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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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Well, it has been some time since I last read the series, but I'll try to answer:

 

 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).

I don't even remember who that was and I used to be a rabid fan of the series back then ;).

As to the other stuff:

1. Everybody was continuously underestimating the level of Pryrates' craziness. He was only as powerful as he was and achieved as much because he was taking the risks that everybody else considered to be mad. He had been lucky for a long time, but it caught up to him in the end, when he imagined that he'd be able to control re-incarnated Ineluki.

2. Yea, I think that Nisses was Uttu'ku's tool, but Ineluki-as-the-Storm King never learned about it. Afterall, his power and presence seemed to fluctuate over time, IIRC, and was at it's nadir in the years following the fall of A'sua. I don't think that his creation was a goal of the Norns, as his actions and his spell seemed to be completely unprecedented among the Gardenborn. But his existence was overall helpful to their goal of killing  all humans, so they allied themselves with him.

No clue about Nissess' and Hjeldin's death, but wanting to bring back Ineluki as means of harnessing the destructive power of his spell is entirely in-line with  him being a loyal servant of Utuk'ku. Putting the Storm King in a body really isn't  bringing him back as Ineluki the Sitha anyway.

3. As discorporate entity, the Storm King could be kept away from places more effectively than the living Gardenborn? Dunno.

4. The Storm King was using his initial spell as a foundation for his other grand sorcery, including the time-turning. Therefore he couldn't return to the time _before_ he started casting it. What the spell was originally supposed to accomplish - it was supposed to work as a weapon of mass destruction against the Rimmersmen, which it did, only at that point it wasn't enough. Still,  it allowed a part of his people led by Amaresu to escape and survive.

What the Storm King intended to do with his temporal shenangians apart from slaughtering the Rimmersmen and preventing the destruction of A'sua - no clue. Personally, I thought that it would have been more interesting for the novel to let him succeed and have it turn out like nothing Utuk'ku imagined or Our Heroes feared. _That_ would have been an original,  worthy conclusion to the series, given that it already had a  villain with highly sympathetic motivations. Williams chose to go for the low-hanging fruit of stereotypical "and magic departs" ending, alas.

Oh, and I never understood why Elias was supposed to be a good vessel for Ineluki - surely a Gardenborn would have been more compatible? Rule of cool, or drama in this case, I guess.

5. They were sustained by the same spell, so they must have died after it failed? OTOH, now that there are sequels in the pipeline, who knows.

6. Simon was attuned to the dreamroads (IIRC) and Ineluki specifically, and  was seen there by him and Utuk'ku. They assumed that he was able to glean and understand much more than he did, so they tried to take him out.

7. I don't remember. Honestly, Elias probably wished his brother dead anyway and his sacrifice may have been intended  for some other purpose. Didn't Pryrates originally promise to bring his beloved wife back from the dead and only gradually changed the hook to personal immortality? And since Elias blamed Josua for her death in the first place, well...

8. I am sure that Utuk'ku had other human pawns waiting in the wings if Pryrates failed to deliver. See Nisses.

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  • 2 weeks later...

It is not.

The series is planned as a trilogy (although with Tad one never knows)  and then there will be two additional novelettes. The first will be about the Battle of Nakkiga set after the end of To Greenangeltower. What the second will be about is still unknown - at least to us.

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5 hours ago, ylvs said:

It is not.

The series is planned as a trilogy (although with Tad one never knows)  and then there will be two additional novelettes. The first will be about the Battle of Nakkiga set after the end of To Greenangeltower. What the second will be about is still unknown - at least to us.

Is "novelette" really even the right word anymore, Ylvs? The first one is ~300 pages. Sure, a novella for Tad Williams; just a novel for most other authors. IMO.

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  • 1 month later...

The Heart of What Was Lost: A Novel of Osten Ard will be published in January 3rd, 2017. The length of the book is 368 pages.

http://edelweiss.abovethetreeline.com/ProductDetailPage.aspx?sku=075641248X

Quote

A short sequel to the epic Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy, which propelled Tad Williams into bestseller status and defined him as one of the most important fantasy writers of our time.

The Heart of What Was Lost is a direct sequel to Tad Williams’ To Green Angel Tower, the New York Times bestselling third volume of his high fantasy trilogy, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. Heart takes place between the end of that beloved novel and its year-later epilogue, and tells the story of how newly-crowned King Simon and Queen Miriamele’s forces, drove the Norns, the most human-antagonistic fae race, back into their mountain stronghold and out of the lands of men. Combining characters from the first trilogy and the upcoming second trilogy, The Heart of What Was Lost is a perfect bridge novel and introduction to The Witchwood Crown, the upcoming first volume of The Last King of Osten Ard, which will be published just three months after this novel.

Series Overview: The New York Times-bestselling epic fantasy trilogy Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, about a young castle servant who saves his kingdom from evil, defined Tad Williams as one of the most important fantasy writers of our time. This book picks up right where the series left off.

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On 23/3/2016 at 5:04 PM, Jussi said:

The Heart of What Was Lost: A Novel of Osten Ard will be published in January 3rd, 2017. The length of the book is 368 pages.

http://edelweiss.abovethetreeline.com/ProductDetailPage.aspx?sku=075641248X

 

 

Great! Super pumped about this anouncement! I´ll probably be re-reading the trilogy at the end of the year then to get ready.

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On 1/9/2016 at 8:22 PM, Maia said:

I don't even remember who that was and I used to be a rabid fan of the series back then ;).

 

Vara is Vorsheva in the German translation. No idea why they changed the name.

And one of the many reasons why I only read originals these days. ;)

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  • 3 weeks later...
4 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Isn't that just a side story?

Dunno about "just", but yes, it's a bridge novel between the old books and the new. Not too much different than A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, except that it takes place immediately after To Green Angel Tower. And it's a bit longer, and is one complete new book instead of separate stories.

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