Welcome to the Tor.com eBook Club! September’s pick is Gardens of the Moon, the first book in the epic fantasy series Malazan Book of the Fallen. You have until September 7th to get your FREE ebook copy—but first, here are 14 reasons this classic is worth getting into!
So, it’s been a few years and you’re still waiting for The Winds of Winter, or maybe the next book in The Kingkiller Chronicle, to hit the shelves. While you wait (and wait, and…), how about a little “appetizer” in the form of a complete epic fantasy series that spans ten books, plus a handful of novellas, with two prequel trilogies (The Kharkanas Trilogy and Path to Ascendancy) currently in progress? OK, maybe not so “little.” Think that might tide you over?
The series is the Malazan Book of the Fallen, by Steven Erikson and Ian Cameron Esslemont—here are a few reasons why you should pick up book one,— Gardens of the Moon.
- The series starts with Gardens of the Moon and ends with The Crippled God in 2011. Yes, I said “ends.”
- It opens in the middle of the story. You know who else opened his epic in medias res? Homer. You know how long people have been retelling that story? See my point?
- There are gods. See above.
- It has undead. But not “oh no, some brooding sparkly guy bit me so now I can’t die” undead. No, they made themselves undead on purpose so they could keep fighting an endless war and ensure the utter extinction of their enemy, even if it took thousands of years. Way cooler.
- A sweeping story that moves across years, continents, and both the mortal and immortal planes involving an empire that has conquered numerous peoples but is now struggling to hold itself together. Gardens focuses on the attempt by an elite Malazan army unit—the Bridgeburners—to take a single city.
- Larger than life characters, including Anomander Rake—the thousands-year-old, shape-shifting, soul-sucking-sword-carrying leader of the non-human Tiste Andii whose home is a flying mountain.
- Characters who are just the size of life. The best characters are not the god-like ones, but the mortals who have to muck around in the day to day without the benefit of immortality. Nobody does the common grunt like Erikson, save perhaps Glen Cook. And nobody has the common grunt tick off the gods quite so much either: “Don’t mess with mortals” is one of the taglines. No “Great Men” version of history here.
- Grey is the new black. Good people do bad things. Bad people do good things. Sometimes what/who we thought was good turns out to be bad and vice versa. Or even vice vice versa.
- A world in flux. Too many fantasies present a static world or a storyline whose goal is a return to the status quo—the return of the king, say. Here, the entire world of Malaz feels like it’s constantly on the cusp of transformation. The empire is tottering, past loyalties are being questioned, old gods are waking up, new gods/ascendants are entering the stage, alliances are broken and formed, enemies and allies exchange places, “extinct” races re-emerge, immortals die, strange new creatures are birthed. Nothing is set in stone, not even death.
- Characters that are actually complex, not the faux complexity that pretends to opaqueness but is eventually, comfortingly explained. True complexity encompasses contradiction and confusion. Like real people, Erikson’s characters change their minds, their personalities, have murky motivations or motivations that remain stubbornly unclear or unrevealed. Most of us, if we were honest, would be hard-pressed to say we truly “know” anyone, or more than a tiny handful of people. Why then should we expect to “fully understand” characters?
- A pervading sense of time. Events from days, months, years, centuries, and thousands of years ago have repercussions that ripple through the present action. Myths, stories, and histories are consequential, whether they turn out to be true or wholly false. Some of those thought long dead rise again. Others who stay dead haunt those who knew them for years. Civilizations, cultures, races, gods, religions, and of course, empires rise and fall leaving behind stories, shards of pottery, strange artifacts, flying mountains, rivers of ice. And Erikson examines what happens when that sense of time is weakened by near or total immortality or by the curse of forgetfulness.
- The series deals with Big Ideas. The influence of story and myth. What it means to be human. The benefits of civilization and whether they outweigh the negatives. How we treat each other and the world around us. Enslavement in all its forms, literal and metaphorical. The impact of individual choice in an indifferent natural universe or within an indifferent or even inimical human one. The power of compassion and empathy. The horror of their absence. Environmentalism. Imperialism. Inequality. Means versus ends. Native culture. The power of religion (or belief in general). How to deal with the recognition that we live in a world where everything is filtered through a limited point of view.
