Williams, Tad

Memory, Sorrow and Thorn

‘Memory, Sorrow and Thorn’ (MST) is a classic epic fantasy yarn with a pinch of swords and sorcery thrown in for good measure. When I say epic I really mean it, 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).

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 one ancient immortal race (the Zida’ya, Hikeda’ya, and Tinukeda’ya), 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 late in the day and ruin everyone’s picnic. 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 excellent 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.

Otherland

Shadowmarch

Shadowmarch is named eponymously for the Castle around which it centres, its current ruling family feature widely in the storyline. Religion is the key driver behind the events depicted, while there are various schisms they broadly recognise the same deities. Unusually it is not the disagreements between these various factions which creates the tension, instead it is an indirect result of a war or theomachy between the actual Gods which, for the human characters at least, is lost in the mists of time. In present events the resulting effect of this war are an ingrained hatred of Humans by the Qar (a collection of long lived races), this is reflected right back at them by most of mankind. The usual human propensity for violence and an ability to breed in far greater numbers has driven the Qar into the far North, and compelled them to create a magical barrier known as the Shadowline or Mantle depending on your point of view. The human races having taken over the majority of the Northern continent have developed schisms of their own, for the most part they rub along relatively peacefully, on the Southern continent though there is a self-styled God-King (the Autarch) who doesn’t play so nice, he has risen to power and dominion over all his neighbours, a situation he would like to recreate in the Northern continent.

The story unfolds via a variety of viewpoints, representing most of the major perspectives described above. These individual narratives all serve to reveal elements of the overarching storyline, like a good mystery novel not all things become clear until near the end of the series. Some of the early assumptions I made regarding the proverbial lay of the land were a little wide of the mark, others missed the target area altogether. There is an awful lot going on under the hood here, the character list (keep this list to hand, it will make life a lot easier) provided at the end of the book is testament to the complexity of this work, not only is there a large number of character but some of them have multiple names, one of the Gods is referred to by eight different names. This complexity never spiralled into the realm of bewildering, yes there are a lot of characters but not all of them are that significant and there is enough separation in the early parts of the series to ensure that the significant players are cemented in your consciousness.

If you’re a fan of epic fantasy in the slightly less gritty mould, Shadowmarch should definitely be in your to read pile.

Bobby Dollar

Last King of Osten Ard

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