Archaeologist of lost worlds

War is a constant -- from continent to continent, century upon century. Erikson's universe is a violent one, Gothic in intensity, without clear demarcation between good and evil. It's perhaps more like the real world, then, than most fantasy, which so clearly differentiates between light and dark. Not the kind of story I would read to my son before bed -- death and pain abound, along with magic and wonder.

I won't attempt to describe the plot. It would be cheating. Readers of "Gardens of the Moon" are confronted with a world where very little is explained as it happens -- like the characters in the story, we have to piece together what is going on from cryptic utterances by gods and warlocks and seers and the fragmentary record left behind by the detritus of previous empires. To leapfrog this process by making sense of it would defeat the purpose of the author.

In the online nooks and crannies where fantasy readers discuss their addictions, Erikson's unwillingness to lay it all out clearly has led to pushback, to complaints that he is too obscure, too complex, too obtuse. And I concede that there were moments when I felt lost, when even constant trips to the glossary and who's-who left me confused. There are destabilizing points where one realizes that from continent to continent and race to race, the names, attributes and powers of, for example, various gods, seem to be in flux. Contradictions abound.

As I pushed deeper into the series I found myself more and more willing to trust Erikson, to enjoy the process of unfolding clarity that reveals itself in each volume. I also began to realize that the ambiguity reflected a little reality in the fantasy. Gods are always messing with mortals in Erikson's work, but the mortals also, by their patterns of belief, create their own gods, their own greater powers. Everything is flux. Men and women ascend to godhood; gods die or lose their powers as the cultures that revered them decline; cultures that go sour generate their own evil. It's a messy, complicated business, and there are no easy answers, or clear heroes. But there is a sense of familiarity, even though there is not a knight to be found in this magic land. Erikson's books are fantasy for gothic grown-ups, but its war-torn world of constant upheaval reminds one an awful lot of our own.

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