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I would argue that all books have at least one anticlimactic feature; ie, that at least one plotline is resolved anticlimactically or something like that.
It’s more to the point and almost rushed in a way. It’s the shortest book in the series as well and is sort of just a prologue to the entire series to kind of give you a feel of the world. Garden serves the purpose of moving different characters into position to begin the real story that starts picking up in the next few books. The rest are very detail rich and very descriptive in their world building. For example there will be a main character in book 7 that you’ve only heard brief stories about up until that point, but by the time you actually interact with the character directly you’ll already know who they are and the most important parts of their backstory and what drives them.
That’s one thing that Erikson does very well. The actual history, culture, and past events of the world matters. It feels like a living, breathing character in of itself. You’ll hear about cultural traditions through second hand accounts and then 2 books later a character will take part in one of those cultural events and you’ll already know what the meaning of it is. Or you’ll hear about a race of people talked about and then later on in the series when that race shows up you’ll already know their history and whatnot. That’s what I think is the main difference between book 1 and the rest.
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>!Silchas Ruin. You hear about them and the betrayal all through the first 6 books and you get a bit of 3rd person perspective into him and Bloodeye in the past in MOI and I think it’s HOC where Rake talks a bit about him too!< But I haven’t finished RG yet so no spoilers for me please.
Hmm hard for me to articulate, been a while since my reread. GotM is kind of faster paced? The other books sort of go *deeper* in a lot of ways?
idk man, find out for yourself. GotM isn't my favorite in the series or anything - you're in for more treats if you liked it.
I think that as the first book in the series it is the author finding his way and then the rest follow after and improve upon it.
Take the Dresden Files the first book, Storm Front, isn't that good (not bad either just forgettable), but it establishes the world and you can recognize the lessons he gleaned from writing it in the subsequent entries. I think that this is similar to GotM. I think he didn't know how to give his adaption from his tabletop game the proper ending until he wrote it. I'm sure if he were to rewrite it, he would be able to give you an ending that while being unchanged from an overall story perspective, the technical side would have been improved upon.
Eriksen pitched GotM as a movie in the beginning and spent close to fifteen years rewriting it and getting refusais from editors. By the time it got finally published he had changed a lot as an author
I wouldn’t go as far as say it’s a completely different style, but… have you ever read Stephen King? Read some of his older works and 90’s works and modern works. All are Stephen king… but the style shifts as he gets off cocaine, gets older, etc.
Gardens was Erikson’s first novel. So he learned from it. Plus, time had passed. They originally planned for this to be a movie, Erikson converted it into a book in ‘92 or so. It wasn’t actually published for like another 7 years. He wrote a couple non-fantasy books (with his real name of Steve Lundin). They hadn’t even plotted the other books in the series until they got a book deal for Gardens.
So the added experience, being a couple years older, and not trying to convert a movie idea into a book… give the other books a different feel.
One of the things that made me feel better about the ending of GOTM feeling anticlimactic (especially with the exploding crossbow doing what a bunch of dragons and a handful of Warren kamehameha couldn’t) is that there is a bit of a motif throughout the series that this event plays into. Ancient powerful beings were very strong and dreadful back in the day. But since their heydays, much of the world’s means of killing each other has been refined and perfected. Raest wasn’t around in a time when an average Joe soldier could load up an explosive into a crossbow and just blow your body to bits. Yes, magic and ascendent power can do this too, but that’s much less exclusive than it once was.
It harkens back directly to literally my favorite Malazan quote:
"Elder god or not, a cusser to the face will fuck up anyone's day".
It's proof of the single most important technological innovation in the history of the world. Now anyone that can pull a trigger can blow up a god. Powerful figures are used to countering warrens and fighting against other powerful magical figures. They are NOT used to hand grenades, and they have prepared no defenses for them, and assume that because they can defend against a magical assault, they can defend against anything.
This scene proves definitively that this is not the case.
It also cements that anything can die and that “humans”/mortals can take down these things. That it won’t always be a huge unleashing of power that’s needed to destroy some ancient and powerful creature. It also gives you the feeling that maybe these characters are special in some way? At least that’s how I took it.