- The writing is technically stimulating / risky. Multiple limited points of view. Non-linear structures. Braided narratives. Unreliable narrators. Wide diversity of voices. Subversion of tropes. Use of simile, metaphor, poetry, echoes of imagery and language, epigraphs, etc. An incredible layering of links and foreshadowings. More than nearly any fantasy work I know, it rewards rereading. It nearly, in fact, demands it.
- Humor (admittedly more in later books than GoTM) in various forms: slapstick, surrealistic, wry, situational, ironic, buddy comedy, puns….
Gardens of the Moon is not without its flaws; but it is a captivating, stimulating read that defies the reader’s preconceptions of fantasy. It challenges as well their tolerance for ambiguity, confusion, complexity, unanswered questions, dislocation, uncertainty, and fluidity. In other words, it challenges their ideas of fantasy by confronting them with reality. It also tells a damn good story about characters we come to care a lot about. You should pick it up and start reading. But I’d recommend you have books 2-10 handy; you’re gonna want them when you’re done.
This article was originally published September 15, 2011
Bill Capossere writes short stories, essays and plays; does reviews for the LA Review of Books and Fantasy Literature, as well as for Tor.com; and works as an adjunct English instructor. In his non-writing and reading time, he plays ultimate Frisbee (though less often and more slowly than he used to) and disc golf.
I bought this book a month ago and am reading it now. It is pretty good and I look forward to continuing the series.
This is my favorite fantasy series of all time, for all of the reasons above.
The series starts with Gardens of the Moon and ends with The Crippled God in 2011. Yes, I said “ends.”
Yes you did, erroneously. Although the core ten-volume series climaxes with The Crippled God, it does leave myriad storylines, character arcs and thematic ideas unresolved. These are explored in the six-volume side-series by another author, in the prequel series that other author has just started, in Erikson’s own prequel trilogy or in the sequel trilogy he has planned but is unlikely to get to for another four or five years.
I do enjoy the Malazan series, but it is both wildly inconsistent and it doesn’t really have a coherent, identifiable, central storyline. That’s also kind of refreshing, but it does mean it’s hard to pin down what the series is about, which makes selling it to new readers difficult. It doesn’t help that Gardens of the Moon is not a strong start to the series. I usually suggest people read Deadhouse Gates (Book 2) first instead, as it is much better-written, better-characterised and has a jaw-dropping, emotionally powerful ending (Gardens of the Moon‘s ending is deus ex machina of the worst kind).
Well, the MBotF series definitely ended after 10 books. There are related series and novellas, but they are quite obviously different beasts than the main sequence.
@3 the Malazan series is often recommended on other sites and I’m seeing this idea crop up more and more to skip the first book.
(Ditto with Discworld. A lot of recommendations to start with Guards! Guards! or Mort, or to read out of sequence and follow certain character storylines. The same with The Dresden Files, a lot of people like to recommend starting with Summer Knight, even though a ton of important characters are introduced in the second and third books, and an event occurs in the third that is called back to in almost every book after.)
I don’t really see that the early novels of these series are so bad that the pros outweigh the cons enough to skip them.
The Malazan series has so many characters that aren’t introduced until later sure, but the first book introduces the Bridgeburners (would we really care so much about the events in Deadhouse Gates and especially Memories of Ice without reading GotM?), Anomander Rake, Garoes Paran and a bunch of others and lays a ton of world-building foundation.
It’s easier to appreciate the growth of a series and it’s author’s writing if you can watch it happen, at least in my opinion.
Absolutely my favorite series ever.
That being said, I did spend most of Gardens wondering wtf was going on, who was good, who was bad, how does magic work in this world, and why is Rake so badass?
@3 Its not so much that there is no central storyline as it is that none of the characters you see the world through are the focus of it. The main characters that you come to know and love (or hate) serve more as examples of the “fallen” that help to tell the story of the Crippled God. Since you don’t get a ton of text with him, especially with him as your pov, it isn’t always easy to see him as the focus.
Hmm. I tried reading this a while back, because it had been recommended by several friends. A quarter of the way through the book, it felt like a chore; after one-third, I wondered why I was continuing to force myself to pick it up and read a few more pages. So I quit. It fell to the Eight Deadly Words:
I don’t care what happens to these people.
