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Tad Williams announces THE LAST KING OF OSTEN ARD, a sequel to MEMORY, SORROW AND THORN

aidan

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Jiriki Landed Knight

Jiriki

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A novel set in the world, even though a short one, is the only suitable replacement short of actually getting Witchwood Crown. So yes, this is good news, though the uncertainty regarding publication is still a big "if" in this news. Obviously it needs to be released ahead of WC, that is 1,5 years away.

Totally agree.

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Jiriki Landed Knight

Jiriki

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I will read everything coming out for the OA universe!


Same here. I really liked "The Burning Man" (but it wasn't long enough, at 60 pages, to really immerse me the way MS&T does). And I liked the fact that we got to see a time we wouldn't normally have gotten to see: the era of King Sulis. With The Witchwood Crown being set 30 years after To Green Angel Tower and The New Book being set between To Green Angel Tower and The Witchwood Crown, there presumably will be a nice swath of about 40 years of Osten Ard history between the nine volumes, assuming TLKOOA takes up about as much time as MS&T.

I'm just a bit sad that i have to wait until 2017 instead of early 2016 for the "main-course".


I don't look at it that way at all: we'll still get an Osten Ard fix in 2016, and then get more in 2017, 2018, and 2019 (roughly). We won't be out of Osten Ard stories until the next decade. :)
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AncalagonTheBlack Council Member

AncalagonTheBlack

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Because of complications arising from the merger of American giants Penguin and Random House, ‘The Witchwood Crown’ had been bumped back a year to March 2017.

SO, where we currently stand, books- and publication-wise, is:

‘The Heart of Regret’ (or possibly ‘The Heart of What Was Lost’) — a short novel (about seventy thousand words) will be published by DAW Books and Hodder & Stoughton sometime before The Witchwood Crown — I hope for Winter, 2016. The title may change (my wife and editors don’t like the original as much as I do) but the book is in rewrite and essentially complete.

 full post - http://www.tadwilliams.com/2015/11/letter-from-tad-williams/

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Jiriki Landed Knight

Jiriki

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I guess no one one knows yet what was meant by Winter 2016 right? Probably the worst case scenario then.

 

Sadly, it is going to be Late 2016 for Heart of Regret and Spring 2017 for The Witchwood Crown. But this isn't Williams' fault. The first draft of the manuscript of The Witchwood Crown was finished by April 2015 (I saw it myself), and the delays are on the publishing end: it doesn't take two years to edit and proof a manuscript, even one as long as Williams' manuscripts tend to be.

Williams has a new interview from his British publisher, where he talks about the new Osten Ard books (as well as Tailchaser's Song and the Bobby Dollar series). Spoilers for MS&T.

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Jiriki Landed Knight

Jiriki

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As a fantasy cartography junky I have a silly question, anyone know if we will get new and improved maps with TLKOOA?

Yes, there are new maps. Like you, good Ser Ellison, I'm also a cartography junky, and I was thrilled to see some rough-outs.

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Shinrei Sellsword

Shinrei

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Yeah, bummer about the release dates. It is especially infuriating when the "botch" is on the publishers side. I mean if the novel is not written yet, ok, that i can understand...but something like this? Embarrassing.

 

A big fat "YES!!" on the map-news! I'm a total map-addict and always wanted to know/see more about/of the world. 

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Jiriki Landed Knight

Jiriki

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Yeah, bummer about the release dates. It is especially infuriating when the "botch" is on the publishers side. I mean if the novel is not written yet, ok, that i can understand...but something like this? Embarrassing.

 

A big fat "YES!!" on the map-news! I'm a total map-addict and always wanted to know/see more about/of the world. 

I don't know that I'd say 'embarrassing'... definitely odd, though. Still, what's done is done.

A good fantasy map brings the readers more into the world. Tad Williams does his own maps, and they're quite good. I hate fantasy maps where it looks like someone just plopped some rivers among mountains, without regard to the fact that water flows downhill, etc.

 

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Jiriki Landed Knight

Jiriki

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Jiriki,

Are the maps of places we haven't seen or are they details of places we are returning to?

