6 November 2007
Steven Erikson – Gardens of the Moon
Posted by Dirk under: books .
This is the first book in what is planned as a 10 book series. I’ve read the first 5 before and recently got #6 from Amazon and decided to re-read them.
I really like this book. It’s epic. (I hate that cover though) The series is called Malazan Book of the Fallen and so far 7 of the books have been finished.
The books are very gritty. They remind me quite a bit of Glen Cook’s Black Company series. There are a ton of characters but they are characterized well and there names are not weird-ass fantasy names that all sound the same, so it’s easy keep them straight in your head.
Often while reading this book it reminded me of a really good roleplaying campaign and according to the wikipedia entry that is what the Malazan world started as. I’d have loved to play in that game!
The books are full of badasses. Almost too many. Like, you are thinking this character is one bad mofo and then a while later you encounter another character that is even tougher and in the next book an even tougher dude. Mutual assured character destruction or something.
Anyway, I highly recommend this series. And Erikson doesn’t hate his characters like George R.R. Martin does so he doesn’t kill em all off just when you are starting to like them 🙂