Thursday, April 03, 2014

The Last King of Osten Ard

Via Bookworm Blues, Tad Williams is set to return to his world of Osten Ard and will write a sequel trilogy to Memory, Sorrow, Thorn set thirty years later.  The three volumes in the trilogy are titled The Witchwood Crown, Empire of Grass, and The Navigator's Children.

I needed several attempts to get into The Dragonbone Chair, but once I got into the meat of the novel I was impressed by the story Williams was telling.  It was traditional kitchen boy fantasy, but it was solid work and by the end of the trilogy, he was twisting the readers expectations in a way that I found satisfying and fresh (at the time, I last read this in 2006 and the last book was published in 1993). 

Except, then after the ending of To Green Angel Tower, there was a little bit of a coda or an epilogue that I felt betrayed absolutely everything that had just come before and pissed me off to no end.  I might still be pissed off, I'm not sure. 

So, I'm not certain exactly how I feel about this news.  I know plenty of fantasy fans with be thrilled by this (Aidan, for one).  But, man, that coda just obliterated so much of the good will Williams had gradually built up over that trilogy. I expect that I'll give it a shot anyway. 

For the curious, here are my reviews of the trilogy.
The Dragonbone Chair
Stone of Farewell
To Green Angel Tower

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