Antonis’s Comments (group member since Oct 01, 2013)

Antonis’s comments from the Beyond Reality group.

I also started the sequel but I'm still not more than 10% through. I hope we get some answers in this one!

Just finished it tonight. My opinion and experience sounds very much like both of yours. Very average and indifferent characters, quite a messy plot, bad editing and the annoying "ending" or lack of it, were my biggest gripes.
Review here

I consider myself very familiar with all the Elder Scrolls games, having played ALL of them extensively and also having read the collected books of Skyrim just for the lore. I think this familiarity has hardly helped me with the book. If you find a map of the general area of Tamriel on the internet (just to get an idea of where each country is) and know a bit of the non-human races then you're good to go. There are things mentioned in the book that refer to events from the games, most notably the Oblivion Crisis but reading the book doesn't really require any previous knowledge of all that.

I'm currently reading it. The start was rather uninteresting but around the mid point more exciting things started happening. I'll try to finish it in the following days and post my thoughts in the other thread.

Great observations on both accounts! Especially about Grallin's gardens, I went over this part without giving it much notice, thinking it sounded important but didn't make much sense for that moment.

I just finished this awesome and amazing book half an hour ago. I loved it. I have 2 questions though:

1. Isn't there a Darujhistan army at all and if so, where is it and its commanders? I know that Darujhistan is a city based on commerce with mostly economical and political power but I can't imagine it surviving for so many years upon years without an army. So where is that army, what with the Empire closing in and everybody knowing about it and the fate of Pale? Shouldn't the generals and commanders of such an army feature prominently on the political scene? I've grown to trust Erikson strongly but this question can't escape my mind.

2. I still haven't figured out the title of the book. What does "Gardens of the moon" refer to? Sure, we have a Moon's Spawn and we have a lot of garden action, especially at the end, but I don't get what the title is about. Is this another Erikson trick that will make sense only after reading some more books of the series?

Now that was a hell of a party that woman was throwing!

Thanks for the explanation about the two Pale wizards. For some reason the replies in this thread didn't show up in my notifications which is strange and I read them just now. I'm going to check the rest of the discussions for things I might have missed.

I would guess that hairlock was probably already on the way to madness. He appeared chaotic enough even before his physical death.
As for the imass, I feel as if everyone and their mother have their own agenda. This became more than a strong suspicion just a few minutes ago when I turned the first page of book 5 and noticed the description of the different dates at the beginning.
Also a question: at the end of book 4 the wizard alchemist mentions two heads from Pale wizards. I don't remember about this, can anybody comment on this??

I won't say it's the best book I've read, but it certainly is one of the most enjoyable I've read for years. I just can't stop reading!! There's so much happening it's crazy and I love it. I thought the book was great until book 3-4 but it gets even better now!
As for the physical book, I like the typeset (Goudy) a lot but I'm reading mostly from the ebook and use the real book only to reference the maps and glossaries.

About Sorry's prologue part, they way I understood it is that the old-witch was just killed by a passing soldier but somehow managed to transfer her soul inside the girl's mind before Cotillion possessed her/them. Also, apparently the witch had some premonition of things to come, because just before the two guys from Shadow approached them she muttered through the girl's lips something like "Here it comes then". Not exactly sure how all that adds up or what role it will play in the future but it's interesting to keep in mind when reading about Sorry.
I just started reading the Darujhistan part (chapter 5) and I'm loving this book thus far!

Edit: Just noticed that I wrote almost the same thing as Kathi! :p

So I started reading this yesterday and have just finished the Pale part (book 1). I have to say, there was only one thing I found really annoying and frustrating about this book and this was the actual physical book... Yeah, it's too thick and the letters are printed too close to the spine and it's hard to read. So I switched to an e-book about 50-60 pages in and I've been loving this since then! There's hardly any boring page as there's constantly so much going on that I just need to keep turning pages! If this keeps like that until the end I will be very very satisfied!

I will start reading this today as I can't wait until the 15th nor can I squeeze in another book in the meantime. :D

I will also start reading this very soon, hopefuly around mid-February.

Same here!

why don't we read the first books of both series and see what commitment we have from there?

I've been intending to start reading the Malazan series in 2015 as Gardens of the Moon has been on my shelf for about 2 years. I can't promise that I can follow on a monthly basis but if we decide to read it as a group, it would be the perfect incentive to pick it up.

I just finished this book and I liked it almost as much as the first one. (My review here) The plot may have been weaker and not so grand in scale and the lack of ancillaries was something that I really missed from the first book as well but we get much closer to Breq and witness the gradual adaptation and evolution to being a single-segment ancillary. I liked how Breq is becoming more human-like now. This is a great series and I will definitely be reading the next one!!

For some reason, I had absolutely no idea that the nominations thread had been open. It must have somehow slipped off my radar once again. I haven't read any of the nominations and I admit I haven't even heard about half of them! ...some interesting choices then!

I finished reading this a couple of days ago. In general, I was both amazed and impressed with this book in most aspects. I was prepared to give this a 5-star rating but the ending of the book fell flat so I'm still undecided. I have to admit I don't like books that end abruptly and this one didn't pass this test in my opinion. I found the rest of the book really great though.