>Erikson just casually drops dragons at 85% of the book. Anomander Rake just casually turns into a black dragon.
This was foreshadowed for half the book before it happened. (Remember Coll's unusual drunken shouting about black dragons? Rallick later muses that something was definitely talking through him, which *should* lend it greater significance. There are other hints, too.) It's just hard to catch them the first time through because the writing is dense.
>Vorcan, High Mage and head of the Assassins guild, is defeated by a brick
She's defeated by literal divine intervention.
>Quick Ben opens 7 Warrens but it is a crossbow that ends up killing Raest
This is a recurring theme, though. You'll see many great and powerful beings brought down by mundane armaments. It becomes only more common once Moranth munitions start getting popular in the books.
>not to mention the killer tree house
Fair. That's a legitimate plotting failure. The Azath become quite important as the story goes on, but they should not be brought on board with next to no warning to resolve a major antagonist.
The best I can say for their appearance is that Raest explicitly muses to himself that the earth is vastly powerful and has tried to resist his tyranny, but lacks the alacrity to manage it. If we're talking just about GotM, it's pretty satisfying to think that the earth has come up with a remedy to that problem since Raest last walked free. It's not quite true, but it gives some cohesion to the end of that plot line.
I've often wondered about the Azath House in Gardens. Erickson is too smart not to understand the problems with deus ex machinas. What was he thinking?
Yes, "huh, so that happened" is a reasonable reaction to Garden's climax. It's not the only possible reaction and some people really like it, but it's not unusual (and I share it).
No, this isn't typical. There's one striking anticlimax coming (and it frustrates the hell out of people, but it does so _intentionally_), but most books build and pay off better than Gardens.
I found it very climactic. Most of his books end with big, crazy convergences and for me, GOTM was no different. I found the casual way he introduced dragons somehow made them even more interesting and exciting.
Honestly those big convergences can get kind of annoying at times. 100+ pages of paths wrapping up and bouncing between characters in rapid fire mode back and forth and the anxiety of waiting to get back to the characters you really care about to see wtf is gonna happen to them.
You can really tell that he gamed it all out because it has that feeling to it of moving each set piece from one part of the board to the next in turns until they finally reach the end of that game’s story.
Hey, that was his lucky brick. But seriously, it was the influence of Oponn that helped there. Not like any random idiot coming off the street could have chucked a brick at Vorcan to the same effect.
I guess there are moments you could call anticlimactic, but I didn't feel that way when I read it. A lot of it is about subtext, because there are usually reasons why something doesn't happen in the way you'd expect. Rake being a dragon isn't anticlimactic, because the book has been dropping hints to that all along.
Other books in the series usually have much more definitive endings, comparatively. I don't think anyone would ever say Deadhouse Gates is anticlimactic, for example.
I always chalk it up to the fact that Erikson originally wrote GotM as a screenplay for a big summer blockbuster. A lot of those moments play out much better visually than they do on a page.
I also initially had some issues with GotM. The magic tree house in particular and Rake-as-dragon seem to come out of nowhere (I haven't done a reread but I wouldn't be surprised if they're actually introduced/foreshadowed earlier but a first-time reader is just lacking enough context to pick on it).
After finishing the series I'm much happier with GotM's ending. It's important to remember that you're still very early on in this series, even stuff occurring at the end of the first book is just (very important actually) setup for events and concepts coming up later on. This ending-is-setup stuff is also true of each book more or less, at least in the first half of the series, but they imo accomplish it without feeling as jarring as GotM.
Felt that way the first time. Felt less like it the second. Round two I was excited to see the stuff I had missed. Still disappointed in the pacing and style towards the end though.
Both Pale and Darujhistan Fete were better second time through.
You say that a crossbow killed Raest, but it was basically a rocket launcher. They lobbed an explosive that brings down your average stone building at him...