I’m no stranger to epic fantasy, or complex world-building, or multiple POVs, or fallible characters. My problem was that, halfway through, I still didn’t care about a single character he’d introduced. There wasn’t one I actually liked, and while there were several that I found mildly disagreeable, there wasn’t anyone I could even actively dislike. They all felt like NPCs in a role-playing game: shallow, forgettable, unrealistic. The plot was just as bad; a third of the way through the book, I still wasn’t interested in any of the various plot arcs already introduced, and they were still too fragmented to provide any kind of a serious hook.
The writing skill of the author is excellent, and that was the one thing I did enjoy about it. Sadly, his story-telling skill didn’t match his word-crafting skill, and the latter was insufficient to overcome the former.
My friends tell me that if I can just get through the first couple of books, it picks up and becomes an awesome series in the third or fourth book. Maybe someday I’ll be at loose ends enough that I’ll try it again, but for now, my to-be-read pile is big enough to make that a ways off. I still need to read the Dresden Files and the Powder Mage series, both of which have already given me enough of a hook to continue, and there are loads of others calling to me as well.
Just one reader’s opinion.
@@.-@: I disagree. After The Crippled God many, many readers want to know what happened to Laseen and the Malazan Civil War that was clearly beginning in The Bonehunters and hadn’t been referenced since. Lots of people wanted to know what was going on with Silverfox and Assail. Karsa Orlong’s fanbase was (understandably) keen to find out where his much-heralded quest was going to take him after Toll the Hounds. Toll the Hounds even leads directly (more or less) into Esslemont’s Orb Sceptre Throne. The connections between the core 10-book series and the other books set in the same world are a lot less divisible than people often claim.
@5: To clarify, my advice would be to start with DHG, then read GotM and MoI (as Erikson originally planned, actually, before his hard drive blew up and took the first draft of MoI with it, compelling him to write DHG instead) and go on from there. You definitely, 100% need to read to GotM at some point in any readthrough of the series.
@7: Characterisation is a key weakness of Erikson’s (possibly even his Achilles heel), although oddly he is much better at the start of the series than the end. That said, the second volume, Deadhouse Gates, features probably his best set of characters (espcially Coltaine, Felisin and Duiker), his best, most dynamic central storyline and by far his best, most gut-wrenching ending. You don’t need to read Gardens of the Moon before Deadhouse Gates (although it helps, a little) so I would recommend just diving into it at some stage.
@7 You aren’t wrong. I even had the experience of wanting to quit after GotM, thinking it just wasn’t good enough to continue an entire series for. I had a friend practically beg me to continue. I did.
And I’m here to tell you that the Malazan Book of the Fallen is the best damn fantasy series ever written.
Reason #15: The Summoning of the Hounds of Tindalos.
@7 “I don’t care what happens to these people.“
Read enough and you will. If you do not get a tear in the eye eveytime you see the word Beak, you are not human.
I’m with @7. I’ve picked up GotM twice now, and neither time did I make it past 350 pages. There’s no hook, no investment in the characters to drag me along. It really feels like the author is just assuming the reader will read on for the sake of reading on—there’s no sense of earning my readership. I don’t want to read a series that takes 1100 pages before I care about the characters.
#15: You have already finished all the books in Glen Cook’s Black Company series.
@13 Preach.
I read the first five books back in 2005 or so — at that point, only Gardens and Deadhouse were even available in the US, so I ordered British paperbacks of 3-5 even before I had finished Gardens. (And I have to say, I do kind of like those British covers better than the original American ones.) One of these years I’ll go back and read the full series, including the Bauchelain & Korbal Broach stuff and maybe the Esslemont books and anything else that may have appeared. It’s just such a commitment at this point.
As others have said, if someone new tries Gardens and can’t get through it, skip it and read Deadhouse Gates. By far the most emotional I’ve ever been after reading a book. What a gut punch that was!
@3
I don’t know if saying the series ends is “erroneous.” Especially in the context of the point, which is that one isn’t starting the first book in a series that is only three or four books into a planned (and we know how that goes) 7-8 books series, with each book allegedly coming out every year (and we know how that goes). The main plot is certainly resolved. Sure, “resolved” doesn’t mean wrapped up neatly with all the characters either dead or nicely summed up future-wise in a helpful epilogue, but life isn’t like that. I wouldn’t say people wanting to know more is a flaw. So I’m going to stick with my claim new readers can feel safe in thinking they can start and finish this series. That said, there’s lots of material out there for those who want to continue in this universe (or even with some of these characters).
