Nearly twenty-five years after the final book in the classic fantasy series Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, Tad Williams released last June the first book of a sequel trilogy, The Witchwood Crown (the trilogy is to be called The Last King of Osten Ard). The second, Empire of Grass, is tentatively scheduled for early 2019.
It's safe to say that fantasy nowadays is no longer what it was in 1993; even if you focus only on epic fantasy series and ignore the many other genres and sub-genres that have become popular since then, there are still a number of aspects in which nearly all contemporary fantasy differs from MST, thanks to the influence of writers like Jordan, Martin and many others. A greater number and variety of viewpoints, a stronger tendency towards moral ambiguity rather than straightforward good vs evil, and so on. Which made me curious how Williams intended to approach this new series – how close would he stay to the original trilogy?
At the time the new book was released, I decided to reread the original trilogy first, figuring that this might be helpful since it had been so long. Having finally gotten around to The Witchwood Crown itself, it turns out that (re)reading the original trilogy first is not just helpful, it's pretty much a requirement.
It became clear very quickly that this new series, set about 30-40 years after the original one, fully embraces the newer trends I mentioned. Where MST is predominantly the story of the kitchen boy Simon on his journey to becoming the greatest hero of the day, The Witchwood Crown is such a mosaic of viewpoints that it's not all that clear who, if anyone, is supposed to be the main protagonist of the series. Simon and his wife Miriamele reappear, now as joint rulers and grandparents, and both get some PoV sections, but so do dozens of other characters spread over a number of locations – including several in the mountain fortress of the Norns, the mysterious 'Dark Elf' antagonists of MST. Who certainly seem like they will be the main antagonists again – but this time around, not as alien and unknowable monsters, but as a faction that we also get to see from the inside.
It is, I thought, a rather nice mosaic; although one may argue that a few less different PoVs would have been a good thing, they are well-written and I liked most of the storylines and characters. However, during most of the novel, many of the plotlines remain mostly or entirely separate from each other, and the reader can only dimly see where all this is going. The book is slow, not in the sense that little happens (like the infamously slow start to The Dragonbone Chair, the opening book of MST), but in the sense that it intentionally lacks a central plot being built up and driving the narrative, like a typical first novel in an epic fantasy series would have.
That's in a way an intriguing approach, and even though the final chapters do make a number of revelations and connect some dots, by the final page the plot still remains a lot more mysterious and less predictable than it generally is at that stage of a series. But this requires a lot of goodwill from readers, even those who liked MST and its setting – it's not for everyone.
I definitely enjoyed The Witchwood Crown and look forward to the sequels, despite reading very little fantasy these days. I strongly recommend it to those who enjoyed the original trilogy but are open to this new, less straightforward and more subtle approach to Osten Ard. Also to others, but it may take more effort and I do think this won't be everyone's cup of tea.
