I know I’m not the most prolific writer on here, but things happen. So, I’m giving you guys a two-for-one review and it’s the first two books of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson.
I bought Gardens of the Moon 23 years ago because it sounded amazing and the cover looked nice. It’s been sitting on my shelf unread until a few months ago. After reading it and then the sequel I had to talk about it.
The Malazan series takes place across several continents, either conquered by or under attack by the Malazan empire. There are a TON of characters (each book has about 90 characters) that do..stuff. Mostly complain about their roles in the war but do nothing about their situation and stuff happens.
Excuse me for being vague here, but it’s hard to know what’s happening in both books because the writing is so SHIT! Yes, I said it, it’s shit. Erikson does NOTHING to explain ANYTHING! Hell, he has a bunch of races that are only described as “an elder race.” THAT TELLS ME NOTHING, ERIKSON! I had to use the Fandom to figure anything out and from what I read Erikson could have EASILY explained in ONE SENTENCE!
Both books have one gripe I have with many fantasy books: it takes about four hundred pages for anything to happen and what happens is a letdown. Yes, I understand buildup is important, but if what you’re building up to is underwhelming, you’ve wasted your reader’s time.
Only one word can describe the characters: BORING! Except for one character, Kruppe, they all come off as the same character. Even the four females we see in the books, Tattersail, Apsalar, Lady Simtal and Felesin come off as the same character but with a different name. There’s ZERO character development or personality to the point where I did not care about any of these characters. Even when a character died horribly, I couldn’t bring myself to care. Kruppe was just annoying. He’s like a human version of those annoying manga/anime animal mascot characters who say their names instead of I. I seriously wanted to see him dead because he annoyed me to no end.
As far as having a huge cast, yes, there are a lot of characters but only, like, ten characters are important to the plot in any way.
I admit, I only read Gardens in its entirety. Gates I read about 260 pages before I violently tossed it against the wall in pure rage because I was so bored with it. So I got what happened by reading the plot summary and, yeah, NOTHING HAPPENS! Gates is going back to the library; Gardens is going into a donation bin and I’m done with the series.
I know there are Malazan fans who say I must read the first three books to appreciate the series. No, there’s nothing that’ll make me appreciate these books since all they did was bore me to tears. I am not reading past this book. Hell, there are people who have read past Gates and have said they hated the series.
In all, I gave Malazan a chance and hated it. The characters were all boring, the writing bored me to tears and I don’t like having to plod thru 400 pages for something to happen. Terry Pratchett, my favorite writer, and author of the Discworld books, can explain everything, tell a brilliant story and make you believe the characters are actually real-life, complicated people in just 3oo pages. As with Jojo and anime, Discworld makes most fantasy books look like shit.
Categories: Novels
Tags: malazan book of the fallen, novels, reviews, Steven Erikson
Sanrock Reviews 