Rating: 
Summary: A great book with a boring introduction
Review: The Dragonbone Chair was a great start on the amazing series, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, but it was most certainly not the best of the series. It's introduction seemed to take the first third of the book, and was not very interesting, and because of that, it took me a very long time to get into it. But by the time I got through "Simon Mooncalf", the first third of the book, I was hooked, and I knew there would be no going back.
Rating: 
Summary: A modern-day Tolkien.....
Review: I'm reading The Dragon Bone Chair for the second time. As good, if not better that the first time around. Tad Williams is right there with Tolkien, only Tad stays the whole course through out the series, with characters as rich, colorful and ALIVE as in the first book. I've heard people say T.W. is too wordy...but only because his descriptions are so rich as to bring them to life. He has created a whole new world with new races and whole new histories, religions, and legends. This series is FANTASY at its very best! The kind that can't easily be put down when the real world creeps in tugging at your sleeve. I found myself again carrying this book around as I went about my daily tasks. Any free moment was spent buried within its pages. What a wonderful escape!!!
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully Written!!!
Review: I just got finished with the entire series, and I lost so much sleep because I couldn't put it down. The characters were so well rounded, the plot was well developed, it was suspenseful and fast paced at the same time. It was a wonderful series for anyone who enjoys a well developed universe and complex plotlines with well rounded characters and suspense. I would recommend it to the more patient intellectual readers I know.
Rating:
Summary: A Terrific Top-notch Fantasy
Review: A very enjoyable read for any fantasy fan. Williams deftly handles the mythic/quest elements common to the genre, and writes believable characters to boot. It's long, but I enjoyed every page, and found myself staying up later than usual reading, not wanting to put it down and anxiously looking forward to picking it up again later. Though there's nothing particulary profound here, it is first-class epic fantasy entertainment.
Rating:
Summary: an excellent introduction to a fine fantasy world
Review: A charming tale. There should be plenty here to please any lover of fantasy. There are occasional false notes, and the somewhat modern idiom of the language does sometimes sound a little odd, but there are many wonderful passages, and Willams gets far more right than he does wrong. The story of Simon's adolescence and coming-of-age is at times itself a little adolescent, and some characters are oddly 2 1/2 dimensional (as is some of the dialogue), but there are loads of marvellous imagery and detailing. What is important to Williams is not so much the originality of the material, but the exuberance with which it is displayed. I might add that Williams really knows how to write a cliffhanger. Alas, this is the best of the trilogy, as the next two installments in the epic fall slightly short of the mark. There is much promise here, however, and those who say Williams could be one of the best are correct--though he is indeed awfully wordy.In response to some of the unfavorable criticisms below, it's true that Tad Williams does not fashion his worlds from whole cloth; not only are (arche)typical motifs, characters, and objects borrowed from numerous other sources, Williams seems to delight in making his world as near our own as possible, while still remaining firmly within the realm of the fantastic. Indeed, he often seems to delight in making deliberate connections and comparisons with our world, which I think is just fine. I have never been a fan of Robert Jordan, for example, whose almost out-of-control imagings seem wearingly (almost chaotically) complex--complexity for complexity's sake (and speaking of creativity, it seems like an awfully close coincidence that "Seddai" rhymes with "Jedi"). Williams is, at heart, a teller of simple tales. There are some who do may not appreciate this manner of world-creation (see certain readers' comments below), but I find it fascinating and wonderful. I admit it seems much more clever if you know what he's borrowing from (Aedon=Adonis, Usires=Osiris, bits & pieces of Welsh legends, and so on), but claiming such methods are "uncreative" seems like misdirected criticism. Many of the so-called "sources" which Williams (so some say) borrows from, are themselves taken from the original mythic sources, so it's no surprise much one finds in The Dragonbone Chair (and the enire trilogy) sounds familiar. It's SUPPOSED to. Do get ready for a little dissappointment, however, as those who claim the last volume is a little rushed and incomplete are correct. I'm sure Tad would be the first to say so. He never meant to tell such a long story. p.s to the reader who wondered where Elias' motivation went: you weren't paying attention. It was the same at the end as it was at the beginning.
Rating:
Summary: WHAT DON"T PEOPLE LIKE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Review: Come on, all you who didn't think the book was great! All right, some things have been used, but that's part of it all! The WAY Tad Williams uses ideas from others gives the book an interesting origionality. All right, some parts drag out, but that's to give us the emotions that the character had! I mean, if YOU were lost in a tunnel, no hope of getting out but a barely-remembered map, wouldn't YOU feel like things went on forever? Tad Williams recycles the tin cans of others' ideas and turns them into the bike of his great story. If I had to chose a favorite book, his works would actually (please excuse what must to some seem like blasphemy) tie with J.R.R. Tolkien! Have a heart and read the book! It's great!
Rating: 
Summary: The Dragonbone Chair was quite a good book.
Review: Tad Williams' The Dragonbone Chair was a good, original story with great characters. The Hero, Simon, was a none too bright kitchen boy who managed to get himself mixed up in things beyond his understanding. The book was written well, and although the characters are very well described, Tad Williams went into too much detail about everything else - he described everything he saw in great detail, telling the history of the object as well as the impact it had on the story. It didn't matter whether the object was a dead leaf or a great stone castle, you would know everything about it within a few minutes. Other than the amount of detail in the book, it was a good, entertaining story which made me want to read the rest of the series.
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Summary: Magical and yet real. Fantasy at it's best.
Review: I have been reading fantasy for years, but this is the first series I actually felt compelled to write the author about and say thank you. While some readers find the first few chapters slow, I did not. Williams does such a great job with his characters that I was pulled right in. Simon is such a wonderful portrayal of a boy growing into manhood - longing for adventure and not sure he wants it when it comes. The harpers never mention how cold, hungry and scary having an adventure is or how you become responsible for other people and events. The character development of Binabik, Mirimele and all the others is just as intriguing. Characters actually grow and change in his books. If you like character driven fantasy, this book is a must.
Rating: 
Summary: A Hackneyed and Unoriginal Bore
Review: It's a wonder how much authors get away with these days. I have to admit that the entire science-fiction genre, along with fantasy, is inherently not too original, but there are some books that come along once in a while that make me continue reading these books. But this book was one of the worst examples of hackneyed fantasies. The plot was completely unoriginal, a daring quest that a small, lowly kitchen boy has to perform in order to save nothing short of the entire universe. I mean, of course, nothing else to save, right? The characters were, in typical fashion, cartoonish. None of them had any truly complicated human mixture of different personalities and traits, and just acted as if they were, well, cartoon characters. I constantly wished one of the main characters would die or something; at least that would have made the book a little bit exciting. And it's not as if the prose saved if from utter failure either, completely the opposite; it was difficult, drawn-out, unexciting, and basically hard to follow. I threw the book against the wall three-quarters of the way through it and entirely regret having spent the money on it. Definitely not recommended.
Rating:
Summary: When it finally started cooking, it really cooked!!
Review: I really loved this book... once it got going, and believe me it did take a while. The first eighty or so pages seemed like a bog to have to slog through, but bam! Once things started happening they really got exciting. I would recommend this book to readers of all kinds, especially if you are into Terry Brooks, the "Death Gate" books, or Tolkien. I can't believe I have to wait all week to get the next one!
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