Happy Memory(s)
I do like to start the year off with a properly epic series, it’s something of a Tomeopathy tradition, the roots of which can be found in the cold weather, lack of sunlight, shortness of funds and the exuberant use of Christmas book tokens.
You may have noticed from the homepage that Tomeopathy is currently reading Shadowplay by Tad Williams. This was preceded by Shadowmarch and in all likelihood will be followed by Shadowrise and Shadowheart to complete the series. Rather than review them all individually I think I’ll wait until the series is finished. In the meantime I’ll try (try, because it’s a busy time at work, some fool wants a five year plan, which means lots of work and meetings forecasting likely activity. All of this carefully considered background work is then completely ignored because someone, more important but infinitely less informed than me, decides that, quite simply, they’d like the line on the graph to be a bit steeper, they can’t use numbers to elucidate their demand because they haven’t bothered to actually look at them. In twelve short months, I’ll be attempting to explain to the same idiot who insisted on the increased target, why our actual results didn’t match up to their wildly optimistic growth expectations, and biting my tongue instead of showing just how closely our actuals matched the original piece of work. Just to be clear, I’m not bitter, after all if they didn’t make me do this nonsense I might not have a job at all, then how would I pay the bills? Sorry, that rant became so long it almost deserved a post of its own, quick takeaway, my job is annoying and frustrating, just like yours probably) and post some reviews for books and series I’ve read in the past, a sentiment that segues nicely into the purpose of this entry.
I kicked last year off in some style, by reading Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, another series from Tad Williams, which I would put somewhere near the top of my favourite pile (the early signs from the Shadowmarch series suggest that it will be of a similar calibre). This was my first foray into the works of Tad Williams, I’d probably have done it a lot sooner if his name wasn’t Tad. For years I’ve overlooked his books, I just couldn’t take the name seriously, Tad just doesn’t have the same gravitas as some of the other authors out there. I don’t know why he didn’t go with initials, T. Williams sounds so much better, and if his middle name begins with an S then it gets better still, T.S. Williams has a very nice ring to it. That being said, I only realised that Robin Hobb was female a couple of years ago so perhaps just ignore my name based discrimination and accept me for the idiot I am, sorry Tad, and Robin.
One thing that it’s difficult to dispute is the epic nature of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn (MST), the final volume alone, To Green Angel Tower, is listed by Wikipedia as one of the longest books of all time with a word count of around 520,000 (that’s more than all three volumes of LOTR combined #GoodValue). It’s a classic epic fantasy yarn with a pinch of swords and sorcery thrown in for good measure, trying to synopsise such a long series without giving away any spoilers is tricky, so instead I’ll focus on the nature of the storytelling. Readers are treated to multiple perspectives, mostly these are protagonists but there are a few antagonist points of view thrown in for balance. Some of these perspectives flow through the whole trilogy, others occur over shorter periods to illustrate particular strands of the story. The author keeps a fairly tight leash on the various themes, despite the overall size the action is confined to a handful of perspectives at any given time. At no point can I recall the need to backtrack and remind myself who I’m reading about and what last happened to that particular character.
Williams avoids using the standard Tolkien-esque fantasy species, although there are parallels, there’s no Elves, Dwarves, or Orcs, instead there’s three strands of ancient immortal types (the Zida’ya, Hikeda’ya, and Tinukeda’ya (Having read just this and half of Shadowmarch, I can verify that Tad Williams is a big fan of apostrophes (whereas I like brackets inside brackets inside brackets))), a bunch of educated trolls and (eventually) some very aggressive insects. One thing which doesn’t stray too far from other fantasy staples, is the treatment of these species by the Johnny-come-lately humans, who turn up and start generally causing a kerfuffle where all those before were all living harmoniously. It’s fair to say that the immortal races take this badly, particularly the Hikeda’ya. Unable to agree on a course of action they go their separate ways and Humans assume control of the continent. Revenge is a dish traditionally served cold, so several (Human) generations after they retreated to the far, frozen North, the Hikeda’ya have resurfaced with ominous intent, an act which provides the backdrop of this whole story.
Williams does an excelletn job of creating atmosphere throughout the trilogy, there is an ethereal, dreamlike quality to parts of MST, particularly those dealing with the Zida’ya. By contrast the chapters focusing on the Hikeda’ya, and the characters with whom they interact, create an unsettling ambiance, some of the more unsavoury storylines evoke genuine horror and disgust, given this, mortal peril for the main characters is easily envisaged.
Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is without doubt a fantasy classic and deserves your attention, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear that my avoidance of Williams work was a ‘Tad’ premature. Sorry Tad, again.