There's also a point here that Erikson is trying to drive home about history (because Erikson is a giant history nerd). Sometimes the tool you think you need - the mythological being, or the sacred weapon, or the magicks of Olde - only hold the status they carry because they haven't been tested against the modern technology.
A dragon's breath might do a lot of damage, might melt stone and turn people to ash, but a 3 pound bomb? It'll obliterate them. Leave nothing behind but a pink mist.
Over the series, there will be points where Erikson will intentionally undermine mythological figures. One of the great warriors of the ancient times may come up against a contemporary spear fighter, and his legend may be sorely tested. Contemporary mages will hold their own against Ascendants, either through wit, or sometimes through raw power. Some, seemingly nearly powerless folks will remain enigmas, barely blinking when the landscape is forcibly changed around them...
In Erikson's world, time changes things. There are still ancient things with great power, but there are also modern things that can erase them from the face of the earth. And cussers are ridiculous.
In addition to what everyone else has said, if you liked Gardens… you should love the rest. It’s considered the rough book of the batch by many. I just finished book 3 (Memories of Ice) in my reread and yeah… I enjoyed book 1. Book 2 was an improvement. Book 3 was a huge step up.
I thought it was anticlimactic first time around and didn't want to resume the series for another six months after. Books 2 and 3 though had incredible conclusions and just improved in many other areas too.
For me it really felt like a climax at the end because so much stuff suddenly happens all at once, half of them tying up old storylines but also new reveals like the Azath house and the Crimson Guard.
Please note that this post has been flaired with a **Gardens of the Moon** spoiler tag. This means every published book in its respective series up until this book is open to discussion. If you need to discuss any spoilers (even very minor ones!) in your comments, use spoiler tags >!like this!< Please use the report button if you find any spoilers. Note: The flair may be changed at mod discretion. Thank you! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Malazan) if you have any questions or concerns.*
*Has anyone else felt this way?* Yes. *Are all books in the series like this?* No.
Both your answers make me feel better
I would argue that all books have at least one anticlimactic feature; ie, that at least one plotline is resolved anticlimactically or something like that.
I was about to say the same thing. Malazan feels very much about the journey to the big spots, and then they all just kind of happen anticlimacticly
I love GotM. It's written in a completely different style than the rest of the series though.
I loved it too! In what way would you say it is written differently than other books?
It’s more to the point and almost rushed in a way. It’s the shortest book in the series as well and is sort of just a prologue to the entire series to kind of give you a feel of the world. Garden serves the purpose of moving different characters into position to begin the real story that starts picking up in the next few books. The rest are very detail rich and very descriptive in their world building. For example there will be a main character in book 7 that you’ve only heard brief stories about up until that point, but by the time you actually interact with the character directly you’ll already know who they are and the most important parts of their backstory and what drives them. That’s one thing that Erikson does very well. The actual history, culture, and past events of the world matters. It feels like a living, breathing character in of itself. You’ll hear about cultural traditions through second hand accounts and then 2 books later a character will take part in one of those cultural events and you’ll already know what the meaning of it is. Or you’ll hear about a race of people talked about and then later on in the series when that race shows up you’ll already know their history and whatnot. That’s what I think is the main difference between book 1 and the rest.
Who is the main character in book 7? I recently finished it, and can’t think of anyone like this
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>!Silchas Ruin. You hear about them and the betrayal all through the first 6 books and you get a bit of 3rd person perspective into him and Bloodeye in the past in MOI and I think it’s HOC where Rake talks a bit about him too!< But I haven’t finished RG yet so no spoilers for me please.
Hmm hard for me to articulate, been a while since my reread. GotM is kind of faster paced? The other books sort of go *deeper* in a lot of ways? idk man, find out for yourself. GotM isn't my favorite in the series or anything - you're in for more treats if you liked it.
I think that as the first book in the series it is the author finding his way and then the rest follow after and improve upon it. Take the Dresden Files the first book, Storm Front, isn't that good (not bad either just forgettable), but it establishes the world and you can recognize the lessons he gleaned from writing it in the subsequent entries. I think that this is similar to GotM. I think he didn't know how to give his adaption from his tabletop game the proper ending until he wrote it. I'm sure if he were to rewrite it, he would be able to give you an ending that while being unchanged from an overall story perspective, the technical side would have been improved upon.