I also wouldn’t call the series “wildly” inconsistent (save for the cough cough timeline), but I’d agree with you on the lack of a laser-focused central storyline. There’s a general arc, but lots of sub-stories and lots of themes. Saying what a creative work is “about” is (or perhaps should be) tough, and it is more than a little reductive, but I get your point. If forced, I’d say it’s “about” empathy and compassion. Everything else seems to drive from those twin ideas. I think it’s more true to life in lots of ways than many are used to or expect with plotting. Some will like that, some surely will not.
On the other hand, I absolutely agree GoTM is not a strong start. In a post coming up, I note that while I personally don’t think it is a weak book, it is certainly the weak-est, and that’s a problem for sure. I usually recommend reading it with that in mind and if one has to, think of it as the prep work. It may be simply logistics on my part—I read pretty quickly, so I don’t see reading a book, despite issues, as much of an obstacle. GoTM does set a stage, introduce major characters, and along with the flaws there are many great moments. And I greatly prefer starting a series with a weak book and moving into stronger writing etc. as opposed to starting off with a bang and having the series go down the tubes, as I’ve experienced way too often. Starting with Deadhouse Gates is a common suggestion as well. It’s definitely a better book starting there is certainly a way to go, though not my preferred recommendation (I would say and have said if people absolutely can’t move on in GoTM to just stop where they are and move on to DG). And in my review of Esslemont’s prequel book, I actually mentioned it might be the best place to start as it is not only entertaining but much more accessible than GoTM.
We’ll have to agree to disagree about characterization (though there may be a point with regard to the more technical how one characterizes, etc.). But I’m with Spamfish @11. I’ve choked/teared up over multiple characters in multiple spots, and that’s even on a third read through. I’d argue this series has some of the greatest characters in the genre and saying goodbye to them at the end is always deeply emotional for me.
@@@@@ 11: I guess I must not be human then. I thought Beak was a rather weak story telling element to be honest but don’t want to say anymore to avoid any spoilers.
This series is a difficult one for me. On the one hand Steven Erikson is awesome at world building, like Abso-Fucking-Lutely amazing world building! While on the other hand, his characterization is weak and many of his plot elements come off as deus ex machina. And while I really liked some of the books like MoI, HoC and MT, I still haven’t read the last two books because I absolutely hated Toll the Hounds.
Funny thing is two of the books that I didn’t really like, Deadhouse Gates and The Bonehunters, are the two books that most fans of the series love the most.
Reason #16: Gardens of the Moon is the September/October 2016 group read at the Grimdark Fantasy Group on Goodreads.
I tried reading Gardens of the Moon once.. it didn’t grab me. So much going on, so many characters I didn’t “feel”. Tried a second time after reading glowing reviews. Once again I dropped it, getting about halfway. Then I read some discussions which helped me “grok” the book and the third time I finished it, and while I still wondered what all the commotion was about, I soldiered on into Deadhouse Gates, then Memories of Ice, then House of Chains, and somewhere around book four I knew there was no going back; and by the end of The Crippled God I knew I had…witnessed…something extraordinary.
And then I did a re-read of Gardens of the Moon…wow! The most rewarding re-read in history. Subsequently, Deadhouse Gates, which already was a much stronger entry than the first novel, also became extremely rewarding and the more I re-read, the more I have come to appreciate this absolutely dense, epic out of proportions and profound tale.
Above all, it was definitely worth the hassle to get to the point of having read it all.
Agree with many comments here – I read GotM a year or so ago and, although I did finish it, it did not make me want to read the next book at all and I couldn’t understand all the great things I’d heard about this series.
Glad to know I wasn’t the only one and if DG is better as many seem to think, I’m now quite keen to give it a try – thanks!
@18 – start the series over. The last two books were not out yet when I finished Toll the Hounds. I did not enjoy it much, and thought it was the weakest book of the series. Deadhouse Gates was my favorite. While waiting for DoD, I started from the beginning. On the second read, TtH was a completely different book – you can see how everything fits, where the motivations come from, how everything converges to TtH. Plus, the second time, the kick in the teeth in TtH is not a total shock causing you scream, throw the book across the room and have your impression of the book completely tainted.
