Reddit Fantasy

TL;DR: This is more of a rant than anything, as I know there are lots of threads about this. I read the first book of Malazan and the beginning of the second one and will probably call it quits because I'm bored.

Oh boy. I wish I liked Malazan. I've been reading fantasy for a long time, but I never got around to reading the "big epics" that are Wheel of Time and Malazan. It doesn't help that I have always had a hard time focusing on things for a long time due to my ADHD, but I've learned to just DNF books that I don't like or can't focus on by now.

I jumped into Gardens of the Moon after hearing about its density, prepared to be overwhelmed and confused. However, I was really just bored. I didn't really understand what was going on, I didn't care about any of the characters or storylines (though some of them were really cool, and I did actually enjoy the prose). A huge cast of characters is fine with me, as long as all of them are well fleshed out and it's not a game of "wait, what were they doing before the perspective switched again?"

A book of GotM's size usually takes me one or two weeks to finish, depending on how busy I am with other things, but this book took me a month to get through, and I found myself skimming large parts of it.

Anyway, I decided to give it a second chance and started Deadhouse Gates anyway, having been convinced by the positive reviews saying that this is where things really kick off and get interesting. The first book is known to be the weakest one, after all.

Well, I'm now about 150 pages into DG and... I still don't really care. It doesn't feel different from the first book, it doesn't get clearer or more straightforward. I think I'm just going to skip this series, which is a bummer! I was so excited to immerse myself this huge ten-book epic. It's just not my cup of tea though, and that's alright.

Rant over. What did you think about these books? Did you force yourself to continue, and did it pay off for you?