/lit/ - Literature

Good luck, OP. The next couple of books are a hell of a ride.

Gardens of the Moon is a mess. It was written way before the rest of the series. Also, as a first time reader you have very little idea what the fuck is going on. To answer your question, yes, it gets much better. Deadhouse Gates is an absolutely phenomenal novel, but it relies on the pieces set up in Gardens, unfortunately.

To address your specific concerns:

>powerlevel garbage
Are you referring to the Rake/Raest matchup? It's not really "powerlevel," but you can expect to find similar sequences in a few of the later novels.

>bits of mythic lore continuously pulled out of ass whenever convenient
The world was developed way before the novel was written. It seems like it's pulled out of Erikson's ass right now, but I assure you it is not. You just don't know much about anything yet.

>everybody's a psychic
Not really. You have Tattersail (a mage specializing in the Deck), and you have Fiddler. Not many other characters are "talents." The psychic thing is not a big focus moving forward.

Anyway, if you have any questions I can try to help without spoiling anything. Once you start figuring out little bits, your enjoyment goes up a lot. That is part of the appeal of the series, at least for me. You have to figure everything out on your own. No exposition, no bullshit.

Attached is a "best guess" world map. Should clear some things up.

Gardens of the Moon throws you into this vast fucking world filled to the brim with lore. It's ridiculously fleshed out. No other series comes close to this level of complexity and detail. But.
You are not given much help by the author. He believes very strongly in avoiding exposition, which means that you are left piecing together shit on your own. "What the fuck is this card deck?" Combine this with an enormous cast of characters (dwarfing series such as A Song of Ice and Fire), and you are going to be one confused fucking reader. But fear not—this is intentional. All is explained in time, even though that time may be five novels later. My main criticism of the first entry in the Malazan Book of the Fallen is that the plot and characterizations suffer from the sheer amount of lore Erikson shovels onto the reader. Also, a lot of the characters are either exceedingly annoying (Krulle, Crokus) or behave inexplicably (Captain Paran, Tattersail). Gardens of the Moon does manage to tie all its disparate strings together in the end, but as a whole it is a muddy affair.

The series does get a lot better once you start understanding shit, though. I'd say half-way through Deadhouse Gates it becomes excellent. This is a work that you cannot really enjoy or judge simply by reading the first book. Anyway, if you like huge worlds with crazy-ass gods, powerful wizards fucking shit up, assassins assassinating the shit out of people, motherfucking Jaghuts and so on, this is something you need to read. As a whole, the series is a phenomenal work.

Oh, and there's no official world map. Attached is a world map combining the various small maps published in the novels thus far with a rough sketch provided by Erikson, to give you a sense of scale and how the various landmasses are placed in regards to each other. Since the series spans multiple fucking continents, this is essential.

>>2817459
Oh, and save this image. There's no official world map yet, but this is a fan-made one based off a rough sketch by Erikson. It shows how the continents are positioned in relation to each other, which is useful because the first novel takes place on two different ones.