Gardens of the Moon: The Malazan Book of the Fallen, Book 1

This is a stunningly powerful epic that can both capture and entrance you. Words like stirring, captivating, engaging, and memorable come to mind. This wonderful work has rich and complex storylines, characters, and descriptions. Consider the complexity of The Lord Of The Rings. Take it up a few notches, and you might be there when it comes to the Gardens of the Moon. Seriously. And this is only the first in the series!

AND. It's woven together well by Eirkson. Some authors get lost in their own work, and lead you, the listener, down literary dead ends. Erikson avoids this entirely and naturally, which is an extreme accomplishment.

Now, don't get discouraged by the attention needed and demanded by Erikson - Again, this is an AWESOME listen. VERY rewarding and exciting. However, you will need your undivided attention steadfastly focused on every single word.

I cannot stress this enough. Do NOT expect to follow everything if you listen to this while you drive a car or any other vehicle.

Don't miss out on one of the most anticipated and satisfying fantasy audiobook listens to come to Audible this season.

This is a great start to what I hear is an amazing series. With all 10 of the books having been out for some time now, I was hoping to dive headlong into them. But, alaas, all I can get my hands on is Book 1. Please hurry and get the rest of the series uploaded to you site so I can buy them and give you a bunch of money :) Thank you.

This book is the tip of the iceberg, the story keeps at this pace, and gets exponentially more intense and engaging. Erikson's writing style is macabre and poetic, so it can be hard to follow. His characters are all extraordinarily dynamic. It's easy to find yourself rooting for all sides. There is very little black and white in Erikson's novels, the drive behind the plot line is fueled by realistic human interests, and power struggles. In the Malazan series, it makes for a more believable, intricate plot-line.

I didn't have trouble following the story, because I've read them, but a long time ago. It was like taking a friend to a movie, when they've read the book. I kept getting flashes of 'Oh hell yeah! I forgot THAT happened!' I was waiting years for this to be released in audio!

Some parts might feel detached from the main story, like the back history of the jaggat, or the astrology clock, but it will become more relevant later in the series. If you liked LotR, the Wheel of Time, Chronicles of Amber, or Game of Thrones, I urge you to keep with this series, even if it means having to read them on paper. You won't be sorry. There is so much more, where this came from.

I love what Ralph Lister managed with this series. I was never confused by who was speaking, with his grip on diverse voices, and he got the gravelly tones of the bridgeburners just how I'd imagined them.

I recommend "Gardens of the Moon" to anyone who enjoys epic fantasy. This book is fast paced, with great characters. Just as complicated as George R.R. Martin, and Robert Jordan, but with a much faster pacing. The Magic is unique, and you can tell that Steven Erikson was a professor of anthropology.

This is Grade A fantasy at its best.

The pacing of the story, it covers a lot of ground. I also have love for the Bridgeburners.

When Quickben, and Kalem get ambushed by Anomander and company on the rooftops.

Certain characters made me laugh, but it is a serious book.

Please get the other 9 books of the main series on Audible asap!! ohh... and all the novellas of the Malazan world by Steven Erikson, and the ones by Ian C. Esslemont

This series is one of my absolute favorites, with complex characters, an engaging plot, and a fantastically rich world full of seemingly living, breathing cultures that really show off Mr. Erikson's education in anthropology and archaeology.

I love the lack of initial exposition in the narrative, and that Erikson trusts his readers enough to just dump them in the middle of a story as complex as this with the hope that we'll hang around long enough to get our bearings. It's well worth the attention it demands of its readers (listeners), though, and close attention to details rewards the audience tenfold later in the book, and one hundredfold later throughout the series.

Mr. Lister is an excellent narrator. His cadence and delivery make for a very easy listen, and his ability to establish different and distinct voices for the characters throughout the book is superb. He pronounces a lot of the vocabulary of the world a little differently than I have in the past, but I wasn't too put out by that.

The only real problem I had with Mr. Lister's narration was that a few of the voices he gave to the characters were nothing like I had imagined them when I read the books myself. This is completely a me problem, I know, but I just couldn't seem to get over it. Dujek and Whiskeyjack's voices were problematic for me, but every time Kalam spoke I was pulled out of the narrative and forced to scream "That's NOT what Kalam sounds like! He's a powerfully built, kick-butt assassin out of Seven Cities, not a nasally, anemic rat-catcher from south Bristol!" (Apologies to all nasally, anemic ratcatchers from Bristol.)

