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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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8 hours ago, kuenjato said:

That's not... hopeful.

I'm mixed on TWC, halfway through this re-read. The Norn stuff is pretty good, but everything with Simon and Miri and Morgan just drags. So much repetition. It feels like half of it could have been cut out.

Same in EoG so far. As bad as TWC was and slow-moving to boot.

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It's tough.

I've got The Uninhabitable Earth and Kay's latest waiting in the wings, but I'm making myself finish EoG at this point because I know myself enough that if I drop EoG I won't pick it back up. Ever. 

My opinion of Williams writing isn't necessarily diminished, but I'm kind of sad about this. 

 

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3 hours ago, JEORDHl said:

It's tough.

I've got The Uninhabitable Earth and Kay's latest waiting in the wings, but I'm making myself finish EoG at this point because I know myself enough that if I drop EoG I won't pick it back up. Ever. 

My opinion of Williams writing isn't necessarily diminished, but I'm kind of sad about this. 

 

Kay's latest is getting very stellar reviews. Thansk for mentioning The Uninhabitable Earth because that looks interesting.

On 6/14/2019 at 3:54 PM, Lord Patrek said:

Same in EoG so far. As bad as TWC was and slow-moving to boot.

I read samples from Empire of Grass on Amazon and once again did not care for it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

In case anyone else is like me, having not read The Witchwood Crown yet, that nice review does have at least one really big spoiler for the first volume that I saw even in my attempt to glaze over for a general feeling. No big deal, I'm never upset if I spoil myself accidentally on media that's been out for a long period of time, but beware. Sounds like a glowing review, though! 

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59 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Makes me wonder how you all feel about Williams other works. I loved all of them, yes even Shadowmarch, so I'm not too worried. That being said I _should_ be starting TWC this weekend.

I posted my impressions in the other thread (which makes me wonder why the link is in this, soon to be terminated thread, but whatever) on TWC/EoG, which I'm mixed overall on (avoiding spoilers). As for his other works, MS&T was hugely influential in my early-mid teens as a more sophisticated take on epic fantasy (late 80's - early 90's), and though I can recognize the pacing issues in the 2nd and 3rd volumes, I feel overall it is a classic of the genre. I burned out on Otherland about midway through the 3rd volume when I came to recognize how artificial some of the storytelling techniques he was using -- to the point that the serial almost felt like unintentional parody concerning the employment of cliffhangers; unintentional, as it was milked to excess in the final volume without much in the way of commentary. Worse, by extending that series to four volumes, mostly so that Tad could play around in certain sandboxes (he himself admitted it it was a kitchen-sink project), the promise of the overall story was stretched too thin. I recall the beginning of Shadowmarch as a free serial on his webpage, but had lost interest in epic fantasy by the time the books came out and/or was more interested in more challenging books when reading genre. 

Some of my impressions might be age. I'm a lot more sensitive now when it feels like an author is meandering along and/or indulging in their pet proclivities to the detriment of the book, than I was as a teenager. It's one of several reasons why I could never read all of the Wheel of Time again. Tad's nowhere near Jordan was in his late period, but both TWC and EoG are fitting too little story into too many pages, IMO. I also wasn't impressed with some of the decisions made in revisiting Osten Ard: how certain characters were introduced, had developed, and so forth. 

To balance that out, there are other threads which were enjoyable / impressive to read - the Norns, some of the Nabban and Thrithings stuff. Unfortunately, woven into these well-planned and executed sections are several threads & characters that feel recycled and/or are a real slog.

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