I've only seen three, and they are for places we have seen, albeit briefly. However, I suspect there will be more, because there are places in TWC that have not been visited before. The maps I saw were not the final versions, and two seemed more conceptual.

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Lord Varys Council Member

Lord Varys

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Well, I've now finally finished listening to the German audiobooks of the Osten Ard series, and I've to admit that I'd never have made it through them if I had to read them. Tad really isn't at his best to keep the reader in the story. Often hints are blatantly obvious, and important conversations/revelations feel infinitely postponed (Josua-Camaris), and I'm also not happy with how some characters completely disappear from the story (Vara).

That said, I still enjoyed the story.

There seem to be a few major plot holes/unresolved threads:

1. Morgenes not doing everything in his power to break Pryrates' influence over Elias in light of the fact that he pretty much knows everything about that guy. Nothing in the first book hints at the fact that these two even knew each other. The same goes for Cadrach hanging out with both Morgenes and Pryrates during the story of the first book.

2. Nisses: The guy is eventually introduced as Black Rimmersman and the main cause behind the war of Fingil against the Sithi. That strongly suggests that Utuk'ku planned the destruction of the Sithi first via the Rimmersmen, inadvertently (or perhaps meticulously?) creating the Storm King in the process, and then later using Ineluki as her pawn/weapon in the final enterprise against mankind. If that's the case - and I'd say that it is at least effectively confirmed that Nisses' knowledge how to defeat the Sithi and destroy Asu'a simply by the fact that Fingil was victorious - then Tad really should have revealed it or hinted at it. But the really interesting mystery is what led to Hjeldin and Nisses' deaths. Tad failed to explain/hint at what the hell happened to them when they died. We learn that Nisses' prophecy was meant as a help for Ineluki's return, but Nisses could not possibly have been in direct contact with Ineluki nor does it make any sense to assume that he wanted to help him - after all, he was apparently crucial in the destruction of Asu'a. How came this prophecy about, why was Nisses searching for a way to bring Ineluki back or help him? And if this is all true, how the hell could Utuk'ku keep all that from Ineluki?

3. It is said that Ineluki could not come back to Asu'a because there were many spells and prayers keeping him away from it - but that seems just to be an ad hoc explanation why the hell Ineluki could not come back. If there were such spells and prayers - where are they during the whole series? Why are the people not using them in their fight against the Norns? And why exactly would anyone specifically create spells to keep out Ineluki, personally? People would not know that he sort of survived, and would be more interested to keep out all the Gardenborn, Sithi and Norns alike. Yet neither the Norns nor the Sithi have later any trouble entering Asu'a.

4. What the hell was Ineluki's plan after he had taken over Elias? He seemed to be in control of time - why the hell did he only go back to the time of his death and not a few months/years farther when he had not yet killed his father and it was still possible to defeat the Rimmersmen before they began destroying Asu'a? Was Ineluki intending to stay in the time 500 years ago, and if so how would he/Elias have survived the inferno that engulfed Asu'a? Where the hell were the Ineluki and his buddies of that time while the ritual took place? Didn't they stage their ritual also in the Angel Tower around the same time? What the hell did Ineluki back then anyway? Did he intentionally made himself this ghost thing or was that just a side effect of what he was doing? What exactly was he intending to do after he had left the tower - slaughtering humans in the past or the present? And what would he have done to the Sithi of that time? I don't get any of that.

5. What happened to the Red Hand? Ineluki apparently died for good, but nobody ever mentioned his minions.

6. Why the hell did Ineluki pursue Simon at all? Later he is no longer important, but they really seem to have been out to get him back in the beginning when he virtually knew nothing and was no threat to Ineluki/Utuk'ku at all.

7. The time line how Pryrates convinced Elias to ally himself with Ineluki and Utuk'ku makes little sense. The way the last book resolves this suggests that Elias only wanted to team up with them after Josua and Miriamele had disappeared. But we know that Pryrates imprisoned Josua and wanted to sacrifice him - did Elias really have no idea about that?

8. During the final ritual Pryrates seems to play the crucial role. Does this mean that Ineluki/Utuk'ku were actually completely dependent on a human ally/pawn? That doesn't make a fine century-spanning plan...

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