A review by davehershey
To Green Angel Tower: Part I by Tad Williams
3.0
I like this series enough to want to find out what happens in the end. Barely. If it was just a little less interesting, I would probably give up.
As I finish this book, I think my biggest problem with the series is that the antagonists are mostly spoken of but not actually in the story. We met, presumably, the primary antagonists in the first two books (Pryates, King Elias, the Storm King) and they are interesting. We get glimpses of them from time to time and discovering what their plans are is a big reason I want to keep reading. But, kind of like the Eye of Sauron in LOTR, they are mostly off stage. They pop up from time to time. Though, unlike LOTR, we do not fully know their motivation, now about 3/4 through the series.
The problem is, the minor villains who do the dirty work for these major villains are not developed. We have heard their names and their evil deeds, but we haven’t met them: Fengbald, Skali. We finally meet them in this book, incredibly briefly, and both are quickly disposed of.
Rather than showing us their villainy, we are told they did villainous deeds. I am wondering if Williams does too much telling and not enough showing. There is a scene near the end of the book when a character enters the room and one character nods. Williams tells us she nods so the other character “knows its okay to come in.” Or something like that. But by this point in the story, we should know a character well enough to know what such a nod means. Another option is just leave it to our imagination; why the nod? I’m curious to go back and reread (but I never will) and see if this problem persisted in the series.
All that said, I do like the series. The characters we met early on - Simon, Binabik and a few others - are interesting. A few of the characters introduced later are also growing in interest. Overall, The Dragonbone Chair focused mostly on Simon for the first half and was very slow. Eventually it got good, but I think the entire series would have benefited by more world building early on and introducing more characters from the start.
All that to say: good, not great. I want to find out what happens so I will finish.
As I finish this book, I think my biggest problem with the series is that the antagonists are mostly spoken of but not actually in the story. We met, presumably, the primary antagonists in the first two books (Pryates, King Elias, the Storm King) and they are interesting. We get glimpses of them from time to time and discovering what their plans are is a big reason I want to keep reading. But, kind of like the Eye of Sauron in LOTR, they are mostly off stage. They pop up from time to time. Though, unlike LOTR, we do not fully know their motivation, now about 3/4 through the series.
The problem is, the minor villains who do the dirty work for these major villains are not developed. We have heard their names and their evil deeds, but we haven’t met them: Fengbald, Skali. We finally meet them in this book, incredibly briefly, and both are quickly disposed of.
Rather than showing us their villainy, we are told they did villainous deeds. I am wondering if Williams does too much telling and not enough showing. There is a scene near the end of the book when a character enters the room and one character nods. Williams tells us she nods so the other character “knows its okay to come in.” Or something like that. But by this point in the story, we should know a character well enough to know what such a nod means. Another option is just leave it to our imagination; why the nod? I’m curious to go back and reread (but I never will) and see if this problem persisted in the series.
All that said, I do like the series. The characters we met early on - Simon, Binabik and a few others - are interesting. A few of the characters introduced later are also growing in interest. Overall, The Dragonbone Chair focused mostly on Simon for the first half and was very slow. Eventually it got good, but I think the entire series would have benefited by more world building early on and introducing more characters from the start.
All that to say: good, not great. I want to find out what happens so I will finish.