Saturday, 8 August 2009 09:51 pm
Book Review: Shadowmarch
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deckardcanineI discovered sf/fantasy writer Tad Williams on my 18th birthday, when someone bought me the first two of four tomes of Otherland at a friend's suggestion.... I was going to say my mom bought them, but now I doubt it, because she didn't think I'd find the time or attention span for them. Instead, the near-future series quickly became one of my all-time favorites. Williams described a mostly cyber-based macrocosm via dozens of juggled focal characters with a skill I'd like to have half of. I finished the 3,000+ pages in about a year, delayed slightly by a wait for the last volume to be released.
During the wait, I bought the 15th anniversary edition of his first novel, Tailchaser's Song, which is typically compared to a feline Watership Down. Much more conventional in length than his later works, it's his only book I ever got others to read (not that I ever tried with anything else). Like me, they generally love its cute nature but have trouble enjoying it once the cats start suffering in earnest. The last maybe 30 pages are anticlimactic and fairly predictable. Williams admits it's probably his most flawed published work, but he fears it'll also be his most enduring one. I still say it's a great start. The fact that he wrote it when a little older than I am now gives me hope.
Then I picked up the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn "trilogy," whose last volume was doubly long and thus split. Here was a more conventional, LotR-type high fantasy, even if the quoted raving critics credited Williams with bucking tired depictions of elves and whatnot. With this in mind, it figures that I'd find it plodding next to the equally long Otherland. I read the first volume in the fall of my second college year, then waited until the next fall for the second volume, and then waited until the next fall for the third. Fortunately, it picked up from there, and I didn't wait to pick up the fourth volume. By the climax, I was excited enough to read parts aloud.
Soon after, I began The War of the Flowers, a sweet parting gift from the first company to employ me as an editor. A single book the length of one volume of his epics, it tells a down-the-rabbit-hole story of a Californian who flees his pursuers to the dimension of Faerie. I consider it at least as much fun as Otherland and probably less flawed. Here Williams demonstrated a mastery of comedy, drama, and suspense with as much imagination as ever. It became the chief inspiration for my NaNoWriMo story last year, which I may just finish up this November.
A substantial strength of Tad Williams is in mixing the realistic with the fantastic. He generally makes believable characters, avoids contrived coincidences, and arranges "happy endings" that are neither too happy nor too much an ending.
In Shadowmarch, alas, that realism was also the bad news. I could still easily project myself into the scenes and usually into the focal characters, but how much did I want to? Several key lives were rather claustrophobic. Things tended to happen even more slowly than in MS&T, much as you might expect of real-life "adventures." Humor was all but absent, and the intertwining stories were nearly all dark enough for an emo teen -- which, indeed, one of the protagonists pretty much was.
The fantasy aspect wasn't much fun, either. Magic and monsters didn't show up much. The Twilight People (apparently nothing like those in Twilight or The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess) didn't show the enviable grace of MS&T's Sithi. I hardly got to know them, even in scenes with no humans present. Of the other two races, Rooftoppers seemed overly simple and Funderlings just duller than dwarves.
I briefly suspected I'd simply outgrown Williams, but I think this book just wasn't meant for me. I pick this genre for escapism; it almost made me want to escape right back. To be fair, tho, when I think about all the sf/fantasy stories I've given lukewarm or worse reviews on LJ, I start to wonder if I stay with the genre mainly out of habit.
That said, it's possible I will pick up the sequel, Shadowplay, someday in the next year or so. Shadowmarch did get better about every 100 pages, and some good changes happened right at the end. I might be interested to know where things are going -- maybe even relive the eventual excitement of MS&T. But for now, I'm trying something very different.
During the wait, I bought the 15th anniversary edition of his first novel, Tailchaser's Song, which is typically compared to a feline Watership Down. Much more conventional in length than his later works, it's his only book I ever got others to read (not that I ever tried with anything else). Like me, they generally love its cute nature but have trouble enjoying it once the cats start suffering in earnest. The last maybe 30 pages are anticlimactic and fairly predictable. Williams admits it's probably his most flawed published work, but he fears it'll also be his most enduring one. I still say it's a great start. The fact that he wrote it when a little older than I am now gives me hope.
Then I picked up the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn "trilogy," whose last volume was doubly long and thus split. Here was a more conventional, LotR-type high fantasy, even if the quoted raving critics credited Williams with bucking tired depictions of elves and whatnot. With this in mind, it figures that I'd find it plodding next to the equally long Otherland. I read the first volume in the fall of my second college year, then waited until the next fall for the second volume, and then waited until the next fall for the third. Fortunately, it picked up from there, and I didn't wait to pick up the fourth volume. By the climax, I was excited enough to read parts aloud.
Soon after, I began The War of the Flowers, a sweet parting gift from the first company to employ me as an editor. A single book the length of one volume of his epics, it tells a down-the-rabbit-hole story of a Californian who flees his pursuers to the dimension of Faerie. I consider it at least as much fun as Otherland and probably less flawed. Here Williams demonstrated a mastery of comedy, drama, and suspense with as much imagination as ever. It became the chief inspiration for my NaNoWriMo story last year, which I may just finish up this November.
A substantial strength of Tad Williams is in mixing the realistic with the fantastic. He generally makes believable characters, avoids contrived coincidences, and arranges "happy endings" that are neither too happy nor too much an ending.
In Shadowmarch, alas, that realism was also the bad news. I could still easily project myself into the scenes and usually into the focal characters, but how much did I want to? Several key lives were rather claustrophobic. Things tended to happen even more slowly than in MS&T, much as you might expect of real-life "adventures." Humor was all but absent, and the intertwining stories were nearly all dark enough for an emo teen -- which, indeed, one of the protagonists pretty much was.
The fantasy aspect wasn't much fun, either. Magic and monsters didn't show up much. The Twilight People (apparently nothing like those in Twilight or The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess) didn't show the enviable grace of MS&T's Sithi. I hardly got to know them, even in scenes with no humans present. Of the other two races, Rooftoppers seemed overly simple and Funderlings just duller than dwarves.
I briefly suspected I'd simply outgrown Williams, but I think this book just wasn't meant for me. I pick this genre for escapism; it almost made me want to escape right back. To be fair, tho, when I think about all the sf/fantasy stories I've given lukewarm or worse reviews on LJ, I start to wonder if I stay with the genre mainly out of habit.
That said, it's possible I will pick up the sequel, Shadowplay, someday in the next year or so. Shadowmarch did get better about every 100 pages, and some good changes happened right at the end. I might be interested to know where things are going -- maybe even relive the eventual excitement of MS&T. But for now, I'm trying something very different.
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no subject
Which book would you recommend to get reacquainted? I'd prefer not to get hooked on a long series.
no subject
Net research tells me that he's written a few other non-series stories, not counting comic books. I can't vouch for their quality, especially given their lack of a Wikipedia entry.