I give in!!

Sparks the Knave

Sparks the Knave

Him on Earth
Joined
Jun 28, 2006
Messages
77
okay okay, so it's taken me a while since the seed was planted in my head by the members of this site, but today I brought Gardens of the Moon. I guess theres no turning back now, shortly after this post I'll make a coffee, dim the lights and settle into a comfortable corner to begin my quest.

the Members of the site were more then right about A song of Ice and Fire which is my favorite series to date, so hopefully this series will be up thereabouts also.
 
ASoIaF is one of my favourite series, too, but after three attempts at GotM I still haven't gotten past a hundred pages. I'll be interested to see how you go...
 
Culhwch - GotM is easily the hardest (and shortest) of the entire series to get through (well, of the 4 that I've read so far). I think if you persevere you may find the next books worth the while. Of course, that is just my opinion.
 
Yes, Gardens of the Moon is quite difficult at first, what with all the name places and the multitude of characters all over the place. I really had to rely on the dramatis persona at the front of the book. And I'm on the second book (well, I was until course books intervened!) and I still get mixed up the different races and etc. But Gardens of the Moon was an excellent book, I was thoroughly enjoying it once I'd got my head around the epic scale of it all!
 
hurray!! Provided you don't get sacred of the fact that it can be confusing, like some people seen too, you should really enjoy it. The key is to agknowledge that some things won't be explained until ouch later in the series and just get on with it :)
 
well work and house inspections/valuations have gotten in the way somewhat, so I'm only at around page 75 but am about to continue on.

I must say while not all bad and in the books defence so far it has had some parts that I have really liked, it's not been the best start to a novel I've read (kinda bland and hasn't gripped me like many stories seem to be able to from the beginning and the characters are mostly hard to relate to/sympathize with in some ways at this point due to the lack of I guess detail. not necessarily however confusing, and this may all been a planned move by the author + I was warned about the first part of the book being slow going).
so far I've only really taken a liking to Paran, and I seem to find Tattersail annoying and boring though I can't justly say why.

With all this said, I plan to keep going with an open mind and wait for the hook to come, sometimes thats all it needs and previous annoyances may fall away quickly.
 
I'm still intending to give Erikson another shot. I have to say it wasn't any confusion on my part that drove me away, but rather just a lack of interest and a failure to engage on any level with the story or characters. Which is a shame because Erikson is clearly a gifted writer. I do come up against the 'persevere, it gets better' argument fairly regularly here, but honestly I do think this is a failing by the author. You shouldn't have to be promised better things to come to get you through the mire of the introductory book. I wonder if GotM was that little bit more accessible, just how much more popular Erikson would be...
 
I agree about that - if a book doesn't grab you, it's hard to justify reading another one. I thought Gardens was pretty good, nothing more, but it was a lack of anything else to read that made me read DhG.
 
yeah, i loved gotm too. It alternates with moi as my favorite in the series. But a lot of people seem to have problems with it.

I loved the way you're dumped into the middle of things and have to work it out as you go. It's not like a quest story where there's a nice easy place to start, certainly, so a certain amount of ambiguity is to be expected. I love it though.

On the other hand, at last count i'd read it at least 15 times, so i'm a bit disconnected to new erikson readers, possibly ;)
 
Well the good news is it's certainly getting better, which I am very glad of as I had already ordered Dead house gates haha.

I have to say though the start was pretty bland, the characters with the exception of Paran for me, were not engaging, their actions and thoughts thin and annoying (tattersail I still have a problem with, as she seems to be a main character I hope she can get her head into gear, stop dithering about like a cow). Complexity and Ambiguity weren't a problem, in fact I like that sort of thing as it builds up interest, If anything the gloss over of characters descriptions seemed to let things down. but as said, it seems to be getting better, so I'm fairly happy that I decided to keep going. It can't be everyones fav or second fav series for no reason and I think theres enough here to build on and keep getting better as I go :D
 
I didn't think it was overly complex, just a bit average. Too many clichés in there (big hounds of shadow, floating mountains, magic system based on a deck of cards, crazy puppet, etc).