The “problem” with TMBotF is that it is written as a short story – a really long one. There are no throwaway sentences. Every word matters and it is way too much to remember it all. You almost have to pick a couple of plot threads to follow and pay less attention to the rest. You can’t do that on the first pass, because you don’t know what plot points are going to converge on the threads you are paying attention to. I did not consciously do this on my second read, but I think this is why I didn’t like DG as much the second time – it’s a very good stand-alone story, but it does not affect much until after TtH.
This is my favorite series, but one I hardly recommend to anymore. It is amazing and hugely rewarding, but 10000 pages is a big commitment, and I really think you need to read it twice, at a minimum.
This has been mentioned a few times and it’s something I’d emphasize. More than just about any series I can think of, this one rewards rereading. Not just the enjoyment of coming back to a favorite, but rewarding in the sense of making connections, seeing echoes, seeing how the story was constructed, how things set up in book two ripple out and have results in book seven, etc. I wouldn’t say it is necessary to reread the series, but it’s a much richer experience to do so.
“Gardens of the Moon is the September/October 2016 group read at the Grimdark Fantasy Group on Goodreads”: that’s comment #19 providing reason #16.
Thanks! I’ve just joined the Grimdark group, and will look forward to the group read.
And thanks for the free book, which I’ve just started. I have a feeling that this freebie will cost me a lot, in terms of money, and especially time!
I followed and loved this series from the start (when Gardens of the Moon and Deadhouse Gate had been published), and I have reread the books many times. However, my current reread is the first full read. I am in book 4 now.
I want to make a few observations.
My experience is that readers either love this series or hate it, there is no middle way.
@Wetlandernw, I have known you for a while, both here in in the WoT FB group, and I do not think you will like this series. Erikson is making points (‘children are dying’ being one of the biggest ones), and at some parts there are atrocities being written that would make GRRM cry. I do not think you (and others) would like reading about that. Although Erikson’s writing style is superb, especially in the grim dark humour in the dialogues at some of the worst scenes. But feel free to surprise me ;) Personally, there are still scenes that make me cry because of the emotions they bring up, tied to characters, what they think and what they feel. Book 2 might just bring up the first one for new readers, Book 3 certainly will.
But the main themes of the series are Compassion, and Empathy. I have always thought this series is not Fantasy, but Tragedy in a Fantasy Setting.
For new readers, the first few books may be confusing. Book 2 is in another setting than Book 1, with only a few known characters. Book 3 follows up on book 1. Book 4 starts out with yet another character, but most of it is a follow up after the (heartbreaking) end of book 2. And then there is Book 5: although one of the best written books in the series, it gives yet new characters and a new setting (and history). Book 6 is where all those threads come together, and from there it is onwards to a single storyline (mostly); books 8 and 9 happen at about the same time in the timeline, and Book 10 is the biggest emotional rollercoaster I ever experienced…. After having read The Crippled God for the first time, I only wanted to read light stuff for a month; for me that was Feist. If these kind of emotions are not want you want in your reading, these books may not be what you want to read. I’d say, at least try Book Two :)
As has been said, this is the series that pays off the most on rereads. In rereading the first few books even know I still find things that kind of foreshadow things in the last few books.
Bill forgot a few reasons to read these books:
Total gender equality: women can be badass warriors too. Not only a few spotlight characters, like WoT and ASoIaF have, but all over the ranks. There are female Heavy Infantry, female Marines, female commanding officers, as many as males. Some of them are smart, some of them are everything but, just like their male counterparts. Women do not have to do the extra mile to prove they are worth standing amongst men in the military; they just are there. The only exception that comes to mind would be in the ranks of sappers: maybe only men can be as crazy as those guys…
For the record, that equality goes for sexual orientation as well. In general, but mostly seen in The Malazan Armies (because the main story is centred on what they do), people are judged on merit, not on who they share a blanket with. Erikson does not go graphic there, because it’s an accepted fact, nothing special.
