Deadhouse Gates

It ended up taking me most of a year to read this book, but that was more because I've been short on free time and reading tends to take a backseat when that happens, and less because I didn't like it. I ended up liking it probably more than the first book in the series, though it again took a while to really get into anything resembling a groove. It features four returning characters, but they only occupy two out of six or so main story threads, with the rest focusing on new faces, and again it's quite a bit of time before most of them seem to start connecting and involving themselves in something that could be called a plot.

It's hard to say whether this struggle early on in the books is a fault of Steven Erikson's writing or if it's just my failure to consistently read them, but usually I can only focus on doing so when I can tell what's happening and am enjoying it. Compared to some other series I've read, The Malazan Book of the Fallen can be pretty obscure. Your eyes can glaze over an entire paragraph if there are too many strange words in it, and if anything really happens in that paragraph, you can struggle with understanding it for a while. But when it works it works really well. I know the series gets weird with its chronology later on, but Deadhouse Gates is a straight sequel to Gardens of the Moon, and it expands on ideas from that book without necessarily requiring you to have just read it. The book uses some pretty dark and violent imagery to effective sell the significance of its events, and at some point it really does get gripping with me reading the last hundred pages in a couple hours. 11 months is definitely too much time to spend on a single book, but I'm prepared to blame that on myself and say I want to continue reading the series.

Gardens of the Moon

So I was looking for a new fantasy series to tide me over a bit while I waited for George R. R. Martin's next book, and the one I've seen with the most direct comparisons is The Malazan Book of the Fallen, which Steven Erikson and Ian Cameron Esslemont based on their roleplaying game campaign. Just as far as the first book goes, Gardens of the Moon is not really that close to being as brilliant as A Game of Thrones, but it was still an enjoyable introduction to a rich, interesting world.

The setting itself is definitely a lot more "fantasy" than Ice and Fire. Martin's series reads like a lost history of European kingdoms with some dragons and undead added for flavor, while the Malazan series is totally soaking in magic. Gods exist in droves and fraternize with mortals, half the characters have access to "warrens" which power their spells and let them quickly travel long distances, there's a floating moon/fortress/city run by a dude who's lived for thousands of years, and so on. The world building definitely seems like the focus was more on making it fun to explore than creating a cohesive vision for a big story, but enough sense is made of it to keep the story going.

The story itself seems a bit deliberately opaque at first, as the perspective jumps around quite a bit, introducing various players and factions in the relevant parts of the world, and sort of telling you what's going on but also sort of not. It took me a little while to really get into it, but eventually things really got going and I could see the purpose of all these different threads, and it did come together into an interesting, mostly original fantasy story. Like I said, the work isn't as strong as Martin's, but Erikson does a good job of balancing a bunch of different things competently and gives them all the right amount of focus without neglecting anything. One thing I really liked is that while there were definitely avenues for sequels left open, the main story arc of the book resolves itself within Moon's pages, rather than feeling like it was one giant volume chopped into ten eventual pieces. I saw enough to make me want to continue reading the series, though I might try out a few others first before I do.