If the Chain of Dogs didn't impress you, I don't think anything Erikson has will. 2nd and 3rd books have some very memorable arcs.
I think your mistake was trying to make sense of it. The characters talk to each other in-universe and will frequently make references that aren't explained until books later(or never). Confusing? Sure, but it's essentially a form of "show, don't tell". The Old Guard is an example of this. You don't need to know who the Old Guard was or what happened to them in order to enjoy the stories being told. But it makes sense that current day Malazan military would talk about them as they're legendary to the founding of the Empire.
If a chain of dogs is the second book, it was a lot better than garden of the moon or whatever.
I don't remember the character who was leading some sort of army or something but then all the Ravens or birds flew at it when he was getting crucified or something, that was pretty crazy.
The problem was is there's this suddenly all this like weird shit happening with their magic realm and some people on a boat maybe they got flipped into the magic realm, I don't remember. It's literally been here since I read it.
It just seemed like it was all over the place and just shoving all these crazy ideas at you without any sort of explanation, where a decent author would set the stage so to speak, and the audience understands what the game is, or at least in the fantasy world, something like a magic system. Sanderson's really good about that and he's very inventive, even if those stories are just kind of, well typical fantasy stuff.
I believe somebody here told me look get through two and three, and it really picks up after that, but I got done with the second one and just wasn't feeling it. I think I bought the third book but never cracked a page, just started reading something else.
I don't know it's just something about his writing, and maybe he gets better over the years, and that seems to happen when some of these guys that do these long series of books. I just know the first one was just goofy, I was told the second one's a lot better, and it was but compared to other stuff I've read, no dice.
Hey if anybody enjoys it, good for them, have a blast. Maybe one day I'll give it another shot. I just felt like it was a weird dungeons and dragons campaign or something. I remember there was some crazy elf man or somebody in the first book who had some crazy sword, and he was a ultimate badass, and suddenly it became like dragon Ball Z.
I just would have been nice to have that first novel set up everything to where the audience understands exactly what does what and then have your characters play out whatever role they're supposed to play. I just felt like you were suddenly thrust into this big epic deal and you didn't know who the hell anybody was, I didn't know the rules of the world, so something happens doesn't make any goddamn sense.
