The Dragonbone Chair

Rating:
Summary: A Good Start to a Great Series
Review: Man oh man, Tad Willimas is good! I read The Dragonbone Chair about 10 or 11 years ago, and I still love it. For starters, it is NOT a story that imitates others in the genre. There are, it seems, many storis in the fantasy genre that echo Tolkien. You know, dwarves are all aggresive and have axes, elves are all nature-loving magical bowmen, and humans are the brash and at times naive swordsmen. Not so with Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. (The trilogy that this book starts up.) The people in the series are people, not an overinflated stereotype. The story is well written (and dark, with a series of ups and downs that held my attention. I've heard somewhere that Williams wrote this series to criticise the at times prejudicial images of Lord of the Rings. (As in, anything that is black is bad, only white is good) Maybe they are reading too much into the books, but I can't say that they're wrong. What's more to say, try these books. Amazon seems to have a hard time keping copies of the paperback edition---...

Rating:
Summary: zzzzzzzzz...
Review: 200 pages of tedium, 300 pages of travelogue, then it finally gets going. i know several people that love this book, and i can't for the life of me understand why. for such a long book, it has amazingly little plot, tension, character development, or drama.

Rating:
Summary: The Best Epic for Some Time
Review: This magnificent book of incredible length set in a brilliant fantasy world, populated with creatures obviously taken from previous epics of this ilk, but Williams takes them and changes them to suit his own plot devices.He plainly enjoys the craft of writing and forges a brilliant plotline driven at a rate somewhere between slow and voracious.The characters are for the most part very well described with good character traits. His ain character is a scullion who matures slowlyover the course of the Three (now split into four parts) books. The main female lead can be fairly annoying, especially with her whining insistance that she cannot be loved because she does not deserve it. The other characters are excellent. My particular favourites being Camaris and Duke Isgrimnur. The vast world spanning scope of the books allows for the little boredom that ensues from the slow moving but thoughtful plot. A must read. Not as good as Tolkien and in some ways not as good as Jordan or Eddings, but it is still a fabulous book of tremendous depth and is a touching look at teenage years. You must read this!!

Rating:
Summary: the journey not the destination
Review: Tad Williams is a fantastic author.
Skillfully crafted, this entire series has left a mark on my own style. I was thoroughly entertained by this 4 book trilogy.
Be warned, these thick tomes are spellbound with compulsive-page-turn +4
I have to admit the plot culmination is somewhat Robert Jordanish in its swift vagueness.
It is the journey and not the destination that makes this series shine.

Rating:
Summary: Get a better copyeditor!
Review: I'm not going to attempt to improve upon the reviews given by the other readers here. I am writing this review simply to point out a problem that has been bugging me with the book since I first noticed it, and it has not gotten better.

Here's the problem. The book makes up a whole bunch of words. That in itself isn't really a problem. I enjoy trying to figure out how to pronounce unusual words. The problem is that Tad Williams can't figure out how to *spell* certain of them! He keeps jumping back and forth between a couple of spellings. And that makes reading the book a real chore for me, since I consider spelling very important.

I'll give two examples. In Chapter 21, "Cold Comforts," he refers to "Skali of Kaldskyrke." In the *very next sentence*, he says "Skali was gone back to Kaldskryke long ago." He also goes back and forth between spelling the name of a region "Hernystir" and "Herynstir."

This problem could have easily have been resolved with a good spell checker, or a reasonably diligent copy-editor, but neverthess it made it into print. Many people probably won't notice it, but it just really bugs me.

The story itself is top-notch. I am really enjoying reading it. I'm just having a difficult time getting past the inconsistent spelling. I would have given the book five stars if it weren't for that problem.

Rating:
Summary: Derivative, but quite readable
Review: I think sometimes I'm a literary snob. I say, what's the point of reading a book that doesn't contain merit, meaning, I do not read solely for pleasure. But I'm lying. I do read for pleasure--but what pleasures me now isn't the same sort of book that pleasured me when I was 18. Then, I could find joy in endless leaps of the imagination, no matter how rusty the springs on the pogo stick were. Nowadays, it takes a new spring on the pogo stick, or at least a whole lot of WD-40.

