Malazan Book of the Fallen

Gardens of the Moon, the entry point into this whole series, does not ease you in. No prologue explaining the gods or the empire or the magic system, just people already mid-conversation about things you have no context for, and I spent a genuine chunk of the first third flipping back trying to remember who was on which side. One review I saw put a number on it, ninety two named characters by the wiki’s own count, and once I read that I stopped feeling bad about how often I lost the thread.

Once the pieces start converging, and they do, eventually, the payoff is real. The magic system has actual teeth, the politics feel lived in rather than sketched, and Kruppe, a fat, riddling merchant who talks entirely in third person about himself, ended up being my favorite character in the whole book almost by accident, comic relief that turns out to be doing more narrative work than he lets on.

My honest problem is the density asks more of me than I always wanted to give it. I don’t mind working for a book, I’ve gotten through plenty of dense hard sci fi that demanded the same kind of attention, but Erikson changes scenes mid-chapter often enough that putting it down for even a day meant real backtracking to remember whose storyline I’d left off in. Compared to something like Martin, where you at least stay with one POV for a full chapter, this asks for a different, more constant kind of focus.

Three stars for this first entry specifically. I can see why the series has a devoted following willing to push through the opening book’s steep climb, I’m just not sure yet whether I’m signing up for the whole climb myself.