Gardens of the Moon (The Malazan Book of the Fallen, #1)
Author: Steven Erikson
Rating: â 5/5
Date Read: 2018/03/22
Pages: 666
I donât know why everyone talks about this book being so difficult to read.
Sure, Infinite Jest is challenging, with the massive amounts of footnotes and obscure references and esoteric vocabulary; I finished that book feeling like Iâve got all the eloquence of Ron Burgundy. Reading Ulysses sometimes feels like tossing the pieces to every puzzle you own together in a trash bag, mixing them around, getting really drunk, then trying to put all the puzzles together on your living room floor. Iâm convinced that Proust may have been in cahoots with a time traveler who slipped him an early version of a computer whose only working function was string concatenation.
Gardens of the Moon is more like watching The Usual Suspects, or Reservoir Dogs, or Twin Peaks: at the beginning, you have no idea whatâs going on, but if you just go with it the story will build itself around you and youâll feel smart because you figured it out.
To be fair, that kind of storytelling just doesnât appeal to everyone. Taking as evidence the inordinate amount of times Iâve been asked by a friend in a movie theater âwhatâs happening?â even though weâre both watching the movie for the first time and I also have no idea whatâs happening which is why Iâve decided to just keep watching, so please stop bothering me, some people have an easier time with uncertainty than others. If youâre cool with Naomi Watts being both Betty and Diane simultaneously, you might like Gardens of the Moon. If you think Bladerunner is better with the voiceover, then maybe this book isnât for you.
Actually, I was surprised to experience a cozy sense of nostalgia in being left in the dark. When I was little, a day off of school meant watching Days of Our Lives with my mom. I would watch the characters do all these things, with no information about their motivation and backstory. I would have to build my understanding by piecing together their actions. And, when I figured it out, it felt good. But I havenât had that experience in a long time. In the days of Netflix and Hulu and HBO Go, my default mode is to start from the very beginning, and shows rarely ask me to puzzle things out.
To come back to Gardens of the Moon, I think what appealed to me about this book was that alienation felt like a novel experience. And, I donât know why, but I liked it. So bring on the next nine books.