Likewise, the political scheming from above and below. There are a few more similarities, but I'd consider them spoilers, so I won't reveal them.
Overall, it's a very dark shade of grey all through the novel.
What's bad: It's meant to be a strength, and Erikson clearly considers it a strength, but the story really does start out in the middle of a figurative dead run; it doesn't slow down from there; and it rarely takes the time (in the first half, anyway) for a nice chunk of expository explanation.
Worse, He has a tendency to introduce one group of characters, stay with them just long enough to make you feel like your feet are grounded with them and you can start to understand where they came from and why they're doing what they're doing... and then, wham, you've got a new group to deal with.
Even more, I swear that for every narrative character who _is_ what he first seems to be, there are two more who aren't what they seem to be, or at the very least have pretty damn unusual backgrounds, not to be revealed until later.
This makes the book damn tough to get a handle on for several hundred pages, and if this ain't your bag, then you won't like it. It probably contributed to the "I've been reading this since 1997" feeling that I've still got.
It does all start to pull together in the second half, and the last three hundred pages went all in the last two days.
What I'm not sure about: Good grief, but there's a metric boatload of magical power sources, powerful critters and gods walking around, and sources of arcane information. One hopes that Erikson has a better handle on it all than I do.
Magic is handled through "warrens" which are apparently naturally forming sources of power on some other plane, into which mortals and gods can tap, to varying degrees. There's a boatload of them out there (on the order of a dozen) and the human ones are themed (life, death, shadow, etc.) They're not static, either. At least, not in historical terms.
There are gods (or 'ascendants'.) Several of them take an active hand, for reasons of their own. There are critters of power equivalent or greater than the gods, and several of them take part on stage, too. There are Demons, again on the same level of power.
There's a surplus of non-human races, too, but part of that is the price of an archaeological scale of history. And many fo them walk on stage and wave at us, too.
I think for this partiular book, the sheer diversity of magic and non-humans almost counts as a negative, because often the reader is left gasping and trying to figure out who is likely to win a given fight, or what the likely effects are going to be. By the end, I was starting to get it, and I can only hope that in subsequent novels, the learning curve won't be too steep.
All in all, not the easiest book I've read all year.
(This review was originally written in August of 2001, and can also be found here)
Posted by John Novak at May 16, 2004 08:07 PM