Gardens of the Moon

and so begins my foray into what many in the book community have referred to as... the ultimate epic fantasy masterpiece, unrivaled in scope.

this first book was...not very good lol. erikson doesn't trouble himself with trifling norms such “character development” or “world building”, at least not this early on in the series. some folks have referred to these basic writing features as “hand holding” but to me, it's simply good story telling, and it's very lacking here.

i didn't feel attached to any of the characters. the book insisted that some characters went through development that is completely absent from the text. for example, what the hell happened to Paran from the prologue and how does he become such a gritty lieutenant in the first chapter, despite having come from a noble family? this bugged me so much lol, i really didn't like how we were just expected to take at face value that he's this hardened military man now, who for some reason can handle seeing horrifying scenes of carnage without batting an eye, unlike his superiors. maybe we'll find out in later books? who knows