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Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn/The Heart of what was Lost/The Last King of Osten Ard


Ser Scot A Ellison

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Geez, the world is a tiny place.

Of course I am that one -I sincerly doubt there is anyone else with this name.

If you live that close you gotta mark Tad's reading in Kassel in your calendar: 13th of October. Reading first, drinks later. It will be tons of fun.

And I am always in for hanging out talking books anyway. Let's wait until you read TWC though.

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I'm pretty sure I'll show up in October. Last saw Ted early in the 2000s when he came to Frankfurt and around the same time for a tour connected the Otherland audio drama.

And we could, of course, also not talk about the new book. But then, it comes out in two months now, doesn't it?

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Well, I started The Witchwood Crown yesterday and it's not a book that captures your imagination from the get-go. Tad Williams' works are never fast-paced affairs, but this one is extremely slow-moving. Simon and Miriamele have not aged well and the narrative-thus far at least-suffers from too many POV characters.

I still have a long way to go and I'm pretty sure things will pick up later on. And yet, I did not expect this sort of underwhelming beginning. . . :unsure:

Tad Williams always starts slow, so this is no surprise. But I was expecting this return to Osten Ard to grab hold of me from the first chapter, and after about a hundred pages I'm not feeling it. Yet.

Keeping my fingers crossed, as this is one of my most eagerly anticipated SFF books of 2017.

Patrick

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2 hours ago, Lord Patrek said:

Well, I started The Witchwood Crown yesterday and it's not a book that captures your imagination from the get-go. Tad Williams' works are never fast-paced affairs, but this one is extremely slow-moving. Simon and Miriamele have not aged well and the narrative-thus far at least-suffers from too many POV characters.

I still have a long way to go and I'm pretty sure things will pick up later on. And yet, I did not expect this sort of underwhelming beginning. . . :unsure:

Tad Williams always starts slow, so this is no surprise. But I was expecting this return to Osten Ard to grab hold of me from the first chapter, and after about a hundred pages I'm not feeling it. Yet.

Keeping my fingers crossed, as this is one of my most eagerly anticipated SFF books of 2017.

Patrick

How is the prose? Does it feel like a forced-return or fairly natural?

The Dragonbone Chair moved very slowly for its first third -- it was a major, major complaint among the fantasy-nerd circles I traveled in during the late-80's--but I really liked the world-building and the writing itself  -- for a 13 year old it felt very rich compared to the Bog Standard Serials at the time. I burned out on TW with Otherland's over-writing, though... is this much in the same style as that? 

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I've read MST more than two decades ago, so I'm too far-removed to really say. But in Williams' usual style, it is a bit overwritten and long-winded and occasionally repetitive.

That said, I've never had any problems with the author's writing style in the past and it's no problem now. It's more about an extremely slow-moving plot and way too many POV characters in so short a span of pages. . .

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I hope you're right! :)

But you participated in the production of this book, so you have a biased opinion on the subject. You gave The Heart of What Was Lost a 5-star rating even though it suffered from a number of shortcomings, after all.

Still, I want this novel to be one of this year's top SFF reads. And since Tad has always been a slow starter (though I expected more from a book fans have been clamoring for for about two decades), I'm not worried. Yet. . .

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Other opinions are available, Pat.

That said, of course I am mighty biased and yes I consider Tad one of finest author in the genre (besides Gaiman and Rothfuss) and what you call slow I call rich and in depth. I never had issues with the slow starts.

I am mighty curious on your final verdict!

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Having read pretty much everything Tad has written, I'm used to his slow starts. Call me naïve, but I was kind of hoping that he would have learned something from writing the Bobby Dollar books and that in this new series he would avoid most of the pitfalls that some readers found so off-putting in MST. In a way, I was expecting TLKoOA to be MST 2.0. And well, it's not. At least not yet. Everything that people hated about MST is present in TWC.

Provided this book delivers later on, existing Tad Williams fans won't mind much. But this series is unlikely to win the author any new fans.

About 250 pages in, which means that I'm past the 1/3 point. If Tad is up to par, things should start to happen now. Keeping my fingers crossed that it will be so. :)

And if the endgame is has gripping as the one in ASoS, I'll be a happy camper! ;)

 

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I've little problems with slow starts. If something is coming afterwards, that is. However, what I don't like about MST and even some of Tad's later work is his tendency to write from the POV of, let's say, characters who pretty much don't know anything. We are often hanging out with people who are not allowed to talk to the big and wise people.

I hope that's not the case in the new series. And I really hope the second book is not going to start as slow as the second book of MST. That was the moment where I gave up reading two times. Dragging on that 'Binabik in jail' plot as long as he did wasn't very compelling.

But different POVs are actually good. Simon was pretty boring last time.

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Okay, I'm more than halfway through and this remains the most underwhelming Tad Williams book I have ever read.

Now I'm really worried. Especially given how much of a chore some chapters are to read. :(

This could well be Tad's equivalent of Steven Erikson's Toll the Hounds. Hopefully the ending will also save this novel, because I'm not feeling it at all up until this point. . .

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43 minutes ago, Lord Patrek said:

Okay, I'm more than halfway through and this remains the most underwhelming Tad Williams book I have ever read.

Now I'm really worried. Especially given how much of a chore some chapters are to read. :(

This could well be Tad's equivalent of Steven Erikson's Toll the Hounds. Hopefully the ending will also save this novel, because I'm not feeling it at all up until this point. . .

At least it isn't Fall Of Light...

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