Tad Williams doesn't have a new spring--his is only as old as the 1960s and that seminal work of high fantasy, The Lord of the Rings. But his WD-40 is fast acting. I don't believe that Tad is offering anything new in this book, but his style is fluid, the plotting well prepared, and the world a strange mixture of reality and fantasy (much like the strange interplay in Tolkien). Compare this to Terry Brooks (who I did read back in my younger days). Brooks, at least in The Sword of Shannara, does nothing new. The characters were cardboard cutouts of those he read in Tolkien. Or how about David Eddings, whose work is one plot coupon after another. Williams at least knows that he is treading the same ground here, and he works hard to make it at least seem different. While he doesn't have the courage of Stephen Donaldson, whose Thomas Covenant novels, while excruciatingly purple, are fevered creations of misery and muse, Williams achieves a good balance between pleasing his audience with good writing skills.

The Dragonbone Chair is an epic. Clearly Williams set out to write a "winnebago" of a book, and constructed a double-wide. The protagonist is your typical young male role model who is a misunderstood dreamer. Luckily, the book gets weird quickly, with a strange intermix of politics, religion (something Tolkien doesn't really cover in Lord of the Rings) and magic.

It is the religious aspect that is unique here. Williams plays on some strange similarities between the fantasy world and our own history, and it shows itself best in the Christ-like figure Usires, and the Mother Church. Some say LotR was an analogy for WWII--perhaps Williams is striving for an updated effect. I can't tell as of yet, being only 1/3 through the tale.

I have the succeeding volumes and I plan to tackle them straightaway. I told Jill before I started these that I needed a new world to simply immerse in for a few books. Tad's fulfilling the bill nicely.

Rating:
Summary: Very personal realism, meets epic fantasy
Review: The first time I read this series (on the advice of a friend), I found it hard to get through the first half of 'The Dragonbone Chair'. At the time, the only fantasy I had read was Tolkien and a select few mixed series. I was ready to read an epic fantasy, with all the battles and magic to match. What I found Myself reading was a less-than-epic story of the mundane exploits of a kitchen-boy. Or so I thought.
After I got the "feel" for the book It really opened up. For the first time I found Myself actually caring for the characters I was reading about (something even Tolkien's Masterpiece didn't entirely do for Me). Tad Williams writes with a very personal style, actively and effortlessly making you a part of his tale, while bringing such a sense of reality to the unreal it's uncanny. Almost nothing in this series seems completely unbelieveable. From the undying Sithi, to the little folk of the 'Troll-Fells', every character in these books seem like someone you know (or wish you knew). How they act. How they think. You're in their heads for better or worse. And the reality of it is dazzling!
All My Gung-ho loyalties aside, this was an amazing series. As afore-mentioned, What really hooked Me with this series was the realism. I'm sure for some of the die-hard fantasy readers out there, this may sound like an affront on the flashy/Magic-laden fantasy that has been a staple of their literary cuisine. But with Mr. Williams in the kitchen, fantasy and reality mesh into a most enjoyable morsel that goes down easy and leaves you ravenous for more. And yes this series does contain magic. But even magic is given a realistic twist (for the most part). Usually being referred to as "the art", and being applied through the means of natural law. Nothing terribly new, but executed with beautiful precision.
In all, this is the best Fantasy series I have read to date. But, I must urge anyone who picks this series up to fight through the first half of "DBC". It is slow, yet at the same time very rich. This is where you meet the players that will entertain you for the duration of your stay in 'Osten Ard'. Get to know them. Don't blow through looking for 'the good parts'. It is all 'the good parts'. You just won't realize it until it's over.
So before I really get carried away...just try it!
What have you got to lose?

Rating:
Summary: A good story is hard to find
Review: When I first picked this book up, I thought it was boring and poorly written and put it down after 150 pages. Then, after coming upon reviews that stated that it was worthwhile to continue for after the first 200-250 pages it really picked up, I continued on. And after I got to reading again I found that, the next 200 pages were even worse! So after pushing myself to read over 450 pages, I finally threw the book down. Yet not too long ago, I needed something to read and so picked up The Dragonbone chair and started it from where I had left off. Within a chapter or two, the main character finally got to Naglimund and something finally, finally happened, and I hoped that this was the moment I had been waiting for. I sludged through another 200-something pages and finally gave up. And after reading 3/4 of the book I can honestly say that regardless of what others say, this is a bad book.

