Stone of Farewell

In the sequel to The Dragonbone Chair, Williams continues the story of our hero, Simon Snowlock ( I do like the Sithi names for things). Having bested the dragon using the sword Thorn, Simon is now at a crossroads in his life. He isn\’t the scullion in Green Angel Tower, but he isn\’t quite the hero. But he is still a mooncalf (whatever that may be). Our fractured story now fractures even more as we follow many characters in this book as they fight against the growing darkness and attempt to mount a last resistance at the Stone of Farewell. Geloe, the wise woman, tells them all at different times that they must go to the Stone of Farewell. And so we follow Josua and his company as they leave the ruins of his castle. We follow Rachel the Dragon back at the castle as it begins to change and as she grows more aware of what is and isn\’t going on. We follow Eolair and Maegwin as they assemble all that remain of the Herynstir people and look for new allies.We follow a couple more minor characters as their plot lines converge. And most importantly, we follow Simon, Binabik, Sludig, and Qantaqa as they follow Geloe\’s advice and seek the Stone of Farewell. The Simon parts are some of the best parts of the book and will let you learn more about the Sithi. This is a great continuation of the story and it reads very quickly. There is a feeling of the darkness growing and that hope is diminishing throughout the book. It almost feels as if it is possible that the hero may not win. But we shall see in the final book.

I\’m a fan of epic fantasy. I grew up on brooks, goodkind (before he got preachy), jordan, rawn, etc. as an adult, I\’ve despaired of finding authors to draw me into their worlds. Novels might be fun but they turn out to be the equivalent of chinese take-out. It was good, but it didn\’t stick, and i don\’t remember if i had the kung pao or the gen tsao\’s. There are some excellent books underway, and I eagerly await the conclusions to several series (butcher, sanderson, rothfuss) The Dragonbone Chair and the rest of the series are NOT chinese food. There is more than enough to keep a speed reader occupied, and the characters and drama stay with me when i have to return to the real world. There\’s meat. There are hints to things not spelled out, so you have to use your imagination and strain to see around the corners for answers. Bits of humor, well placed. Great descriptions. Strong characters. Loved it!

Tad Williams is out of his mind. This whole story is a fever dream. Our Mc is not a hero, a reluctant hero, or a man with a destiny, he\’s just a sheltered teenager caught up in events beyond his comprehension. There is magic, but not really since it is never explained. We are bombarded with unlikable characters, and wiseman and women who refuse to inform anyone of the plot in order to be mysterious. There is literally a moment in the novel where a wise person has figured out the dark lords scheme, and right before they tell us what that is, they are killed. Oh no, we\’ll never know what the plan was because the wise person didn\’t write it down! This book is like listening to that one intelligent person at the party who thinks they\’re really clever, but in actuality they\’re speaking nonsense. None of our characters grow as a result of the events of the book. It\’s frustrating since this is a thick read. When Frodo is betrayed by boromir in LOTR it is a pivotal moment in his character development. He begins to lose trust in those around him. Frodo, fresh still with the loss of his mentor Gandalf, decides to finally accept his burden and finish the quest given to him by fate. When our Protagonist Simon recovers from his fight with a dragon, he whines like a spoiled brat and complains it\’s cold and he\’s hungry. It is infuriating to know that this is the hero of the story. Furthermore, The author seems to be very callous and cruel, especially since everything that occurs makes hope for victory seem bleak. Idk if I\’d recommend this. The whole story feels mean spirited and purposely nebulous. I\’d say get this if you can stomach bad men winning and a childish unchanging fool for a protagonist, otherwise skip this series altogether.

Book 2 has a lot of cool elvish stuff in it, and finding out about their history and lore was a lot of fun. The villains also become clearer in this book. While book one has many characters on many disparate threads, they start to come together in book 2 as they meet to consolidate their power base and prepare to strike back. As for the series as a whole: It\’s a cool high fantasy novel with a rich setting and a lot of lore. There are a lot of twists on the original races so it\’s not boring, and there\’s a lot of politicking going on, if you\’re into that kind of thing. The religions of the setting were very cool too. This book is VERY long, and you\’re going to need to read all 4 of them for a good payoff. It starts very slow, but when you get to the end, the payoff is very worth it. I was so happy with how this series ended! The main character is kind of ignorant and dumb in the first book. but part of his journey is how he overcomes that and transforms into someone heroic, so he gets better. There is a core of side characters that are generally very lovable, so that helps too, though in the first book it can be a little difficult to keep track of where they all are at first, it becomes clear later. I especially liked Binabik, Isgrimnur, Josua, Eolair and Maegwen. This is the second series I\’ve read and loved by Tad Williams, the first being the Otherland Series. If you liked this and you\’re also up for a long, slow-starting, Cyberpunk story with mad 90s virtual reality universe, a diverse main cast, and an absolutely fantastic ending, you might want to give that a shot too. I\’m planning to try Williams\’ Shadowmarch series next time I get some serious downtime.

Tad William\’s Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy (+1) of books is a thoroughly engrossing read. I enjoyed reading them in paper back form in the dim and distant past. I decided to grab a new Kindle version for convenience of reading … Unfortunately, the conversion to Kindle has errors. Mostly, it\’s just missing the breaks that show that the story has moved onto other things … but reading just now the chapter 17 \”A wager of little value\” (loc 7623 on Kindle) I find myself irritated enough to write this review. In the middle of Joshua\’s encounters in the High Thrithings (no details; I won\’t spoil the story) the Kindle text goes straight to a discussion of Eolair\’s pending journey with nothing more that a comma for punctuation. This continues for a couple of pages before jumping back to Joshua (with a chunk of the story missing). I\’ve had to grab my old paper back copy off the shelf to read the story as intended! Not good enough. Message to the publisher: please try harder! Choosing Kindle format shouldn\’t mean the text of the book gets messed up.

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