Gardens of the Midnight Tide
I'm still waiting for Bonehunters to come out in mass-market(because I'm just that cheap, and besides, I have other books to read), but I thought I'd poll people here about something that I've been wondering about since I read Midnight Tides.
Which book would you recommend for someone starting the series--Gardens of the Moon, or Midnight Tides?
I ask because after reading MT, I'd vote for starting with that one. For one thing, it clearly comes before the prologue of House of Chains, which it took me a long time to figure out. For another, it contains some bits of exposition useful to a newcomer to the series, like an explanation of what the hell a "warren" is, which continued to vex me well into the second book. It's less in medias res, so it's easier to get into the action. And it's much, much funnier, though that might set false expectations for the rest of the series.
Most of what Gardens of The Moon has going for it is the fact that the next three books generally involve a lot of the characters mentioned there. But the plot progression from book to book dwindles markedly, until it disappears entirely between House of Chains and Midnight Tides. It's obvious by this point that these are really a set of related novels set in the same world with some continuing characters, rather than a multiple-book epic like "A Song of Ice And Fire", "The Wheel of Time", "The Prince of Nothing", etc. So why not start with Midnight Tides and get that clear right off the bat?
Anyways, those are my thoughts...
Which book would you recommend for someone starting the series--Gardens of the Moon, or Midnight Tides?
I ask because after reading MT, I'd vote for starting with that one. For one thing, it clearly comes before the prologue of House of Chains, which it took me a long time to figure out. For another, it contains some bits of exposition useful to a newcomer to the series, like an explanation of what the hell a "warren" is, which continued to vex me well into the second book. It's less in medias res, so it's easier to get into the action. And it's much, much funnier, though that might set false expectations for the rest of the series.
Most of what Gardens of The Moon has going for it is the fact that the next three books generally involve a lot of the characters mentioned there. But the plot progression from book to book dwindles markedly, until it disappears entirely between House of Chains and Midnight Tides. It's obvious by this point that these are really a set of related novels set in the same world with some continuing characters, rather than a multiple-book epic like "A Song of Ice And Fire", "The Wheel of Time", "The Prince of Nothing", etc. So why not start with Midnight Tides and get that clear right off the bat?
Anyways, those are my thoughts...