"There is no point beginning something without ambition." So begins the preface Gardens of the Moon. I will grant him the ambition and even admire the quixotic notions he espouses in the preface. Every writer needs an element of it, for them to believe that their story is worth being read.

And hoo boy is this book ambitious. So many places and characters and gods and things unexplained, or a lot of things explained that don't pertain to the usual elements: magic is understood situationally (Warrens are both a source of magic and realm which has denizens, but there are costs to using them among other things); characters don't always say what they mean; allegiances are hard to parse; characters have mysterious unexplained backstories, the full weight of which is hard to parse, especially so early into the series. This frustrates and intrigues me. It's hard to describe the book and what it's about because it's a constantly layered labyrinth of plot. This world is huge and the players are not all what they seem, even the gods are not what they seem.

I adored the worldbuilding and scope, felt the prose was often awkward, and the dialogue was mostly bad--elliptical, unnatural, and just plain odd. Characters often repeating their interlocutors' names again and again. Reading it aloud felt very unusual. The prose could get wordy and overcomplicate action and sometimes stymie clarity. I am all for bucking trends and allowing us to figure out what happens in the narrative. I respect it, even if I believe Erikson's skill does not match his ambition just yet, but when it comes to what characters are doing moment to moment, I need to clearly understand this. There were points where I could see a lot of the problems that early career writers make: to explain in precise detail actions, like which hand stabs which other hand, where the action called for something punchier (and less precise).

It's not all bad. There is a high level of coolness factor (Anonmander Rake and the Moon's Spawn, Dragnipur, Warren travel and Ascendants) but soured by awkwardness. The pacing for me was off as well. It was a slow burn throughout, which normally be fine if I felt like the characters and plot were making meaningful strides forwards. In the last third there is a lot of discussion about where they were going but no actual movement.

And good heavens, there were too many perspective characters. There are some scenes like the assassins on the rooftop where this constant hopping helped create tension and understand motivation and other time it slowed down everything entirely. In a lot of ways, it is emblematic of the problems of fantasy of this era: having the explosive finish with lots of build-up. But I wanted more juice throughout.

It was a damn good ride though.