Raymond's Reviews #41

%S Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn
%T The Dragonbone Chair
%A Tad Williams
%I DAW Books
%D Nov 1989
%O paperback, US$5.95/$21.95
%P 783 (in galley)
%G 0-88677-384-9

%S Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn
%T The Stone of Farewell
%A Tad Williams
%I DAW Books
%D Aug 1990
%O paperback, US$5.95/$21.95
%P 592 (in galley)
%G 0-88677-435-7

These are the first two volumes of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, an epic fantasy trilogy by the author of Tailchaser's Song. In them, Williams tells the story of Simon, the scullion boy of Castle Hayholt, a gangly dreamer who has just begun to find a niche in life apprenticed to the magician Dr. Morgenes when his world is shattered by the machinations of the evil priest Pryrates.

The High King, Elias, has fallen under Pryrates's influence; and Pryrates is himself a tool of the undead Storm King, Ineluki. The Storm King, once the greatest of the immortals men call Sithi, has brooded over his revenge for five centuries; now he is ready to strike. A freezing winter is howling down from the north of the world, fell things walk out of the wastelands, and the King of all Osten Ard is descending into madness.

Simon is forced to flee the castle and seek out Prince Josua, the King's unworldly brother, for only Josua can rally Osten Ard against the Storm King's minions. Simon's ties to Morgenes involve him in the quest for the three Swords of Power which may (if prophecy is correct) be the key to the Storm King's undoing.

But Simon himself may be more than anyone but the Storm King knows. He saves the life of a prince of the Sithi twice; he strikes a blow against the dragon Igjarjuk and lives; and the hell-huntsmen of Ineluki's dread queen seek him with a special malice. And, increasingly, he dreams prophetic dreams...

These books are wonderfully written, but they wear their sources far too plainly on their sleeves. Castle Hayholt is too like Gormenghast; the Church of Usires Aedon is too like Christianity; the Rimmersmen are too obviously land-bound Vikings; the `trolls' are mountain-dwelling Eskimos; the Hernystiri are idealized pagan Welshmen; Ineluki and his Red Hand are Morgoth and the Nazgul in drag; et painful cetera. They read almost as if Williams thought it would be cute to be so obvious -- and matters are not helped by the ingenuous little note at the beginning of Volume I suggesting that in Osten Ard, things are not always what they seem.

Williams has obvious gifts for descriptive writing and characterization -- but I never quite overcame my uneasy feeling that I was being had by a writer who is either incapable of real originality or out to work quotation of myths and other fantasists' motifs into some kind of intentional pastiche of the entire genre. For example: when his pseudo-Viking Rimmersmen started talking about "Udun One-Eye" my suspension of disbelief just shattered; if you're writing about an entire secondary world supposedly unconnected to ours it just doesn't do to run historical god-names through a phonetic Cuisinart and think you've created a convincing pantheon.

Newcomers to the genre would likely find the books' flaws much less obtrusive. It must be said that at the microlevel of prose construction, descriptive vividness and the telling detail of character Williams is very good and very involving; better, indeed, than most of the writers his world recalls. If those are the qualities you like in fiction, you will really enjoy these books. The third and final volume, To Green Angel Tower, is already in the works.