Malazan Sappers: the most unruly, anti-authoritarian, crazy kind of military type you can find. If Erikson did race tropes (well, he is playing with the elf trope some, I guess), I say they would have been Dwarves. They carry around big heavy throwing munitions that can torch platoons, or blow up stuff (up to very big sizes) and they aren’t cutting long fuses there. The only times I have seen them cry (and I cried with them) was when after a long long campaign march being out of Moranth munitions, they got supplied fully again. But they always make me laugh, and make me fond of them.
Jaghut, possibly the funniest and yet most philosophical race ever to have occurred in fiction.
And of course, Dragons, lots of Dragons! Big ones, smaller ones, smart ones, stupid ones, Living ones, undead ones. Decent ones, mean ones.
All I can say is Witness!
It seems there is very little middle ground for Erikson. You either hate it and won’t get much past Gardens of the Moon if that, or you are absolutely hooked like me and can’t get enough.
I absolutely agree with Bill and with Fiddler and others who’ve posted. MBotF tells a story of part of the life of an empire, but it’s more than that, it is, as others have said, a treatise on themes of empathy, compassion, certainty and more. It is some parts social commentary and criticism. To the comments that it lacks a central arc and a neatly packaged ending, well as I said, it’s a window on history but it’s not told to you by an all seeing historian. And there’s history before it starts, there’s history after it. It is, for example, like reading the story of the entire World War II including some of the causes and results. You might read from 1936 to 1950 but that doesn’t tie everything up completely. There’s post WWI effects to think of before. There’s long term results like the Cold War that come after. MBotF doesn’t deal with all of those things for you. It can’t. Some gets resolved by other books or by Esslemont, some will just be a mystery.
I disagree on characterization too. In my opinion Erikson can make you care about a character in just a few pages where many authors fail after 16 books (or 14 or whatever). (I’m looking at you Rand al’Thor.) Beak is not the example I’d necessarily cite though.
Re-reading is where Erikson shines. The complexity of everything he’s doing comes to light on re-reads. Now that’s a long term investment, if we’re saying that this 10 book series is better the second time around (it is).
On GotM specifically yeah it’s not as strong as some of the other books in the series, and it does fling you wholesale off the deep end without a life vest so it’s hard to find your way at first. But there are enough characters to hold on to. For lack of a definite protagonist or antagonist I think it is stronger. Again that’s opinion. And I vociferously disagree about Erikson’s use of DEM’s. I personally believe that is readers’ missing the set up of events, which makes it appear as such. In the re-read of GotM on this site there is a long discussion about it.
Finally, agree with the love for Glen Cook. Also a great series.
Thumbs up to djk1978 :)
I forgot to add in my post, that for the doubters, the reread here on TOR gives a good view on what to expect. If you have doubts, just peek in there. We do not spoil much :)
On that note, *glares at Bill*, when do we start Assail? ;) It is one of my favourite books :)
I will go with Fiddler, Bill & djk1978 in loving the series. From the beginning to the end–it resonated with me.
I must chime in with support for Fiddler, Bill, and djk1978.
Fiddler has recommended several series to me, all of which have been wonderful, so I took a leap with Erikson. But, without a few explanations from him, I might have been lost in GotM. “What’s a Warren?”
Persevere. This is the deepest, most far reaching, philosophical, history of a world and its myriad peoples I have ever read….. And reread.
As for characters….. They are the reason I read, and Erikson can make me know and love a character in a paragraph, even if that’s all they get. Extraordinary. Empathy and Compassion indeed.
@27 Fiddler (and all)
We’re thinking we’ll pick up again at the very end of the month. So not too much longer!
@30
Oh this is such a relief haha, I just finished The Crippled God and have been using this reread to keep up throughout my first readthrough of the series…then I looked at the index and realised it had been a while since a post and was terrified it had been discontinued (and I couldn’t check the posts on the most recent entries cause I was scared of spoilers)…so happy to stumble on this and find out it’s still going. Also, massive thanks to you and Amanda for all this work so far, I don’t think I would’ve kept up at all without it, and it enhanced my enjoyment of the series so much.
Reason#17 – Best duos in fantasy: Tehol & Bug, Icarium & Mappo, Trull & Onrack, Bauchelain & Korbal, Stormy & Gesler, etc…
I also recommend to start with Deadhouse Gates. Read about the Chain of Dogs, Icarium and Mappo, Fiddler’s trek through Seven cities, get your mind blown by the ending then go to GotM with a completely new vision and enjoy it. :)