Gardens of the Moon by Steven EriksonMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Steven Erikson has obviously done a lot of reading of fantasy fiction, just what authors are advised to do. Read other authors and learn. I think I detect a lot of influences here. Do you like Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time? Welcome to another complicated, slow revealing, multivolume epic. How about George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire? Well, Malazan has a plethora of characters, all with axes to grind and we get to observe them from all angles. Are you a fan of sword & sorcery books like Fritz Leiber's Faffhrd and the Grey Mouser, where gods and supernatural powers interfere in human struggles? Prepare for Oponn and Shadowthrone stirring the pot for their own purposes. How about Glen Cook's The Black Company? Malazan's Bridgeburners may remind you of them, what with their nifty names (Whiskeyjack, Fiddler, Hedge, etc.), their resident wizard (Quick Ben) and healer (Mallet), and their sneaky plans. In fact, there are a lot of similarities to Cook's series.
Erikson doesn't over explain things, either. He just keeps throwing characters and situations at the reader, with the expectation that you will sort it out as you go. It's a palpable relief when you start to recognize repeat appearances and when the plot starts to take on a hazy shape.
For me, I was a quarter of the way through the book before things really clicked for me. There's way too much pointless description for me, paragraphs and more paragraphs of cityscapes. I amused myself by mentally editing as I read, using my mental red pen to cross out reams of text. Then, at the two thirds point, I stalled. Mind you, library books with due dates affected this situation, but I found it difficult to return to the Gardens.
I had expectations of this series, possibly my mistake. The author is a fellow Canuck and I really wanted to love his writing. After all, I love another Canadian fantasy writer, Guy Gavriel Kay. And James Alan Gardner. Charles de Lint. There is precedent. However, Erikson writes more on the level of R.A. Salvatore (Legend of Drizzt). Serviceable, but not elegant. Thankfully, I like it enough to give the next book a try.
Book number 397 of my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project.
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