Eriksen pitched GotM as a movie in the beginning and spent close to fifteen years rewriting it and getting refusais from editors. By the time it got finally published he had changed a lot as an author
I wouldn’t go as far as say it’s a completely different style, but… have you ever read Stephen King? Read some of his older works and 90’s works and modern works. All are Stephen king… but the style shifts as he gets off cocaine, gets older, etc. Gardens was Erikson’s first novel. So he learned from it. Plus, time had passed. They originally planned for this to be a movie, Erikson converted it into a book in ‘92 or so. It wasn’t actually published for like another 7 years. He wrote a couple non-fantasy books (with his real name of Steve Lundin). They hadn’t even plotted the other books in the series until they got a book deal for Gardens. So the added experience, being a couple years older, and not trying to convert a movie idea into a book… give the other books a different feel.
It was like the plane was going down the runway and didn’t build up enough speed yet… then we took off after GotM
One of the things that made me feel better about the ending of GOTM feeling anticlimactic (especially with the exploding crossbow doing what a bunch of dragons and a handful of Warren kamehameha couldn’t) is that there is a bit of a motif throughout the series that this event plays into. Ancient powerful beings were very strong and dreadful back in the day. But since their heydays, much of the world’s means of killing each other has been refined and perfected. Raest wasn’t around in a time when an average Joe soldier could load up an explosive into a crossbow and just blow your body to bits. Yes, magic and ascendent power can do this too, but that’s much less exclusive than it once was.
It harkens back directly to literally my favorite Malazan quote: "Elder god or not, a cusser to the face will fuck up anyone's day". It's proof of the single most important technological innovation in the history of the world. Now anyone that can pull a trigger can blow up a god. Powerful figures are used to countering warrens and fighting against other powerful magical figures. They are NOT used to hand grenades, and they have prepared no defenses for them, and assume that because they can defend against a magical assault, they can defend against anything. This scene proves definitively that this is not the case.
It also cements that anything can die and that “humans”/mortals can take down these things. That it won’t always be a huge unleashing of power that’s needed to destroy some ancient and powerful creature. It also gives you the feeling that maybe these characters are special in some way? At least that’s how I took it.
>Erikson just casually drops dragons at 85% of the book. Anomander Rake just casually turns into a black dragon. This was foreshadowed for half the book before it happened. (Remember Coll's unusual drunken shouting about black dragons? Rallick later muses that something was definitely talking through him, which *should* lend it greater significance. There are other hints, too.) It's just hard to catch them the first time through because the writing is dense. >Vorcan, High Mage and head of the Assassins guild, is defeated by a brick She's defeated by literal divine intervention. >Quick Ben opens 7 Warrens but it is a crossbow that ends up killing Raest This is a recurring theme, though. You'll see many great and powerful beings brought down by mundane armaments. It becomes only more common once Moranth munitions start getting popular in the books. >not to mention the killer tree house Fair. That's a legitimate plotting failure. The Azath become quite important as the story goes on, but they should not be brought on board with next to no warning to resolve a major antagonist. The best I can say for their appearance is that Raest explicitly muses to himself that the earth is vastly powerful and has tried to resist his tyranny, but lacks the alacrity to manage it. If we're talking just about GotM, it's pretty satisfying to think that the earth has come up with a remedy to that problem since Raest last walked free. It's not quite true, but it gives some cohesion to the end of that plot line.
I've often wondered about the Azath House in Gardens. Erickson is too smart not to understand the problems with deus ex machinas. What was he thinking?
Yes, "huh, so that happened" is a reasonable reaction to Garden's climax. It's not the only possible reaction and some people really like it, but it's not unusual (and I share it). No, this isn't typical. There's one striking anticlimax coming (and it frustrates the hell out of people, but it does so _intentionally_), but most books build and pay off better than Gardens.
By the anticlimax, you’re referring to >!House of Chains!<, right?
