Just some quick little book shelf porn. Or is it love? From my review of the Malazan Book of the Fallen (which is more of my real tribute to MBotF) and interviews with co-creators Steven Erikson & Ian Cameron Esslemont you already know I have affection for everything Malazan but to give visual evidence this is a quick snap of just some of my copies of the UK first edition/print (among others) of Gardens of the Moon.
I’ve always loved this cover.
Gardens of the Moon started it all but I’m actually currently listening to the Deadhouse Gates audio book. This is only the second audio book I’ve ever listened to (my brain just doesn’t usually work this way with consuming fiction) though I have read it at least a half dozen times. I’m loving it.
I’ve been listening while I do my morning pool laps, feeling not silly at all getting my cardio on while re-experiencing Kalam encountering Leoman and Toblakai in the midst of the revolution and rebellion.
I know that some people have difficulty getting into Gardens and miss out on two instant epic fantasy classics in the next two books in the series in Deadhouse Gates and Memories of Ice and I usually am on the side of people who’d argue why would they get through a (large) novel they don’t like to get to more they may or may not like and my only answer to that is that if you don’t enjoy Deadhouse Gates and Memories of Ice we just have extremely different ideas in what makes not only great epic fantasy but propels it to an as of yet unseen and unprecedented level while being gloriously mired in all of the classic fantasy tropes we loved and thought we grew past.
We didn’t, it just took Erikson to come along and write a post-modern Epic – THE MOST epic – Fantasy.
The Malazan Book of the Fallen is just one of my favorite things a creative human has added to my reality. I guess this picture is me clinging to a piece of it.