This book was fantastic! Yes it has its slow moments but so many elements were resolved so well. And definitely I felt sad when it was over. Tad Williams definitely is in my favorite fantasy writers. His prose is masterful.
Good review! I was born around the time this series was being finished and picked it up in my early teens, along with many of Tad's other series (Otherland, Shadow lands, War of the Roses, eventually the Bobby Dollar books), and I've loved them all. He was kind of my first foray into grand and epic stories. Huge Tad Williams fan and I'm happy to see him get some appreciation! Also, yeah, read Otherland. It's wild and crazy, sometimes a little slow, someone's extremely unsettling, but it's an incredible work of Scifi/Fantasy, in my mind at least.
I had to run here immediately after finishing the book, to thank you for bringing these books to my attention and to slowclap at everything you say about it. Because SO MUCH STRONG AGREE. Especially about the love for the side characters (my softest spot is for Isgrimnur). I'm going to read the rest of the Osten Ard books ASAP and I hope you're going to review those as well, at some point.
To Green Angel Tower is definitely a book for me to read. I’ve read The Dragonbone Chair and Stone of Farewell, so, I’m going to finish Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. So far, it’s a favorite fantasy series for me.
Thanks as always! I struggled to get through this one but it was well worth it. The book dragged for me in the beginning but I was so happy with how things came together. The last scene with Rachel the Dragon was so satisfying.
Fantastic series! I plan to pick up the other books in Osten Ard sometime in the near future. Only gripe with TGAT was that the climax felt just a little too short---it's very much a product of its time in that regard. Like you said many times, this book pioneered modern fantasy while keeping a foot in the classic stuff. The climax felt old hat, very Tolkien-esque. Otherwise, just a joy. Thanks for the thoughtful review!
I would love to hear another spoiler discussion like you did for book 1. Also, I’m really enjoying the sequel trilogy. He really upped the political game. Book 3 comes out today
This trilogy is a masterpiece, in my opinion. The pacing is top notch; I enjoyed the slower moments when the scene basically travelling/exploring and just characters talking amongst themselves. What I also really like is that it's not riddled with nonstop, super gory battle scenes every thirty pages or so. "The Last King of Osten Ard" is equally as good, too. I'm on the fence about this series (one of my most beloved series of time) being made into a tv show or movie. I just don't want to see it butchered just to please couch potatoes that never read it.
I'm so glad you enjoyed these books! Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is one of my all time favorites. This was recommended to me a long time ago after I finished ASOIAF and was looking for something to read waiting for the Winds of Winter. I'm still waiting for Winds, but there is a lot of good fantasy out there to pass the time!
I don’t believe we will get the last book by Martin. He lost it, he lost the connection to the world of westeros, his mind is not in it anymore, he’s not motivated anymore and he doesn’t enjoy it anymore, he has too Many distractions and other things on his mind, that he can’t finish the damn book. He has a block. The book will never be finished unfortunately.
Hey. Great that you, too, Mike like this legendary series👏 When the series was translated into Finnish. It became a 12-part series🤓 Which I think is a good solution. I have been trying to find a series for myself for several years. So far, I’ve been content with the library’s books 😁
Crazy that it was translated to Finnish and to a 12 part series. I usually read Fantasy in English since only the most popular series get translated to Swedish or Finnish
@@mikesbookreviewsYep 12 books. Here are their names in Finnish. The Dragonbone Chair B1 1. Velhon oppipoika 2. Kruununperilline 3. Miekan mahti The Stone of Farewell B2 4. Myrskyn silmä 5. Pimeyden käsi 6. Jäähyväisten kivi To Green Angel Tower B3 7. Piiritetty kivi 8. Korppien tanssi 9. Torven taika 10. Liekkien loimu 11. Varjojen vanki 12. Vihreän enkelin torni You can find the cover images of the books with the Finnish name🤓
First of all, I love the shirt! It has been great to see somebody on Booktube read and discuss this book. It definitely deserves more love on here! Thank you for sharing your thoughts on it, and I’m so glad you enjoyed it!
Hmmmmmmmmmm............I think I will re-read this, you make it sound exciting.............I remember this one, that first book was a real page snoozer, everytime I pick it up, I doze off. Thank you Mike!!!
Like you I spent the latter parts of the final book thinking “this would make for spectacular Movie/TV show if done right Really enjoyed it and after having finished book 1 over a year ago, thanks for helping me finish the series off
Great review Mike! I'm loving the light you are shining on this classic. I found myself appreciating Simon more and more, and by the end I was emotionally invested in his trials and victories. I've also read Otherland, although it's a very different experience, so I hope you enjoy it as well. The Whelan covers for those books are excellent.
