 So, Gardens of the Moon. I just finished it. It is the first in the Malazan series. It was recommended to me by a lot of people. And I gotta say that the actual story itself and the concept is pretty good, I think. And I think the execution of it is okay, but it really shits the bed in terms of presentation. That really drags the entire thing down. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. So, the plot to this is pretty simple, actually. There's just an empire called the Malazan Empire, which is currently in the process of subjugating and conquering a bunch of its neighbors. And this follows some of the people that are conquering them. And, you know, there's some more stuff to it. There's some, you know, backstabbing conspiracies, other plans, all that. You know, the stuff you expect in an epic fantasy, but that is the gist of it. Like I said, the actual story itself is pretty good. You know, it's just... And I will say that the climax I actually really enjoyed. But, okay, I want to talk about the execution, then I'll get to the presentation. So, the execution of it, like I said, is okay. But the issue is that there are way too many characters in this. Because, like, remember how when I reviewed the Red Knight, I said that that one was trying to feel like an epic fantasy without actually being an epic fantasy? This one kind of has the same problem, but only in terms of characters. Because it feels like the author was saying, Okay, well, I have this big epic story, which means I have to throw in a whole bunch of different characters. And this copy of the book that I have has a four-page-long appendix, which has all their names and brief descriptions of them. Which, I'm sorry, that's just a little bit too much to keep track of, because most of them blend together a lot. Like, very few of them have any real personality or any real detail about them. And a lot of the scenes where they're first introduced just start with, He walks down the street, he turned the corner, and so for a little while I didn't even know who it was. And so, well, yeah, I think that this book could probably have cut the number of characters in half, or, hell, they could have cut out more than half of these, honestly, because a lot of them, again, they just don't have that much personality or anything to them. And you could just take the same stuff that they did, and, well, no, you just take the stuff that they did and have some of the more major characters do it. And another big issue with that is that not only is it hard to keep track of, but, I mean, without detail, I was having trouble getting attached to the main main characters, which there are a couple. And the thing is, I kind of liked them. I kind of wanted to like them more, but there just wasn't enough to them. Like, the closest thing to a protagonist we have is this guy named Paran, or Paran, Paran, I don't know, something like that. And he seems like a decent guy actually, and I kind of liked how in the prologue we see him as a kid, and then we see him years later, he's much more disgruntled. I don't know, he's, you know, he's older, more world weary, and we kind of see how he got to that point, and we see how he changes from there. Like, I did like that, but we didn't spend nearly enough time with him, so I could never get that attached to him. Same with some of the other characters like Whiskey Jack and Tattersail, you know? Like, I kind of liked these guys, and I think if we had spent more time with them, then I would have really liked them. And I did like the world that this took place in. That was something a lot of people were telling me about, was, oh, it's a very deep, rich setting, and while I will agree that, yes, it is a deep, rich setting, and it has a lot of neat aspects to it, I don't like the way it was presented to us, because, like, I know this is the first book in a series, but in a lot of ways it feels like it was a book that I just picked out of the middle of a series and started reading, because it starts talking about all these different places, and all these different races, and groups of people, and the history of the world, and it doesn't really explain it all that much, except at a couple of points, so I feel like I'm just playing catch-up the whole time. And, well, I mean, that's no fun. You know, that's actually worse than exposition dumping. I would rather just have characters have long dialogue stretches where they explain shit to each other than this, because at least then I'd know what's going on. Speaking of long dialogue stretches, that is what a pretty substantial portion of this book consists of, because, I mean, there are points where they're actually doing stuff, you know, there's points where, oh, okay, I'm gonna go steal this thing, or there's a couple of fights, and like I said, the climax is pretty good, but there are a lot of points... There's a lot of this book where they're just standing around talking, and sometimes it's the more minor characters as well, so I don't even really know who they are, and they're just talking and expositing towards each other, and not expositing about the world, expositing about, like, oh, okay, here's what I'm doing, here's my plan, or here's what happened over there, or here's what was going on, it's just... it gets boring. I don't like using the B word too often, but yes, it gets really boring a lot. And I think that's another thing where the author was trying to go for, you know, an epic feel, and so he did that by having all these complex plans that were woven into one