2025 Reading Challenge discussion

I will most likely read more than 10 books this year, but it's my first challenge and one must start somewhere. Some books are more challenging than others and I'll be quite happy with myself even if I achieved my goal in first half a year.
The goal is to read Malazan, but I'm currently reading and will be reading other books relating to my private challenges with others, and I'll try to post reviews for all of them.
Thanks for checking on this thread. Please comment on whatever you find interesting.

1. Gardens of the Moon
2. Deadhouse Gates

As I mentioned before - I'm checking out various other books on the way. I can already see that it will be very challenging to stick to such a long series as Malazan and I definitely need breaks in between. I've decided to re-post only the reviews for this series here, to keep the thread consistent. However you are very welcome to check all my other reviews through my profile.

Here comes the first review:

Gardens of the Moon

4 stars

I must admit that I have a hard time grasping the essence of the Gardens of the Moon. The story seems to lack any central message which makes it hard for me to relate to any of its aspects. On the other hand, however, this was also a first book I've ever read with such vast and extremely rich world.
Steven Erikson had originally based his world on the RPG he developed with his gamer friends. This allowed him to get on unprecedented level of sophistication in terms of story structure and variety of characters, without loosing on consistency. The world is engineered very well. There are no fillers. Everything has a meaning and you have to pay attention. The first 200 pages can be very challenging to read. The amount of characters and events we have to remember is not only overwhelming, but we're introduced to them in a very scant way, as the story quickly develops, and the author doesn't seem to pay much attention to a lost reader. After we make our way through these initial uncertainties however, it proves to be very rewarding. Steven Erikson, in one of his interviews, said something like this: "I know it's hard, but if you trust me and stay with me, I guarantee a blast", and it puts it pretty well.
The story allows us to explore personalities and a whole range of character arcs, each leading to important decisions, which often shake the whole network of interpersonal relations within the story. It is interesting to watch how the vast amount of goals and motivations intertwine with each other to create a coherent plot - from simple, like Crockus's love of Chalice, to seemingly more consequential, like Paran's eagerness to kill Empress's adjunct.
Multidimensionality of the magic system is impressive. The warrens can be interpreted as true "dimensions" of the universe. If you imagine yourself embedded within a 2 dimensional plane on a folded sheet of paper, you can imagine warren being almost parallel to this space but folded differently. Accessing a warren in certain places allows you then to significantly cut the travelling time. The planes can also shift slightly and points in which they touch each other provide "fissures" from which the magical power flows. Those fissures can apparently be created temporary by mages when they cast spells, but can also remain for longer, when too large energy is released, causing the worlds to intertwine.
Following up with that - Quick Ben is my favourite character . He almost seems like a scientist of magic. He's not the most powerful mage in the story and yet he's able to outsmart most of them by making inferences on his widespread knowledge. He's not specializing in just one thing, but can draw interesting conclusions from accessing different sources (like coming to the warren of shadows and then escaping to warren of chaos).
I like the very rich culture of the world. Very descriptive language. For example chalcedony sword used by Tool. Variety of things used by people of different tribes and nations. I like how they are sort of casually thrown here and there to paint the picture of each of them. This differs from many other fantasy stories, in which those attributes often depend on some arbitrary magic and are too disconnected from the real world to make any deeper reference to the tribe's history. This speaks a lot about Erikson's background as an archeologist.
There is also a fair distinction between simple tribes and more advanced civilizations - not only in terms of goods they can produces - outfits they wear and weapons they carry, but also culturally. A good example is Darhujistan with Mammot as its historian, whose books introduce the whole other dimension to the description of the city. Another example is Paran recalling his lessons of philosophy in Unta.
Although, as I said in the beginning, the book didn't contain much of a general far reaching meaning to it, there were couple aspects, which I liked. Theses were mostly encapsulated within Lorn's struggle between duty and being loyal to her feelings. One citation in particular has stuck in my mind:
"Humans had indeed come from them [T'lan Imass - the undead race], had indeed inherited a world. Empire was a parts of them, a legacy flowing like blood through human muscle , bone and brain. But such a thing could easily be seen as a curse, Were they destined one day to become human versions of the T'lan Imass? Was war all there was? Would they bow to it in immortal servitude, no more than deliverers of death"
I really like this citation as it reaches deep into the human nature and asks if war is embedded into it forever? Can we exist without war? Can we be humans without it? Or would we first have to become something else? Lorn suggests we can't get rid of it because it was implanted into us sort of genetically. And following this fact she sees the future as a constant decline of human race to the point where all the other virtues are lost.