It was a blast reading and sharing and reading everyone's thoughts in the read along. I basically agree with all the pros and cons you address and this book had one of my favorite animinal companions. Thanks for doing the read along!
Throughout the whole story I kept thinking MS&T would make an incredible anime series. I think the imagery and emotional depth of the story is beautifully suited to the typical stylings of anime; it translates clearly and easily in my mind’s eye, as it it was meant for it. Anime can do epic unlike any other medium.
Great review. I'll be reading the sequel trilogy. I just read The Heart of what was lost, and it was a good, short follow up. It's definitely not to be read fast ... definitely about the journey.
I just finished it today. I think I read about 80% in around a week, before I kept picking it up, putting it down, etc. Probably for about 8 months. Finally decided to bang it out! 4 stars, some parts really exasperated me and others were an absolute thrill-ride.
I really didn’t like how he wrote Miriamele and Maegwin. But with that said, I agree that Williams stuck the landing at the end. I’d recommend it to anyone who loves fantasy.
After decades, I still have nightmares of this great series. The three books were split into twelve, when they were published in Finnish. About twice a year I got a slice of a book, full price of course, without it containing a proper story structure -- which is to be expected for just a few off-plucked chapters of the original books.
I never would've known about this series if not for you and your channel and discord. I very much enjoyed it, even though certain parts dragged on a bit. But thankfully that didn't happen over much. Can't wait to join you for Codex Alera. Another new to me series.
Finished it myself this week! Really enjoyed it and definitely found it the best out of the 3. It had a very interesting plot and I loved the characters! I only had 2 major problems. One concerning a characters' death and one concerning the villain. But overall it was really really good! I'm now onto some shorter books.
I wanna add that 'To Green Angel Tower' is such a cool name for a book. It just sounds urgent. Ever since I saw that name years ago I was fascinated by it, for some reason. It's the fact that during the first 10 pages of Dragonbone Chair Green Angel Tower is mentioned and you just see that final book title and you get excited for what's to come. What could be so important about that tower? Just wanted to point that out
We should be starting this book in a week or so. Really glad to hear the ending is great. I'd love it if you did another talk video with Madison about the whole series. 😃
I enjoyed this video Mike! 😊 I'm not going to lie, the length of these Tad Williams novels are a little intimidating, but they are on my shelves and I'm going to give them a try
Loved it, and great review Mike. I know your TBR is massive, but I hope someday you can read the sequel trilogy too. It is unbelievably excellent - even better than MST, as hard as that may be to believe. Best books I read in 2021.
I enjoyed this series a lot, I gave the books each 4 stars, although the second was the weakest. Thanks for providing the opportunity to read this, I had never heard of it otherwise.
This series is what made me really enjoy Tad Williams. Otherland is a really well done story as well. I really do hope you love it as much as I did. You should also check out Shadowmarch some time as well. Similar themes and it duality really plays a big part.
Tad Williams is one of...no, no qualifiers, he's the best writer I have ever read in any genre. I'm sure my opinion means little to nothing to most, but there it is. I have read and/or listened to this series countless times over the last 20+ years and have never understood how Tad Williams or this series has avoided becoming a household name over all that time. I admit to some resentment toward authors like GRRM who have found so much success by (from my perspective, having been familiar with these books) riding Tads coat tails. But I do my best to follow Tads example and be gracious and open minded about it. I hope you enjoy the follow up series. I was worried when I started them bc at first it felt like he was just going to rehash the same story...but as you get deeper into the books and revelations it becomes clear that is not the case. If you get a chance to listen to the stories Andrew Wincott does a magnificent job narrating. Tad aged the characters so well, they are older, but still familiar. I feel like Andrew's fantastic narration from one series to the next amplifies how masterfully Tad accomplished this...I hear what a lot of people say about not enjoying parts of the books that drag on like Simon wandering in the tunnels, but I always felt like that was the point...I mean I agree with those people, I didn't enjoy it, but I didnt think I was supposed to, like... that was Tads intention. So even though it was tedious I stayed with Simon through it all. If that makes sense. Anyway, thank you for bringing the series to more peoples attention. I cant wait for the Navigators Children, so many questions to be answered!
Luv this series...really my only problem was the slog..of countless pages describing Simon walking through tunnels with nothing happening, worth reading but dang that part of the final book was hard to get through
I finished it back in March and I loved it. The only chapters I never looked forward to were Maegwin's. Even her payoff chapter didn't make the buildup worth it. But for the most part I loved the rest of the series.
I first read this series so long ago, and I loved it then. I re-read it about 10 years ago and still thought it was good. I’m happy that you finally read it, and enjoyed it. I’ve got his Shadowmarch series in my Kindle but still haven’t read it. Loved his short story compilation and War of the Flowers. Haven’t read any Otherland, though. Be interested to know your thoughts.
