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

[Lord Varys]

Did they actually repair the ebook versions of the first trilogy in the time being? I consider buying the originals for my kindle right now but what I read about those a few years wasn't exactly wasn't very promising...

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

:Insert Ser Scot A Ellison's snarky comment about ebooks here:

[ylvs]

I think they did. But I just read from a blogger who just purchased the old typo ridden ones from kobo.
I am checking this as I type and will get back to you, Lord Varys.

[AncalagonTheBlack]

15 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Did they actually repair the ebook versions of the first trilogy in the time being? I consider buying the originals for my kindle right now but what I read about those a few years wasn't exactly wasn't very promising...

I have the latest ebook versions from DAW and they have undergone various corrections.The present publisher version is 'Version_5' for books 1 & 2 and 'Version_4' for book 3.You can find it on the copyright page.Usually DAW ebooks on first release start with 'Version_1'. With each phase of corrections the no.increases,so ver. 5 probably means all or most of the initial errors have been corrected.

edit - see the kindle sample for version no.

edit 2 -The Dragonbone Chair (Memory, Sorrow & Thorn #1) by Tad Williams is for £0.99

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dragonbone-Chair-Memory-Sorrow-Thorn-ebook/dp/B00YET9WS4
https://www.kobo.com/ie/en/ebook/the-dragonbone-chair

As for the UK ebooks which came out recently,it depends if they used the old DAW copies or did their own scans of the old UK editions from Orbit.I have no idea.Either way, they must have proof-read them  before finalizing the ebooks for publication.

[Werthead]

On 13/01/2017 at 7:51 AM, JEORDHl said:

I don't know. For myself, with this novella [short novel, whatever] that sense of Otherness that the Sithi and Norns had in the original series was made mundane. Ho hum.   

I didn't really get that in the first series. They're elves/dark elves and proceed to do very elvish/dark elvish things.

[Lord Varys]

Been through two thirds of the new story. I don't know. Didn't connect all that well with. The end seems to sort of fixed, completely draining the story of any tension.

And man, I realized at once how much I hated that stupid Usires religion. 

Making the Norns suddenly 'human' is a strange thing. On the one hand, it is a good thing considering that they actually a culture and people of their own, but then, back in the old trilogy they were basically faceless cannon fodder for the Storm King, making it sort of weird that they actually have their own desires and hopes and all that.

I think it would have worked much better if Tad had begun the story all those decades later where the new book is going to begin with telling important events via flashbacks if necessary. 

Spoiler

 

That whole discussion about the Norns beginning to interbreed with the humans was very strange, too. I waited the entire time that they mention that hunter chap with the dog's helmet from the original trilogy. He would have been such a half-breed or fully human slave of the queen, right? But he still greatly distinguished himself in the war, killing Amerasu.

The fact that those Black Rimmersmen are apparently missing, too, also doesn't fit all that well with the story. Those people were a thing back in the first trilogy.

The Norns considering the fall of Asu'a a tragedy also doesn't sit well with me. Nisses supposedly came from the far north, near or from Nakkiga, and he gave Fingil the power to overcome the defenses of the Sithi and bring them all down. That would suggest that Utuk'ku masterminded the destruction of her cousins and then later used the twisted Ineluki for her own ends as well.

It might be that the run-of-the-mill Norns have no idea about that plans but, then, they also know that they were at war with the Sithi as well as the humans during Ineluki's campaign.

And the queen going to sleep is also nothing that was in the last trilogy. There here sliver mask was destroyed and her powers were drained, but she was still alive and conscious. This whole sleeping thing just seems to be the excuse to depict all those Norns plotting and bickering.

 

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 hours ago, Werthead said:

I didn't really get that in the first series. They're elves/dark elves and proceed to do very elvish/dark elvish things.

Exactly, this is a first time we get a Sithi/Norn POV or anything more than an outsider's view of their culture.  I found myself looking at the Norns with a lot of sympathy.  

I really want to know what it was that destroyed the Garden.  If it was natural and the Garden is on the same Planet as Osten Ard... why have the Norns and Sithi never tried to go back to the Garden?  Doesn't that also suggest they can't.  If something was so bad it destroyed a continent, and it was on the same planet as Osten Ard, how was Osten Ard not affected by that disaster?  As such, I think this is more evidence that the Sithi and Norns are literally "otherworldly".

