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[Prospero]

So when shopping for Christmas presents yesterday afternoon I noticed that Gene Wolfe's two-volume series The Wizard Knight has finished up:

..and that Tad Williams has a new book:

Now, seeing as how Wolfe and Williams are the only two fantasy writers I'm willing to read these days*, I'm excited. But Wolfe's The Book of the Short Sun left me cold, and I'm suspicious about the Williams book because that "Volume 1" seems to indicate that the number of volumes in the series is undetermined in a Wheel-of-Time kind of way. Anyone else pick these up? Any opinions?

*I would be reading George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, but I don't read multi-volume fantasy epics until they've been completed.

 

[brooklyngooner]

I read Shadowmarch and was not terribly impressed. A lot of potentially interesting ideas that weren't fully developed and fairly stock fantasy characters. There's nothing about it that's overwhelmingly interesting. Obviously it's leagues better than all the hacks at work like Jordan, Goodkind and Brooks, but for someone as admired as Williams is, I was disappointed.

Put it this way: when volume 2 comes out, I'll wait for the paperback.

Incidentally, this is meant to be a multi-volume epic, so it isn't completed per your rule.

 

[Prospero]

I read Shadowmarch and was not terribly impressed. A lot of potentially interesting ideas that weren't fully developed and fairly stock fantasy characters. There's nothing about it that's overwhelmingly interesting. Obviously it's leagues better than all the hacks at work like Jordan, Goodkind and Brooks, but for someone as admired as Williams is, I was disappointed.

Put it this way: when volume 2 comes out, I'll wait for the paperback.

Incidentally, this is meant to be a multi-volume epic, so it isn't completed per your rule.

Thanks. I should clarify what I meant by the "multi-volume rule": I'm willing to buy the book as long as there's a promise on the cover or within the intro that says something like, "The first volume of a four-volume epic!" or something similar. I bought all the volumes of Otherland in hardcover when they came out, and simply shelved them until volume 4 was released: then I read them all over about three months. (I did the same for Stephenson's Baroque Cycle.) But Shadowmarch gives the impression that it will go on and on for three or seven or maybe even ten volumes, with possible lapses of several years in between each publication, and life is too short for something like that.

 

[brooklyngooner]

Thanks. I should clarify what I meant by the "multi-volume rule": I'm willing to buy the book as long as there's a promise on the cover or within the intro that says something like, "The first volume of a four-volume epic!" or something similar. I bought all the volumes of Otherland in hardcover when they came out, and simply shelved them until volume 4 was released: then I read them all over about three months. (I did the same for Stephenson's Baroque Cycle.) But Shadowmarch gives the impression that it will go on and on for three or seven or maybe even ten volumes, with possible lapses of several years in between each publication, and life is too short for something like that.

I know what you mean. Either I'm left salivating for the next volume for years (Martin) or I was rather indifferent to the first and by the time the next volume is out, I've really forgotten many of the plot points from the first one (happened to me with J.V Jones).

I should clarify: I'm not the *hugest* Williams admirer around. I enjoy him a lot more than other comtemporary fantasy writers, but not as much as most readers seem to. Shadowmarch is nicely written, and if you enjoy him turning a phrase, he can and does here. But if it's solid plotting you enjoy this one really is hit or miss, and worst of all to me, I'm indifferent to the characters. It just really lacks that overall atmosphere you step right back into every time you open the book.

I did read it fairly quickly though. Not a plodding epic.

 

[Prospero]

I should clarify: I'm not the *hugest* Williams admirer around. I enjoy him a lot more than other comtemporary fantasy writers, but not as much as most readers seem to.

Hmm. The only Williams I've read is Otherland--I haven't read Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn or any of his single-volume stuff. What I liked about Otherland was its balls-out ambition--mixing cyberpunk, hack-and-slash fantasy, political and cultural satire, and references to earlier classic literature into a big stew and making it all work together. It's almost a sort of history of the fantasy novel, with all those small, self-contained, heavily-researched worlds that are inspired by authors like Borges and Coleridge and L. Frank Baum.

Shadowmarch doesn't seem to have that sense of ambition, though--looks like he's kind of slumming it this time out. Maybe I'll wait until it hits the bargain bin in hardcover and pick it up then--I'm sure it was overprinted, just like every other Williams book.

 

[teiresias]

Eh, just read "Perdido Street Station" and die happy.