I found the first one extremely hard to get into. Erikson pushed the 'in media res' approach really far for a series opener, and in this first one in particular I thought he didn't master yet so well the "converging" structure that would become his trademark later (very slow build ups, followed by a sudden awesome final rush, sometimes lasting for the full last third of a book etc. ) From book 2 onward this is excellently done, in GoTM I lost interest before it started happening, and when it did I just didn't really care anymore. It got better on re read, as GoTM is one of those books that don't make much sense early on but you discover later in the series were full of things that escaped you).