Gardens of the Moon

Everything Malazan does well, it does really well. Characters are all introduced with very solid and human foundations, you can see decisions ripple out and affect pages in the future and locations miles away.

Its biggest fault comes in the cast itself. Every interaction, though interesting seems to be in some accelerated timeline, where one night with 2 characters is enough to set up an absolute infatuation with one another. Or where one conversation can crumble the foundation of a character's morals that they have themselves described to grow old with. Reading any character “evolve” in this book felt like they were growing past their own personalities within the space of each word. Its so fast that i struggled to understand the same characters' motivations within the same chapter. Culling the perspective of half the cast would probably ruin a lot of the books magic, but essential time growing each character is missing, so its left to the reader to fill each of these gaps themselves.

3.8/5