r/TadWilliams

I am reading To Green Angel Tower, and just reached the point where Cadrach is with Miriamele and Binabik, in Hayholt's tunnels, and tells them the full story about what Pryrates wanted and how he didn't care about the swords. Miriamele is angry at Cadrach for betraying them, and when Binabik points out that Cadrach didn't know them and he can't be blamed for telling Pryrates information under torture, Miriamele says she's angry because if he had told them the full story about the swords sooner, they would be able to do something.

I don't really understand why Miriamele is angry with Cadrach. Cadrach already told Miriamele, after they escaped Aspitis, that Du Svardenvyrd is an evil book and contains information that no human should know. What I understood from it was that Josua's company should not be trusting this book as a way of fighting Ineluki, and the poems are going to lead them down the wrong path. I kept expecting Miriamele to warn Josua and co, especially when she discovered that Tiamak had a page of the book, but she never did.

Do you think Miriamele was angry with Cadrach partly because she blamed herself for not warning everyone about Du Svardenvyrd when she could, and especially for not letting Cadrach look at Tiamak's page of the book (since if he had, he might have said something)?

Is it ever explained exactly how Josua lost his hand? I am rereading all the books for the first time in 25 years (doing audiobooks actually) and I know it had something to do with Elias' wife Hylissa but do they ever clearly explain it?

Did they ever go into how Jarnulf was able to get a hold of a League of the Scroll emblem? I know that it was explained that Jarnulf was with Josua for a bit, but I was still confused on that detail because apparently the emblem was not like the others? It could be possibly I missed a flashback or am forgetting something.

Also, was there ever a flashback where Jarnulf went into detail about his time with "father." I remember him talking about his time as a slave and being trained by a Norn as well as his time with the Rimmersgard heathens and I know he mentions being tutored by a religious priest he calls father, but I do not remember if they go into detail. Josua was wounded at the time, correct? So all of the things Jarnulf was interpreting was Josua's meanderings? Am I getting that right? Everything seemed to happen so fast with the Josua reveal, I'm just starting to process it.

i’m just starting the series and only one chapter in but i’m picking up on some religious undertones. is it very religious in its themes and whatnot? i despise religion and truly think that blind faith in one’s religion is responsible for more death and destruction in this world than anything else. knowing that about me, do you think this series is something i should dive into?

I’ve been interested in reading Dragonbone Chair for a while. I’m interested in finding a fantasy series with a lot of depth (world building I mean not necessarily philosophical depth) that works for me. I began reading and was loving it at first. First few chapters I was locked in. I’m about 100 pages in and feeling like I’ve lost momentum. What is your advice: should I stick with it to a certain point, or should I be catching the bug at this point if I’m going to enjoy it long term?

I recently started listening to the Audiobook for The Dragonbone Chair as part of my audible monthly sub and have really been enjoying it. Hearing it read aloud has made the text even more evocative. Tad Williams makes excellent use of metaphors and similes to convey images and moods. At times the voice actor Andrew Wincott's character speech comes out different than I imagined it would be but it is still very enjoyable.

I haven't done a read-through of MST in probably 10+ years and had totally forgotten how prophetic Simon's dreams were. For some reason I had in my head that most of those visions were after being splashed by Igjarjuk's blood.

What have others discovered on a reread that you didn't notice in the first read through?

FOR FANS OF COMPLEX WORLDBUILDING and fully-realized characters; readers of George R. R. Martin, John Gwynne, Joe Abercrombie, Patrick Rothfuss, and Brandon Sanderson will be thrilled

A QUEER ROBIN HOOD: One of the novel’s main characters is a steal-from-the-rich type bandit who is very handsome, very blond, and very romantically interested in other men

A BREEZE TO READ: Thanks to a fast-moving plot, lots of action, and a merry sense of humor, the pages of Tad Williams’s latest fly by

A STANDALONE ADVENTURE IN A BESTSELLING WORLD: Set in the same world as the bestselling Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy, which included DAW's first book to hit the New York Times bestseller list

INSPIRED BESTSELLING FANTASY EPICS: Osten Ard has inspired authors including George R. R. Martin, Patrick Rothfuss, Brandon Sanderson, and Christopher Paolini

2.4 MILLION COPIES SOLD IN SERIES: The original Osten Ard trilogy has sold over 2,400,000 copies across all formats

This book made me love Williams even more. Even though I think the longer books are more to his strength, but I just loved what he did here. 