I read the first 2.5 books of this series some 10 years ago and never picked up the final volume. But, I just picked up Shadowmarch ~100 pages in. And I mean, I literally picked it up from a box of books someone left on their doorstep :P
Since this is my favorite series of all time, I was glad to see that you enjoyed it. Yep, this is the series that made ASOIF unreadable to me (just felt like Martin stole all the ideas in his books from Williams - just my opinion). Loved the videos and the reviews.
@@mikesbookreviews I would just word it different, How about - Martin took a great many ideas, concepts and characters out of Memory Sorrow and Thorn and reused them in asoiaf. Doesn’t matter, glad you enjoyed the series.
Other than a slight disappointment with how little villains like Ineluki, the Red Hand or the Norn Queen were fleshed out, I was very happy with this whole series. Simon was really put through the wringer here and he damn well earned the victory he won. Very good series, look forward to reading more Tad Williams. Maybe I should pick up The Heart of What Was Lost, it's apparently got Norn POV in it. More Isgrimnur too. The copy of Empire of Grass I got might have my favorite cover for a fantasy book I've ever owned. All that greenery growing over stonework, that's great stuff.
Devoured the book in like less than 2 days. Loved the entire series start to finish, but I agree in the main points of criticism. I wish Simon/Miri had more time to flesh out their relationship.
3:26 honestly, I feel like this series could have been five books (including splitting TGAT into 2 parts.) One issue I had with this book was the introduction of plot threads that weren't really expanded upon until the end when they were rushed super hard. (MAJOR SPOLIERS BTW) The stuff with the Ghants and Kilpas felt pretty rushed, and it felt like it sort of resolved itself without much actually happening. The Nabban campaign resolved itself in like 100 pages despite it being a literal war. The actual fight with the Norns and Elias's soldiers was also kind of rushed. Finally, Simon/Josua's heritage also felt kind of rushed, they were both revealed within like 10 pages of eachother, in the last 30 pages of the book. Honestly, there was like 600 pages of other material that could've been written, but it probably didn't flow well with Simon and the other's story, which is why everything felt so rushed at the end.
I havent read any of it. Wanted to hear your review of how good it is in total before spending the time and find out it had a bad last part as big as it is
As usual, I have to agree, it's a CLASSIC, read it some 20 years ago, and I'm going to reread it. Well built, big payoff, epic, a classic, well written tale of all times. But Otherland, no way, I could not finish it. Read 2 books and a half. Didn't engage well, hope you enjoy, though, and as always, wish you the best, man!
It's interesting that you connect Miriamele to Sansa. This series is often recced to me with Miriamele/Marya being the Arya Stark of the story. Just reading up on her, she seems like an Arya-esque character, especially if you ignore GOT and only take ASOIAF into account.
Definitely a split. The Arya ones are obvious. The Sansa ones I look at as her being taken by Littlefinger and being forced to grow up fast when you're royalty plucked form the castle because you lost your father.
Something I wonder, and something I personally am not used to, is reading multiple books at the same time. Usually with a trilogy or books that have more than three parts, I typically read one part a month. But I also feel just focusing on that one entire series for several months takes away from reading other books on my radar (TBR). What are your thoughts on reading maybe two books at the same time at the very least? Btw, farily new subscriber, love your channel! :)
I know not everyone can do it, but it's a must for me. Especially a book as long as this one. I usually like to do two books at once. I look at it as "I can watch two TV series at once; how is reading two books at once any different?" It's just something I've always done to avoid burnout.
I put down Dragonbone Chair after page 350 because it was so slow, but boy am I glad I picked it back up again because this series has quickly become one of my all-time favorites. I just simply could not put it down and read SoF and TGAT back to back in 6 weeks time. It's a shame we're never going to see this adapted to the screen due to the simple fact that Tad Williams used the Christian religion as the centerpiece of the story. And if there's one thing the movie/tv industry doens't like doing, it's to have to romanticize and promote Christianity rather than to ridicule it.
Just couldn't get through book two. Simon is such a whiny, uninteresting character and half way through the second book he hasn't grown as a character. Also, the other story lines are largely uninteresting. I feel the same about Magician. Can someone tell me if the second half of Magician gets better?
I used to borrow the entire trilogy (in Polish) from the local library whenever I saw all 6 books (cause they split the 3rd one into FOUR over here, I guess even split into two the books were too thick for the printers they used) and would reread it over the course of the week and come back to it in a couple of months when all books were available again. I also read it twice in English since then and it still remains one of my favorite series and is probably my most re-read series too. So, glad you liked it and glad I stuck around (I originally came here for the Berserk videos) :D
@@mikesbookreviews Yep, and just the right length for a fast reader who had no other obligations aside school for a weekly long reread every few months :D