![]() ![]() Old and wiser when I stared the second trilogy, I reacted differently to The Witchwood Crown than I did to the youthful exuberance of The Dragonbone Chair all those years ago. This thirty year gap reflected my experiences as a reader and person. ![]() There is, cunningly, a thirty year gap between the publication of the first in the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn and The Last King Series, and also a parallel thirty year gap in the actual narrative of Simon and Miriamele. It is possible that you might want to plunge straight into The Last King of Osten Ard trilogy. It starts just after the end of the action of To Green Angel and introduces some of the characters who will appear in The Witchwood Crown, 30 years later in the series timeline… At 100,000 it’s a relative minnow in the Tad writerverse. As a bridging book between To Green Angel Tower and The Witchwood Crown, the first book of the second trilogy, we have The Heart of What Was Lost. By the time you get to Dragonbone’s climactic scene, a battle with a dragon in the frozen north, it’s quite inconceivable you won’t be fully paid up for the rest of an amazing trip.Ī quick introduction to Osten Ard: The Heart of What Was Lost (An Osten Ard Novel)īut there is now a shorter way into the Osten Ard world. Both are now major actors in a cosmic battle between good and evil and the stage is perfectly set for the two further parts of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, Stone of Farewell and To Green Angel Tower (the latter so vast it is divided in two in paperback form – Siege and Storm ). He encounters Miriamele, John’s granddaughter, on the road. Simon is the unwitting dupe caught up and then cast out in the upheaval. All is not well in the succession to the throne and there are dark forces conspiring to topple the empire. Simon is a kitchen boy serving his time in the feudal household of the good King John in the Hayholt, the fortress at the heart of the Osten Ard empire. As at the beginning of any journey, there’s a bit of familiarisation before we can properly get going on the epic quest behind this book and its two (or three depending on how you read them) successors. The inspiration of George RR Martin’s later, multi-character, relationship-based epic fantasy is the starting place for many, maybe the majority of Tad fans. So where to begin? Where it all began: The Dragonbone Chair (Book One in the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series) I’m not sure if anyone has tried adding up the number of published words but if we assume the minimum length of any of his series books is 300,000 ( and many are much longer) my guess would be in excess of 5 million words all told. When discussing the work of Tad Williams, three words tend to crop up: ‘beloved’ (as in best-loved author) ‘warm hearted’ (his delight in creating empathic heroes and heroines) and ‘immersive’ (his ability to conjure massive, sweeping worlds rivalling Tolkien). ![]()
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