I should admit that Isgrimnur and Gurtun were my two least favourite characters in MST, because of how closed minded they both are. There were parts of MST where I liked each, but my overall impression of them was very unfavourable. I am also quite biased in any conflict between humans and other species because of the way we sprawl and leave a path of destruction behind us.

So getting me to empathise with the Norns would not have been very difficult. Even when they show abhorrent behaviour, like wanting to execute the lower caste/slaves for not wanting to go into the Deep Darkness. Yeah, they're not great people, but no one gets to decide who is "good enough" to live in this world. Especially for an entire race. Especially if the people deciding are the ones who started the cycle of violence to begin with (or their ancestors did).

But I did not expect that the book would make me despise the rimmersmen. I felt my blood boil when I read some of Isgrimnur's chapters, where he talked about wanting to kill an entire race, or showed Brindur's bloodlust. So many people died, because Isgrimnur was grieving and didn't want let the Norns just live in hiding, or reach a peace treaty with them.

And it wasn't just Isgrimnur's PoV. Viyeki uses the same words to describe Floki as humans do to describe the giants. The book really portrayed the rimmersmen as barbaric and brutal. 

Interestingly, it was only the rimmersmen who were being portrayed like this. Porto and Endri both found the war pointless. The language used during their PoVs is much more grounded in the devastation of a continued war. Even though Endri died hallucinating and talking nonsense, I found him (and his single-minded obssession to go home) the sanest of all the humans in this story. It was that same single-minded obssession to go home that stopped zombie-Endri from marching into the camp to murder the living. The end of the book was devastating, but incredibly beautiful.

Other things I really enjoyed: 

1. I also loved the portrayal of how dangerous desperate people get. Especially people at the point of extinction. I really don't think the humans ever appreciated it. Isgrimnur did not seem to understand it even when Suno'ku told him.

2. It was interesting to me how different the Norns were to the Sitha. They have sch a respect for formality and hierarchy. While the Sitha have respect for their elders, it was made very clear in MST that the elders can't order the other Sitha to do anything. This is very different amongst the Norns, to the point that Viyeki is devasted to find out about his master's supposed betrayal, and wants to kill himself. I wondered whether Williams was linking their respect for hierarchy to their ruthlessness, or whether the respect for hierarchy is a product of the gruelling lives they had inside a mountain.

3. What it means to survive. For the Norns, it was initially to fight with tooth and nail, but then to surrender their most fierce fighter and seal themselves off from the world. And maybe choose to be builders. It will be interesting to see how the society will have changed by the time the Queen awakes and what her reaction will be. It was also interesting that Akhenabi decided to join this coalition. I liked that Williams did not portray him as simply an evil character. I hope we see more of him in the Last King of Osten Ard books. He would make for a complex and interesting villain.

4. Edited to add: the scene between Suno'ku and Isgrimnur. It was such a devastating scene. How Isgrimnur came to have respect for her, but even then he couldn't offer better terms. And her parting words "Then we have little reason to speak more" even though they both share the same pain and they want the same thing. They are the same people. But they couldn't find a common ground.

Two things I wished were a bit different:

1. I wish the Norns weren't so similar to humans. In MST we are told a lot that the humans can't decipher the Sitha, but in this book we're shown that the Norns have similar emotions and social structures as humans. I guess Williams wanted to de-dehumanise them. But I wonder if that would still have been possible if he maintained an element of alien-ness.

2. I wish the book leaned more into the pointlessness of blood feuds. We saw that some of the Norns understood it. But it seems like the humans (at least the decision-makers) didn't appreciate that they're sacrificing the lives of more people and bringing more misery by continuing this war. It isn't until Ayuminu tells Isgrimur that he decides to parley and even then he offers terms that are basically a joke. I thought the Brindur's first reaction to Floki's death would be a catalyst. But he only became more bloodthirsty after.

 

So what were your thoughts on this book? What did you like the most about it?