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GARDENS OF THE
MOON is the first volume in Steven Erikson’s Malazan Empire
series. I was drawn to the series after hearing roughly a dozen
different people heap mighty amounts of praise upon it. Although
it was still shockingly unavailable in the
United States
, I managed to obtain the first three paperbacks from
www.amazon.ca. (Tor has now acquired the rights to the series
and will be releasing GARDENS OF THE MOON sometime this summer.)
I think GARDENS
OF THE MOON can best be described as “epic fantasy with the
dial cranked up to 11”: The dragons, empires, and wars are all
bigger. The cast of characters is larger. The intrigues more
convoluted. The elder races more alien. The magic more powerful
(and its forms more mysterious). Even the world is too big for
the map (and its only one of many).
And I mean all
of that in the best possible way.
No, seriously, I
do. Erikson has invested his world with some truly amazing depth
and a truly astounding scope, and it’s perfectly delightful to
behold.
For example,
Erikson manages to detail a complex, interwoven set of magical
systems – yet, at the same time, his magic feels magical.
He manages to sidestep the trap of making magic nothing more
than an alternative physics, but he also doesn’t cheat by
simply drawing a curtain across its workings.
Another
remarkable thing about GARDENS OF THE MOON is the history. Its
so thick that it seems to ooze right off the page. And its not
just the world which has received this lavish attention: Every
single character has been gifted with a rich backstory that,
once it becomes apparent, gives them a life and vitality and
reality all their own.
I could rave on
for quite some time in this vein, because Erikson has truly
created a marvelously complex and lovingly detailed world: A
work of art with few equals.
Unfortunately,
not everything about GARDENS OF THE MOON is so deserving of
praise. The book is, to put it bluntly, very rough around the
edges. Where Erikson succeeds so brilliantly at evoking a world
and creating a compelling plot, he frequently falls down when it
comes to prose and (most importantly) basic storytelling. And
what is perhaps most frustrating about these latter flaws is
that you can see, here and there throughout the book, that he is
capable of so much better.
It was nearly
150 pages before I began to have something resembling a firm
grasp on what was happening. Erikson dumps you right into the
middle of a complex society, history, cast of characters, and
action – and then skips around like a rabid rabbit, flashing
forward and backward in time, between characters, and across
continents.
To be perfectly
clear here: It’s not simply starting you in the middle of
things which is the problem here. I don’t have any problem
with starting a story in media res. But Erikson never stops.
No narrative thread is held onto for longer than a couple of
pages. You’re constantly flipping between the literally dozens
of POV characters and are never allowed a chance to focus your
attention on anything.
Adding to this
problem is Erikson’s concerted effort to withhold information
from one end of the book to the other: Unnamed characters do
cryptic, unexplained things to other characters (who are
frequently no more than a name on the page); false cliffhangers
are created through selective description; motivations are often
left unexplained until hundreds of pages after the fact.
Which leads to
another problem: There are significant spans of the novel where
characters stop doing things for any particular reason and start
doing them because, well, that’s what happens next (and,
besides, they need to do it so that something else can happen
later on). Sometimes this is just an impression left by Erikson
holding back essential information. And sometimes its justified
by having gods explicitly or implicitly mucking around in the
mix. But, just as frequently, the only all-powerful hand at work
seems to be the author’s, fating characters to an inevitable
outline.
(This is all
simultaneously contrasted and highlighted rather oddly by a
stretch of the book in which vast amounts of secret history
comes spilling out during a casual conversation between two
characters. I was left with the vague sensation of taking a walk
with someone and having them casually – and for no apparent
reason – describe the secret history of the Illuminati, the
Masons’ involvement in the Fall of Atlantis, and the secret
war between the Templars and Papist Loyalists over the Holy
Grail in Victorian India. Ironically, very little of this
conversation actually serves to directly illuminate the active
threads of the plot.)
In the end, I
was simply left with the vague feeling that – if I had known
everything I knew by the end of the book at the beginning of the
book – the whole work would have been a lot more effective for
me.
More than
anything, though, I’m left with a general feeling of
inconsistency, because, like I said, there are large spans of
the book where Erikson’s potential shines through unfettered
by these storytelling flaws. (Most notably the last 150 pages
flew by with only a couple of rough spots standing in the way.)
A couple more
problems I need to throw out here before moving on:
First, Erikson
cannot write poetry. Which is unfortunate, because he spreads it
around pretty liberally in the books. Fortunately, the vast
majority of it is found at the beginning of chapters and is
easily skipped.
Second, someone
hereabouts mentioned recently that Erikson has a tin ear for
names, and that’s true in spades. He varies between two
extremes: Names which are common words (Burn, Sorry, Whiskeyjack,
Hairlock) and names which are nearly unpronounceable. Mixed
inbetween the two extremes are more traditional-sounding fantasy
names (Kalam, Paran) and a few names drawn from the real world
(Quick Ben). The result is simply chaos, and I surely can’t
see any rhyme or reason to the divisions: Whether a character is
a god, a mage, a noble, or a common soldier seems to have no
bearing whatsoever on the type of name they’ll possess.
Okay, I’ve now
spent nearly a dozen paragraphs hashing out the problems I had
with GARDENS OF THE MOON. But take all that with a pinch of
salt: The only reason that these problems stand out like sore
thumbs is because they mar what would otherwise be a colossal
triumph and achievement.
Erikson offers a
rich world, spectacular settings, and powerful characters tied
together in a plot of epic proportions and fiendish intrigue. If
he ends up tripping over his feet every so often in the process,
then that’s something I’m willing to forgive.
Before I bring
this to an end, there’s one last thing that I want to point
out: GARDENS OF THE MOON functions as a stand-alone novel, not
just the first volume in a series. The story being told here has
a beginning, a middle, and an end. There are also clearly some
threads which will be picked up and used later in the series,
but they’re handled in a way which is entirely consistent with
GARDENS OF THE MOON having an independent existence. So even if
you’re the type of person who doesn’t want to pick up an
unfinished series, you might want to give GARDENS OF THE MOON a
try.
GRADE: B+
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