[Derfel Cadarn]

On my last re-read I looked at the clues as to whether the Garden wason the same world - I'd say it is.

The ships landed to the east of the Osten Ard continent, but continental changes drove up mountains blocking access to that coast.  My take is the world was in turmoil, hence why the exodus fleet stayed at sea for so long.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

13 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

On my last re-read I looked at the clues as to whether the Garden wason the same world - I'd say it is.

The ships landed to the east of the Osten Ard continent, but continental changes drove up mountains blocking access to that coast.  My take is the world was in turmoil, hence why the exodus fleet stayed at sea for so long.

I'm think the time is another clue of interstellar distance.  Why, after so much time has no one tried to go back to the Garden?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

DC,

Why do the Sithi and Norns have a year at a different length from the Osten Ard year?

[Darth Richard II]

59 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

DC,

Why do the Sithi and Norns have a year at a different length from the Osten Ard year?

Isn't their year a century? That makes sense when you consider how long they live.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

18 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Isn't their year a century? That makes sense when you consider how long they live.

I disagree.  A year is, normally, a full cycle if seasons.  The same seasons hold in OA as here.  Why would the Sithi/Norn year be 400 cycles of seasons?  Why would the Garden, if on the same planet, have such a dramatically different seasonal cycle?

[Darth Richard II]

I think you are reading way to much into stuff here.

 

Might as well ask why the Norns speak English, well, they must obviously be from future earth!

[Derfel Cadarn]

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I'm think the time is another clue of interstellar distance.  Why, after so much time has no one tried to go back to the Garden?

The books make it clear geological changes have made the eastern ocean unreacjable by land

[Darth Richard II]

Also, you know, it's a fantasy. A wizard did it.

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I disagree.  A year is, normally, a full cycle if seasons.  The same seasons hold in OA as here.  Why would the Sithi/Norn year be 400 cycles of seasons?  Why would the Garden, if on the same planet, have such a dramatically different seasonal cycle?

It's been 3,000 years since the Keida'ya arrived in Osten Ard (Heart of What Was Lost gives us that figure for the first time). A Keida'ya Great Year is 62.5 years (as 500 years = 8 Great Years in Heart of What Was Lost).

A Keida'ya lifespan appears to be about 6,000 years (Amerasu Shipborn was "in middle age"), although I'm not sure about that. If that was so, there should be lots of them who were still alive in the Garden, instead of just Utuk'ku.

The Keida'ya appear to have landed on the east coast of Osten Ard, as the Rimmersmen came from the continent or islands across the western ocean.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

18 minutes ago, Werthead said:

It's been 3,000 years since the Keida'ya arrived in Osten Ard (Heart of What Was Lost gives us that figure for the first time). A Keida'ya Great Year is 62.5 years (as 500 years = 8 Great Years in Heart of What Was Lost).

A Keida'ya lifespan appears to be about 6,000 years (Amerasu Shipborn was "in middle age"), although I'm not sure about that. If that was so, there should be lots of them who were still alive in the Garden, instead of just Utuk'ku.

The Keida'ya appear to have landed on the east coast of Osten Ard, as the Rimmersmen came from the continent or islands across the western ocean.

Again, what catastrophe could destroy a continent and leaves other continents capable of habitation but would prevent a return to the original continent after 3000 years?  How big is the planet on which OA exists to facilitate this?

[Werthead]

6 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Again, what catastrophe could destroy a continent and leaves other continents capable of habitation but would prevent a return to the original continent after 3000 years?  How big is the planet on which OA exists to facilitate this?

You could ask the Valyrians or Numenoreans  

[Darth Richard II]

https://frinkiac.com/meme/S11E04/567160.jpg?b64lines=IEFILiBZRUFILiBXRUxMLCBXSEVORVZFUgogWU9VIE5PVElDRSBTT01FVEhJTkcgTElLRQogVEhBVCBBIFdJWkFSRCBESUQgSVQ=

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

You could ask the Valyrians or Numenoreans  

Neither were full sized continents and neither had years completely different from the people around them.