Memories of Ice
Regularly ranked the finest single Malazan novel and one of epic fantasy's summit achievements: the book that converts the series' difficulty into earned, cumulative force.
Book Entry · Fantasy
Gardens of the Moon
by Steven Erikson · 1999 · Malazan Book of the Fallen, book 1
What is Gardens of the Moon about?
The Malazan Empire's siege of Pale opens with a mage-cadre annihilated from the sky and the floating fortress of Moon's Spawn withdrawing to Darujhistan, next city on the Empress's list — and that sentence is roughly as much orientation as Erikson provides. Sergeant Whiskeyjack's Bridgeburners, the possessed recruit Sorry, the Adjunct, the alchemist Baruk's cabal, Anomander Rake (Son of Darkness, dragon, owner of a soul-drinking sword that makes Stormbringer look like a letter-opener) and the gods — actively cheating — converge on the city in a structure that trusts the reader absolutely. Thousands of pages of payoff stand behind every unexplained term; the entry fee is this book, paid in full attention.
Why it matters
The most famous deep-end opening in fantasy and the launch of the genre's most ambitious completed epic: the ten-volume Book of the Fallen, delivered at a book a year, redefined what scale and difficulty a mainstream series could sustain.
Where does it sit in the series?
Ten volumes, three continents, three hundred millennia of buried history and a cast of thousands: Erikson's archaeological epic of empire, gods and compassion among the fallen.
In the Guide from Malazan Book of the Fallen:
- Gardens of the Moon (1999)
- Memories of Ice (2001)
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