Memory, Sorrow, & Thorn series

[zoran]

Originally Posted by Neon

I've never read any of Tad Williams, but have read good reviews about him. I'm considering the purchase of the Memory, Sorrow, & Thorn series .... is this a good one to read?

Well, to give my own oppinion, I would say that Williams is an average writer. He has nice sentences, and some scenes in the book are described very nicely and convincingly.

But, he has horrible feeling for dynamics. His books are too slow, nothing happens for hundreds of pages, and complete Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series could be shortened in half without losing anything important or interesting.

Secondly, I find him very unimaginative - M,S&T is consisted of cliches seen milions of times, and I allmost gave up reading on first book when it became clear that the main character will be "An orphan of secret origin, who is presently kitchen boy, but who will eventualy do great things and turn to be a royal figure". It sucks so much that it hurts, plus David Eddings has allready written this book. Not to mention Walt Disney's "The Sword in the Stone" cartoon.

So, the books are fine to read if you have a need to kill a lot of time, but they hardly justify the amount of attention they receive.

[Grimward]

A beautiful aspect of the Chrons...everyone's entitled to an opinion....

[WhiteWolf]

Yes, but I agree with this one:

Originally Posted by Tobytwo

I liked the way Williams took established fantasy stereotypes (elves, wizards, druids, dwarves etc) and did new things with them and made them his. The book had a sense of solidity that I feel a lot of fantasy lacks.

... they are great novels, and well worth the time you can spend reading them. Very good stuff overall!

[Grimward]

Me too, WW, me too.

[zoran]

Now I would say:

Originally Posted by Grimward

A beautiful aspect of the Chrons...everyone's entitled to an opinion....

[Tobytwo]

Although I stick with what I said, I think Zoran raises good points and certainly isn't wrong. To me, Williams is good at making cliches solid and credible (up to the disappointing twist in the end, which undid a lot of good work) - but they are still cliches. I suppose you could say that Williams is very good in his particular niche, but it's a narrow and crowded niche nevertheless. Given that fantasy is supposed to be about imagination, there isn't much room to do really innovative things in the "A bit like Tolkein" corner.

I would agree that Williams is not at his best writing about action, and that he can wander off. There are several times when Simon gets lost, which all go on way too long and add very little to the stories.

Where I thought he really did well, though, was turning the cliches into something solid. Simon's relationship with Miriamele, for instance, is pretty credible, and Aditu the elf is far more likeable than the usual wishy-washy, noble-stereotype elves of worse fantasy of this kind. Likewise Binabik the dwarf is made interesting with some (I think) Inuit influences, and the druid Geloe has a personality beyond the usual role that druids tend to fulfil in fantasy. The only one who stood out as weak was the knight Camaris, who really was a cardboard cut-out. But then writing about near-perfection is not easy.