a lot of imagination has started Yes - but I did the whole thing to overcharge something too confused and too bulky

Hardly any other genre is so vast as Fantasy.
From relatively realistic stories with only mild fantasy impacts to very complex fantasy worlds that have hardly anything to do with our world and the reader therefore already extremely invited to request a lot of imagination, must or may be counted in the genre with everything.
Mark T Barnes' "The Garden of Stones" lies on allerhintersten end of this scale.
Whether one considers this as rather positive or negative, of course, can only decide for himself, but for me personally was the world, the author in his first novel, clearly lifted and thus very hard to imagine, though Barnes quite well processed some good ideas.

The plot is not easy to get because of the many under shoot sinterized figures and minor storylines so to the point, roughly summarized it comes to war within a federation to vanished cultures, strange-looking creatures, races, traditions and technologies, and a scholar who to be the beat "other side", as he once married the daughter of an opposition prefect.

The Positive ahead, the author can write reasonably well and formulate so that the novel is quite liquid wegliest from writing style.
However, I had the impression that he sometimes very bogged down and a few less protagonist, strange creatures and secondary storylines would have been more clearly here to the at least 500 pages and reading pleasure would have made much more pleasant.
Eventually, of course, we read in this very complex fantasy world, but the way there I have found to be very stressful and sometimes quite confusing.
If it was not for a review copy, I do not know if I would have worked my way just dutifully through the 500 pages, or at least abandoned prematurely, especially me some, for example, the political system, unfortunately, has remained relatively obscure until the end - who here has exactly what tasks and powers, was for me at times a little in the dark.
Apparently, "Garden of Stones" planned as the beginning of a series and perhaps it is therefore intended to clarify various issues and matters only in other volumes, but even as a preliminary volume of a series I was the novel over long distances easily confused and bogged down in too many subplots, as he really had me can captivate.
However, those who like to particularly complex and wide-ranging fantasy epics like the right as a reader asking for could "Garden of Stones", however, be a real find one.