Title: The Witchwood Crown
Author: Tad Williams
Publication Date: February 26, 2019 by Daw Books
Genres: Fantasy
Protagonist Gender: Various
Sometimes you really can't go home again.
I read Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn back in high school, which was 30 years ago, and while I don't have strong memories of it, I enjoyed it. Otherland didn't work for me at all, but I chalked that up to my not being a fan of the whole virtual reality/gaming genre. The War of the Flowers was an OK read, but I figured my lack of enthusiasm was due to my preference for epic, multi-volume sagas. In light of that, Shadowmarch should have been a near-perfect fit, yet I've been stuck on book 3 for years now. I abandoned it, returned to it, and abandoned it again more times than I can count.
Anyway, that brings us back to The Last King of Osten Ard and The Witchwood Crown. I was looking forward to it, but when my read of the original ARC fell flat, I blamed it on an ugly pre-presss PDF format. Call me old-fashioned, but when it comes to epic fantasy I like to hold a big, thick book in my hands, flipping back and forth between maps, glossaries, dramatis personæ, and the story, so I went out and bought the hardcover for myself . . . and still found myself underwhelmed.
I spent a little over a month with that hardcover, willing myself to find my way into the story, but couldn't get past the glacial pacing or unlikable characters. As interesting as it was to see Simon and Miriamele having grown older, all they've seemed to do is suffer, bicker, and linger on as royal figureheads. Whatever spark they had in the original saga is sadly absent here. It was Miriamele who bothered me the most, having gone from one the strongest women I can remember in epic fantasy to a sad Shakespearean figure, terrified by dreams, and wallowing in self-pity. And don't even get me started on Prince Morgan, perhaps the most distasteful, most tiresome character Williams has ever crafted. He, more than anything, was the breaking point for me, and I consigned that hardcover to the DNF stack in the corner.
And yet, even then I wasn't ready to call it quits. At some point, craving a deep, dense, thick epic fantasy in which to immerse myself, I picked up the mass market paperback and decided to give it one more try. After all, it took me 4 tries to get into Steven Erikson's first book, and other authors have benefited from waiting for the right place, right time.
That was two years ago - September 2022 - and I just finished it today.
I'm glad I did it, and I will likely give Empire of Grass a read at some point, but I'll either need Simon and Miri to wake up or Morgan to step up and become a character worthy of his grandparents for me to finish that. This was such a long read, such a repetitive read, and very little actually happened. The actual plot developments could have been covered in a novella, and if you cut out Morgan's drinking scenes and Simon and Miri's bedroom bickering scenes, I'm sure you could cut 100 pages from the book. There are so many POVs that the narrative feels constantly interrupted, and being that it was a book I only returned to between other books, I sometimes had trouble remembering who they were or why they mattered.
As for the end, there are a few exceptionally strong plot developments that really feel like a kicking off point for the series, but then there's a massive twist that certainly had shock value . . . but which leaves me with way too many questions. For a POV character to change so drastically, with no hint as to those thoughts in any of their chapters, feels like a cheat. So in addition to needed more from Simon, Miri, and Morgan for me to finish with the next book, I also need some valid explanation for that twist.
The Witchwood Crown wasn't a horrible book. It wasn't even necessarily a bad book. It just wasn't a good book.
Rating: ♀ ♀ ♀
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