Now, to refute any criticisms, I tell you now that I LOVE long, detailed stories. I love learning about the histories of worlds and religions, the background stories on various characters, and the minute details about different places. I love long series! I would read the Wheel of Time if it spanned thirty books as long as Jordan kept up his writing. I would read the Song of Ice and Fire if each book was 3000 pages as long as Martin didn't screw up the series. I would read indexes and constantly check maps if it was for a worthy book. But it isn't, because this book goes NOWHERE! The plot of this book is one of the sleepiest I ever read. I had to push myself to read almost every page, to finish every sentence. The main character did absolutely nothing that took my interest, and when he finally left the Hayholt the book got even slower from there as Simon just plodded around with absolutely nothing happening. And believe me, I am not, not, NOT a fan of Dragonlance/Forgotten Realms stories with their action, action, action. But as I read about Simon who seemed as if his feet were stuck in the mud, I almost yearned to be reading about that sniveling fool Garion and his smart-[aleck] Aunt Pol from the Belgariad series just so that I could read about SOMETHING, though I consider that series trivial and juvenile. And whenever I wasn't reading about Simon Slowfoot with his head in the sand, I was listening to Tad Williams' lectures on the history of the land. And though I love getting the background info on the world, the sermon-like way it was given almost forced me to skip over it all. And though the 'history lesson' seemed to go on for years, the history seemed very incomplete, touching on all the uninteresting things and nothing that perked any genuine interest. It was a world where there seemed to be quite a lot of kings, even though it seemed each king ruled seemingly nothing but a town, and a religion that could not have been more of a carbon-copy of Christianity, going only far enough to flip the Son of God on his cross so he was hanging upside down and then giving him a new name. And I am really sick of everyone making excuses in their '5-star' reviews about how it is okay to have a slow start to a book because you have to learn all the new histories and characters. Are you kidding me?! A good author can work it all in effortlessly. A good book has a good beginning, a good middle, and a good end.

And I have to say that I don't mind if an author borrows ideas from other books. We've all heard of the common boy who meets a magic someone and then goes on a quest to find a magic superweapon. Many have used that plot which was ultimately taken from Tolkein in his Lord of the Rings, which was, oh yes, taken heavily from Germanic legends itself. However, if an author can make that plot new and exciting, then who really cares. But, Tad Williams fails in that task. His storyline seems non-existent. His characters are useless. Almost all of them are completely one-dimensional, and though Simon succeeds in being two-dimensional, he doesn't come off as at all interesting or sympathetic. And I'm not saying that a castle scullion can't be interesting, I'm just saying that Simon isn't. In fact the reason why the characterization is so slim is because Williams just flits all across the country to spent various moments with a slew of random, unmemorable characters who do almost nothing to advance the plot. The plot is therefore wasted on them when it should be focused on something important. It is not to say that a story can not be told through a lot of viewpoints, because it definitely can. Erikson and Martin do it effortlessly, and Jordan, while faltering in his latest books, does it much better than Williams. But these side excursions into the lives of the uninteresting distract you from what you should be reading and so sacrifice the plot and its characters to obscurity. It also makes the flow of the story totally choppy, as every scene seems to last seconds, and as every page ends with a new character jumping in provide you will unrealistic dialogue and an unwelcome story, as well as forcing you to flip to the character index every third paragraph to wade through a list of mostly unnecessary names in order to find a three-word description of you latest POV character.

So if you like a totally borrowed book with cook-cutter characters, an aimless story which tumbles through an army of POVS, and a plot which always seems to progress somewhere other then where you are reading, then go ahead and read this book. Otherwise read anything else.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: This series follows the adventures of one kitchen boy named Simon. He doesn't seem like much at first but he shows plenty of grit when the chips are down.

As the book opens the old king Pester John is about to die. He is literally a self-made man the son of peasants who has ruled the land for almost 80 years.
His two sons start to fight shortly after his death and when one of them disappears rumors start to fly about open rebellion of the Joshua against Ellias.

Simon discovers the truth and is drawn into a conspiracy that is both ancient and the most ultimate of evil.

He will find friends and lose them along the way to the last free lands in the empire. A terrible battle awaits him and his new friends upon arrival and it will keep you thoroughly interested.

The only thing that might throw you off is the vast amounts of characters there are so many and each is drawn with great attention to detail.

Rating:
Summary: Very slow start, series gets better
Review: I picked up this book because I was waiting for new books out from my usual fantasy authors - Jordan, Brooks, Eddings, Modesitt, Feist. I felt compelled to write my first review after reading the reviews already posted and agreeing with those reviewers who could not get into the book after a few hundred pages. I was still not that interested in the book after 400 pages. The main protagonist - Simon - is whiny and annoying and if it wasn't for the fact that I had already invested the time to read the first 400 pages, I would not have finished the book. However, it gets interesting the last 100 pages, enough so that I purchased the second book and intend to read the entire series. Unlike Jordan (who is milking his series for all its worth), this series ends and I appreciate that. Simon gets more interesting in book two, and the other characters develop enough so that you don't even care that you don't care about Simon. If you are bored and waiting for another author to come out, this won't be a complete waste of time.