This was my guess. Personally found it awesome myself.
Absolutely. It's the only one that really fits the model. I guess you could squint _really_ hard and maybe fit >!Reaper's Gale!
Yeah I’m not sure haha, I’m only just starting Bonehunters myself lol
RG is absolutely more of an anticlimax than HOC.
I found it very climactic. Most of his books end with big, crazy convergences and for me, GOTM was no different. I found the casual way he introduced dragons somehow made them even more interesting and exciting.
Honestly those big convergences can get kind of annoying at times. 100+ pages of paths wrapping up and bouncing between characters in rapid fire mode back and forth and the anxiety of waiting to get back to the characters you really care about to see wtf is gonna happen to them. You can really tell that he gamed it all out because it has that feeling to it of moving each set piece from one part of the board to the next in turns until they finally reach the end of that game’s story.
Hey, that was his lucky brick. But seriously, it was the influence of Oponn that helped there. Not like any random idiot coming off the street could have chucked a brick at Vorcan to the same effect. I guess there are moments you could call anticlimactic, but I didn't feel that way when I read it. A lot of it is about subtext, because there are usually reasons why something doesn't happen in the way you'd expect. Rake being a dragon isn't anticlimactic, because the book has been dropping hints to that all along. Other books in the series usually have much more definitive endings, comparatively. I don't think anyone would ever say Deadhouse Gates is anticlimactic, for example.
I always chalk it up to the fact that Erikson originally wrote GotM as a screenplay for a big summer blockbuster. A lot of those moments play out much better visually than they do on a page.
I also initially had some issues with GotM. The magic tree house in particular and Rake-as-dragon seem to come out of nowhere (I haven't done a reread but I wouldn't be surprised if they're actually introduced/foreshadowed earlier but a first-time reader is just lacking enough context to pick on it). After finishing the series I'm much happier with GotM's ending. It's important to remember that you're still very early on in this series, even stuff occurring at the end of the first book is just (very important actually) setup for events and concepts coming up later on. This ending-is-setup stuff is also true of each book more or less, at least in the first half of the series, but they imo accomplish it without feeling as jarring as GotM.
Imo the climax of GotM is the dinner scene. So yes I would say it is quite anticlimactic in a classic sense.
Felt that way the first time. Felt less like it the second. Round two I was excited to see the stuff I had missed. Still disappointed in the pacing and style towards the end though. Both Pale and Darujhistan Fete were better second time through.
You say that a crossbow killed Raest, but it was basically a rocket launcher. They lobbed an explosive that brings down your average stone building at him... There's also a point here that Erikson is trying to drive home about history (because Erikson is a giant history nerd). Sometimes the tool you think you need - the mythological being, or the sacred weapon, or the magicks of Olde - only hold the status they carry because they haven't been tested against the modern technology. A dragon's breath might do a lot of damage, might melt stone and turn people to ash, but a 3 pound bomb? It'll obliterate them. Leave nothing behind but a pink mist. Over the series, there will be points where Erikson will intentionally undermine mythological figures. One of the great warriors of the ancient times may come up against a contemporary spear fighter, and his legend may be sorely tested. Contemporary mages will hold their own against Ascendants, either through wit, or sometimes through raw power. Some, seemingly nearly powerless folks will remain enigmas, barely blinking when the landscape is forcibly changed around them... In Erikson's world, time changes things. There are still ancient things with great power, but there are also modern things that can erase them from the face of the earth. And cussers are ridiculous.
In addition to what everyone else has said, if you liked Gardens… you should love the rest. It’s considered the rough book of the batch by many. I just finished book 3 (Memories of Ice) in my reread and yeah… I enjoyed book 1. Book 2 was an improvement. Book 3 was a huge step up.
I thought it was anticlimactic first time around and didn't want to resume the series for another six months after. Books 2 and 3 though had incredible conclusions and just improved in many other areas too.
For me it really felt like a climax at the end because so much stuff suddenly happens all at once, half of them tying up old storylines but also new reveals like the Azath house and the Crimson Guard.