The rest of the series got a lot more sophisticated/interesting - a result of the length of time between writing GotM and DhG, I think. A lot of the clichés I disliked in Gardens were given much more interesting or believable footings.
 
Green said:
I didn't think it was overly complex, just a bit average. Too many clichés in there (big hounds of shadow, floating mountains, magic system based on a deck of cards, crazy puppet, etc).
Click to expand...
Green, I'm not arguing your point but I'm curious to know of other epic fantasies that carry a magic system based on a deck of cards as well as a crazy puppet. I just don't recall running into these elements in other works. Now, I know that the Wild Cards series is out there but that was more a play on Wild than Cards and really didn't have a whole lot to do with cards - and that was the standard 52 card playing deck in any case, not the tarot. Crazy puppets I seem to recall have ocurred once or twice in some horror flicks but I'm not well-read enough in that genre to say whether it is cliche or not. I don't recall any that I've seen in epic fantasy - though again, It could be that I just haven't read the right books. Anyway, I'm not attacking your statement that these are cliched, I was just wondering where else you see these elements (they might be books I'd like to check out!).
 
Well, maybe not in specific fantasy books (or series), but definitely still clichés. Magic cards, Taroh, mad puppets/dolls/clowns, floating mountains, big bad hounds, young captain eager to prove himself... all these things appear in bloody hundreds of different books/films/comics/TV shows/whatever. Do these fantasy elements/themes have to be taken from a specific fantasy book (and all of them from the same book) to be a fantasy cliché? I don't think they do. Taroh cards have been done to death over the decades! And it's pretty clear that's what the DoD is based on :)

Nothing wrong with using old themes, as we all know, as long as they're done well, and from a fresh angle. These features of GotM left me feeling somewhat bored and unimpressed. I didn't think they were done in an interesting way; they felt cheap.

SPOILER for Midnight Tides (I think)

As for the floating mountains thing, as an example of how he improved on it (for me)... he took this concept of a magic floating mountain, and kind of gave it a reason for being. It was created by the K'Chain'chamaileliliesill using their magic. So he gave a bunch of dinosaurs a mastery of physics and gravity, all wrapped up in magic clothes. Now that I thought was interesting :)
 
Last edited:
Green said:
K'Chain'chamaileliliesill
Click to expand...

Tell me that's an exageration, or I'm afraid I won't be revisiting Erikson.

I have to say, the whole floating mountain thing did me in too. Come on, a floating mountain? I'll believe in some weird stuff, but that's a bit much. But having said that, I've never been a big one for magic-heavy books.
 
Culhwch said:
I'm still intending to give Erikson another shot. I have to say it wasn't any confusion on my part that drove me away, but rather just a lack of interest and a failure to engage on any level with the story or characters. Which is a shame because Erikson is clearly a gifted writer. I do come up against the 'persevere, it gets better' argument fairly regularly here, but honestly I do think this is a failing by the author. You shouldn't have to be promised better things to come to get you through the mire of the introductory book. I wonder if GotM was that little bit more accessible, just how much more popular Erikson would be...
Click to expand...
I'm with you, except on the confusion part. I was confused by the too many characters and whatnot, and I stopped reading about 2/3 of the way through. It just bogged me down and I couldn't get past it.

I also don't like the "persevere, it gets better" argument. It should grab and hold from the beginning, and this one doesn't entirely do it for me, either. I persevered for as long as I did simply because we bought the first five books in the series, and I'm cheap - hate a waste of money. Luckily, now dh is reading them, and he's loving them - but he's also got a mind like a steel trap and can keep the details straight, which I can't.

Culhwch said:
Tell me that's an exageration, or I'm afraid I won't be revisiting Erikson.
Click to expand...
Seriously, no kidding. That was another of my complaints - too many confusing nonsensical names that, quite frankly, I have a difficult time slotting into my memory in such a way that I can create order out of it.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one. Dh loves the books so much that I was starting to get a complex. :p
 
Was it a floating 'mountain'? Are there not similar things in Science Fiction? :confused:
Personally, I didn't think it was strange at all.

As to the many nonsensical names, it might have been easier for some readers (me!) if Erikson had not introduced most of them at the start of the book. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top