Gardens of the Moon

 Steven Erikson

This book is confusing as all shit. All books, especially fantasy books, have a certain number of chapters or pages where they just throw you into the mess, and explain things later. I have heard that this explanation begins to occur a little bit around the third book in this series.

That said, I'm enjoying being confused so far. It's well written, and Erikson can do an incredible brutal scene. There's some cool ideas that I think I'm picking up on, and some interesting characters, although those supposedly change every book as well.

This book sorta follows a group of soldiers, who used to be the elite guard under the previous emperor, and what they do when the new empress turns against them. But really, that's probably less than a third of the book. There's all sorts of stuff with meddling gods, wizard fighting, Totallynotdarkelves who live on a moon, and worldbuilding out the ass. It's hard to give a summary.

Erikson does a good job of compensating for the confusion. There's some lovely maps, as well as a glossary, and a Dramatis Personae section listing the names of all the characters, what category they belong to (Bridgeburners, regulars at the Phoenix Inn, etc.), without which I would be totally lost.

It has the added benefit of being the first book in a completed epic fantasy series. I personally plan on continuing with the series, at least until I cease to enjoy being totally lost.

I would recommend this book to hardcore fantasy fans. If you enjoyed Game of Thrones but thought it could use more unexplained magic and about three times the characters, odds are good you'll like this book. This is not for the light reader. Amazon tells me the kindle edition is about 500 pages long, but it feels longer because of the dense writing style Erikson uses, as well as the amount of time you'll spend looking up names of characters.

If you do enjoy, there's nine sequels after it, as well as a host of accompanying novels. I'll review the books as I finish them, and if I manage to make it to the end without losing interest, I'll do a series retrospective.

That's it for Gardens of the Moon ladies and gentlemen.

-Leo