I know that I must have enraged or at least provoked some people with this statement. I find Tad Williams' writing style much more accessible than J.R.R. Tolkien's. It's due in part to my own weakness in not being able to follow Tolkien's long, detailed passages describing the geography of each and every scene. LOTR does have fewer characters to keep track of, this being important as I think I have slight ADD. I had to work very hard to finish the LOTR Trilogy, and I thoroughly appreciate it for its magnificence.
Moving on, I don't know what I could add to the great reviews that have come before me so I will try to be succinct:
PLEASE KEEP READING! It IS a fantastic piece of work! And although others described the beginning as "slow", I disagree for my part. I appreciated the purposeful, totally believable, character development of Simon, the protagonist. I was delighted and irritated with, empathetic toward, and wholeheartedly rooting for Simon in turns, in very short order. Simon became real to me, almost like adopting a child at the age of 15. William's took the time to paint a whole world, the histories, the cultures of people, rather than just hand it to us for acceptance and move on to the action-which is top notch by the way!
There is quite a cast of characters,(I had to go to the appendix in frustration at some points to keep them all straight)however, I felt that none were merely thrown in to advance the story, but that T.W. was writing about things as they really happened, and truly cared about even the most fleeting of these appearances. The players are given such dimension in a surprisingly short space of time. I felt sadness and shock when they befell some misfortune or died, as many of them do. This is not your feel good story where all the good guys make it to the end, and women and children never come to harm.
That the "magic" is not forefront in the story, at least until later, is a great selling point for me. Problems are not solved with the wave of a wand or an incantation. Human motivations and politics are are the guts of the story, made even more intriguing by the fantastical nature of events and unique creatures that are manipulated within it. There are so many surprises that keep you glued to your kindle, in my case, reading until late at night and snatching minutes here and there. It is difficult to find a point where you can say,"This is a good place to stop."
I'm definitely going to finish the series! My new favorite author!
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