another, but at the end of the day, it just makes this really confusing and hard to follow. Like, I will say the timeline isn't too bad, you know, like a lot of books like this, they'll jump back and forth in the timeline, or a lot of stories like this rather, which makes it hard to keep track of what's going on or what order things are going in, so I'll give it credit for not doing that. But, I mean, the plans and what was going on was just... I could not keep track. Like, I think I was around 350 pages in, and I just stopped for a moment and realized, I don't know what the hell's going on, you know, I'm just watching these characters who I don't really understand talk to each other about plans with other characters, and I don't really remember who those other people are or exactly what they're up to, and I don't quite understand the world all that much, and, okay, now they're talking about magic, and they do some stuff with the magic system, they explain that somewhat, but not all that much, so I can't really keep track of that either, and it's, I mean, it's a mess. And part of the reason for that as well is, again, this is the presentation, is the prose, the way it's actually written. It's dry, man. It's dry. Like, well, I was about to say I never had trouble keeping track of what's going on, but no, I did. I did have a lot of trouble keeping track of what was going on, and all the characters, like I said, a lot of this is dialogue, and all the characters talk very much the same. You know, like, there aren't any characters who, okay, this guy swears a lot, so when his dialogue comes up, it's easier to see, or this guy has a weird accent, so it's easy to see when he's talking, like, no, they all talk exactly the same. And it's also done in that weird style that fantasy authors like to do a lot, where the characters are talking in this, like, pseudo-Shakesperian type talk that no one actually does, and I mean, listen, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. I personally am not a fan of it, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it, but when it takes up 80% of your book, and every character does it like that, then I just don't know what's happening. And it wasn't until the last quarter or the last third of the book that I was able to get a more solid grasp on what was going on, but I'm not going to lie. I actually went online and looked over a plot summary of this book to make sure that I understood everything before going into this, and while I did have a pretty good grasp of it, I did understand most of it, I'm sure that a lot of the smaller details slipped through my fingers. Now, all of those are legitimate problems. I'm not going to say that they aren't. However, I do want to say that part of the issue that I didn't enjoy this book all that much was just the circumstances in which I read it. And what I mean by that is that these types of stories take a lot of mental energy to get through, at least for me, you know, because you're stepping into a new world, you have to learn all this new stuff, you have to keep track of all this new stuff, so it takes mental energy, you know? And I've been reading a lot of fantasy lately, not even lately, I've been reading a lot of fantasy for a very long time, and so over the years, it's been taking more and more energy from me. And in addition to that, I just have other stuff going on in my life, which is also taking up my time and my energy, and so for a lot of this book, when I went to get to reading it, it felt like a job. I didn't feel like, oh, I'm doing this because I enjoy it. It felt like, oh, I gotta do this again. And so, yeah, I will admit that had I read this at a different point in my life, I probably would have enjoyed it more, because like I said, there's a lot to like here. I think the overall plot is pretty good. I think some of the characters are decent, even if we don't spend enough time with them to really get attached to them. I think that the world is really fascinating, like the author apparently is an anthropologist and an archeologist, or he was before he wrote this, and yeah, I can tell. He definitely has a grasp on how societies work, and he has a grasp of, you know, just little things, like how the magic works and how certain races are transitioning from being nomadic to being sedentary and how there's different types of power plays within the empire. He clearly understands how this sort of thing works, so yeah, that is really cool, and I just, I couldn't summon the energy to care. And so what I'm saying after all that is that I will definitely be taking a short break from this type of story. Like I was originally going to read the Honor Harrington series after this, but I mean, that's another thing that would probably just take a lot of time and energy, so for a little while I don't see it lasting too long, like I'm thinking a month or two. I'm just going to be sticking to reading much simpler stuff, you know, much simpler stories that are easier to get through, easier to digest, and I mean, I'll still be releasing all my scripted videos and stuff, don't get me wrong. It's just, for review purposes, I will be deviating from the to read list, which I am sorry about, but you know, I just, I can't summon energy to care about this type of thing at the moment, and so I just got to give myself some time to recharge. Anyways, thanks for watching, thanks to all my patrons, including Christopher Hawkins, Des Brennan, Joseph Pendergraft, and all the other people you see on screen here. Please donate and subscribe. Bye.