I would have liked to have given Mr. Lister's performance 5 stars (and really, it does merit 5 stars), but I just couldn't get over those voices. Well, Dujek and Whiskeyjack stopped bothering me by about the 15th hour, but I never got over Kalam. I am an evil and spiteful person.

I am so excited to hear the rest of the series, and am so glad that Audible has made these available to me.

In closing, I really do hope they keep Ralph Lister as the narrator, but I'm going to warn you right now; if Coltaine is given a sufficiently non-heroic voice by the time his story comes around, I will find whoever is responsible and kick them right in the shins!

You have been warned.

Full prose, depth of characters, huge ensemble, high politics and motivations, ambiguity in characterizations . These are all elements that are positive and welcome in this book. My only qualm is the sheer denseness of the material. I listen while driving and in all probability this has been the book I've had to go back a minute or two the most in my history as a listener. As other reviewers have pointed out, you *need* to concentrate.

Cropper. By far the most entertaining. He's a reader favourite on par with Tyrion Lannister in George R.R. Martin's epic.

Good accents, tries his best to differentiate which is extremely demanding. A difficult to transfer to audio book. There is a section half-way within the book where a character - a powerful demon named 'Pearl'- appears. Ralph Lister's approach there made the scene shine.

A large book, which is a positive trait in my personal fantasy listens. I suspect I use these books not unlike others find daytime TV entertaining. However be forewarned, this is the first of 10 books. The good news is that the series is complete. The bad news is that only the first one is available, so far, from audible.

This book demands attention from the reader/listener that I had to frequently skip back secs / mins to catchup on things which I missed or did not understood because I was not paying needed attention. Partially it is due to the nature of the book the way it is written, and a lot of it is due to narration. The narrator though otherwise did a great job, did finish one chapter of the book and start the next one seemingly in same breath causing confusion at times. I had to get use to this style, but once I was in synch, I had a great time.

Book has mix of great elements such as mage assassins making it an entertaining listen. Even though there is free flow use of magic, author manage to maintain the intrigue of such things while combining it with great character development. Characters are very well flushed out, and combination of interesting skill set makes the plot lines very interesting.

Book does demand attention as mentioned above that not everything is spelled out for the listener. Events are taking place which make no sense at the time gets explained as user continue to read through the book.

Book sets ambitious goal for itself in terms of complexity and quality, and I have to say that it almost achieved it. Though not easy to listen, it is very entertaining sometimes awesome epic. I plan to next book in the series when it arrives. I would recommend this book for seasoned epic fantasy fans.

I really enjoyed this book. I am fairly new to audiobooks, and completely new to Erikson. I must say I was more than pleasantly surprised. An interesting world, it takes some getting used too but once your are IN, well, it's hard to get out. The world is hard, gritty and tumultous. The narrator gives a good performance, distinct voices for most major characters. This is the first performance I have been graced with by Lister, and outside of minor quibbles with some pronunciation (likely due to different nationalities) I truly enjoyed his reading. The biggest problem is that there is NOT MORE!! This is the first of many books in a series, and unfortunately the only one on audible.

I want more from this author and this series available on audible. I have to drive/travel a lot for my job, hours at a time and I love to listen to entertaining books that are over 20 hrs. Please add the rest of the series.

I am a lifetime devotee to fantasy and sci-fi and I really wanted to like this. This book had wizards, fighters, thieves, assassins, fair maidens, and various sentient winged creatures. It had plots and plots within conspiracies within plots. It had all of the superficial elements the genre demands but somehow the whole never became any greater than the sum of these parts. There were too many characters and they were introduced too fast without sufficient background to "get to know" them. As a result, I spent the first 1/3 of the book a bit confused and I never fell in love with the characters in the way I have with other fantasy series. The narrator was pretty good but a few characters sounded annoyingly like leprechauns.

It's obvious form the other reviews that plenty of other people enjoyed this book much more than I did,but all in all it just never grew on me.