Epic beginning to an epic cycle (The Dragonbone Chair - Tad Williams)

Member Name: mpeh

Product:	The Dragonbone Chair - Tad Williams
Date:	03/10/01 (67 review reads)
Rating:

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I just noticed, the description of this product given by Dooyoo is a lot more accurate than a lot of their descriptions. Good one Dooyoo.

This is the first book in Tad Williams epic trilogy now published in four parts in paper back, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. In hardback the three volumes are this one 'The Dragonbone Chair', 'The Stone of Farewell' and 'To Green Angel Tower'. It appears Williams fell into the same trap that many trilogy writers do, they say it'll be a trilogy, or whatever, and then write a last book that is so large it needs to be published in two paperback volumes. In this case these volumes are called 'Siege' and 'Storm'.

I first read this series what I thought was a few years ago but upon closer inspection it was more like seven which makes me feel too old, never mind that. I'm now rereading them having found the entire set looking brand new in a second hand bookshop, that's a bargain I thought and here I am again. In between reading these the first time and now I've read the other series by Williams, the Otherland cycle which I thoroughly enjoyed. Having returned to his first major publication I am pleased to find that it is as good as I remembered it being. One of the press comments on the front is 'the fantasy War and Peace'. Now I've struggled through a lot of the translation of war and peace and I think this far outranks it. One of the problems with 'classics' is that they don't have to be all that great, there are modern authors who, due to a better education and general world understanding write better novels than those authors of the classics we all had to study in school (everyone must have done at least one). Now don't get me wrong a lot of the classics are very good, fine but some of them aren't, in fact some of them would only make Mills and Boon nowadays. Anyway my point is that if you've read War and Peace, this is nothing l
ike it, at all.

In some ways this is a fantasy classic, in all ways an epic. It takes as our hero Simon, a scullery boy in the kitchen of the great castle in the capital of a newly forged realm. Williams takes all the ingredients of fantasy and mixes them up very successfully into a complex story with so much depth you might think it was Tolkien. Now I'm not one to throw that name around. Having carped about classics not really being here is one that deserves the name. The Lord of the Rings is still one of the best books ever written. Partly because it was effectively the culmination of a life's work, partly because the author had a perfect understanding of the prose he was using being a language professor and partly because he managed to take every folk tale from English cultural history and adapt it into Middle Earth. One problem for fantasy novels post Lord of the Rings is that they can easily be held up to it as 'copies'. This is unfair as Tolkien did base his world on the myths of everyone so that if you now use those same myths you are 'Tolkienesque'. Anyway this series is comparable, in a good way.

Admittedly the thing that does smack of Tolkien in this series are the 'elves' which Williams calls the Zida'ya or Sithi. They are very elf like but Williams makes the concept his own. They are much more alien than Tolkien manages to make his elves (or elfs from his old English style?) and much more fluid. There is very little similarity on the whole history front either apart from 'the furthest west' as the afterlife or second part of immortality. When reading the series you aren't continuously thinking 'this smacks of Tolkien' the way you are with some authors, this happily stands up on it's own and then runs away with you.

The book is set in a land named Osten Ard, the high king Prestor John who bound the whole land together under himself is dying, rapidly, and passing the th
rone onto his eldest son Elias. As the land breaks apart under Elias' misrule the adventure takes off. Williams takes a leisurely pace, in fact this is the only 'criticism' I could level at this novel if criticism it is, and there is a lot of background and scene setting. Basically Simon sets off almost accidentally from his home after he discovers the levels of depravation of the evil priest counselling the king and then suffers the consequences.

After a long while a heroic quest ensues and the book has so wrapped you up with background and characters that you follow along quite happily after. As with a lot of fantasy novels although you start only following one person or group after you have become sympathetic to other characters you split your time between them. This does happen here but Williams also uses the technique of following much more minor characters as a window on what is happening in the rest of the world, a technique that adds depth to the story. Again this isn't a unique thing, many other authors do it but that doesn't devalue the effect it has.

These books are very smooth, really very smooth. You sit down to read for a bit and then a hundred pages later look up and decide that maybe you can spare some more time, you'll just read a little more. The slow pace is deceptive as you follow events in such a wealth of description that you don't realise you've been reading for all that long. On the other hand don't let my continual reference to the slow pace put you off, when needed Williams can up the heat and excitement. There are various ways he raises the tension. In the 'middle' of some things he will jump to another set of characters and then return to the tense atmosphere later, leaving you a cliff-hanger as it were, also the contrast between fast and slow, tense and relaxed heightens the tension. Giving you the description right through the eyes of the character, including the distractions
of hunger, thirst, wounds or whatever is another way of placing you right in the action. Most of the narrative is given in the nearly neutral 'he did this and went there and then this happened' type style. Although you are definitely following a character and you get told what they are thinking you still get to 'see' things which they can't. When Williams switches to a purely character based perception he often leaves you knowing more than the character resulting in you reading and partly going 'the bad guy's still around somewhere, no don't relax you're still under attack' and partly feeling that it's you under threat yourself.

The beginning of a wonderful series I don't think these books get enough attention. If you liked the Otherland series then in my opinion (:-)) these are much better. 'Epic fantasy you can get lost in for days, not just hours' as it says on the back.

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