OTHERLAND TV series in development

A fresh attempt is being mounted to bring Tad Williams' cyberpunk-fantasy epic Otherland to the screen.

Platige Image, the production company behind Netflix's Witcher adaptation and anthology series Love, Death and Robots, and producer Mike Weber (who helped usher Wheel of Time onto Amazon), have teamed up to develop an adaptation of the series, which comprises four novels: City of Golden Shadow (1996), River of Blue Fire (1998), Mountain of Black Glass (1999) and Sea of Silver Light (2001).

The series is set in the near-future and depicts a world where virtual reality has become a reality, and an increasing source of entertainment and escape. The main character, Renie, is an instructor in virtual engineering in South Africa when her brother falls victim to a spreading illness which leaves its victims insensible. Wondering if there could be a connection between the illness and a new form of VR tech, Renie embarks on a dangerous investigation alongside her student !Xabbu (of the San bushmen), which leads them to the discovery of incredibly advanced VR worlds, hidden from the rest of the network. Eventually they discover a complex and unfolding plot spanning both the globe and decades of time.

Otherland's key appeal is the numerous virtual worlds located within its setting, including a version of World War I, a single house the size of a city and an alternate history in which the Aztec Empire crossed the Atlantic Ocean and successfully conquered Europe, allowing for a blend of history, fantasy and science fiction.

Otherland is Williams' second-biggest-selling series, after his epic fantasy Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. The series was a solid seller in most countries, but it was a huge success in Germany, attracting wide acclaim and even an MMORPG video game adaptation from a German studio. It was previously optioned for adaptation in 2012 by Warner Brothers.

So far no showrunner or network/studio/streamer is attached, so this is the beginning of an attempt to bring the project to the screen. Given the creators' ties to both Netflix and Amazon, they have to be contenders to pick up the project.

Into the Narrowdark by Tad Williams

The High Kingdom is in peril. The Norns have returned and are advancing from the north, threatening both the Hayholt and the Sithi strongholds of the old forest. The tribes of the Thrithings are threatening an invasion from the east. There is civil war in Nabban. The realm needs King Simon to act decisively to crush these threats, but he is bereft and grief-ridden. As the king's allies try to rally to save the kingdom, his enemies move against him.

The Last King of Osten Ard is a sequel series to Tad William's Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy, an acknowledged classic of epic fantasy. Picking up the action thirty years later, this sequel series asks hard questions about what happens to the heroes who saved the day in one story and if they are the best people to lead the land through all the complexities of life in peacetime.

The first two volumes of the series, The Witchwood Crown and Empire of Grass, set up a fascinating, multi-sided conflict as the human kingdoms struggle with internal divisions whilst their old Norn enemies have managed to rebuild and are now threatening a fresh offensive. But, unlike the original trilogy, Williams also spends a lot of time in the Norn camp, exploring their internal divisions and politics as well, humanising this previously faceless enemy. The result is a richer, more interesting series which is less interested in being a retread of the hero's journey (though a few characters also get arcs more akin to that).

Into the Narrowdark is both the third book in the series and the opening half of the concluding chapter; yet again (to the point it's virtually become a meme) Williams delivered a book far too vast to fit between two covers and the book was split in half for publication. Unfortunately, this is to this volume's detriment. In normal circumstances, Williams is the very embodiment of the "slow-burn" writer, setting up his guns very carefully in a row before firing them, but when he fires them the story comes together impressively well, even within individual novels of a series. This novel is, unfortunately, all setup and no resolution, which is fairly frustrating given, at almost 600 pages in hardcover, it's not exactly a short book.

The other problem is that Williams is not at all shy to revisit previous story ideas. So, for those who were kind of over the characters spending hundreds of pages lost in the Aldheorte forest in earlier books, the prospect of spending yet more time with characters wandering through the exact same woods may not entice. The same for characters lost in the Nabbanese wilderness, or roaming back and forth through the Thrithings or even just roaming lost through the labyrinth cellars of the Hayholt. If we were getting major character growth or huge backstory revelations in these sequences, that would be one thing, but we're not, or very little. After the first two books did a good job of matching plot development, worldbuilding, political intrigue and character growth, this third volume feels more like an exercise in wheel-spinning.

That said, Tad Williams is still an excellent prose writer and a gifted evoker of atmosphere. The few battle sequences are vivid and well-described, and Morgan, at least, gets some much-needed growth. Returning to the world of Osten Ard is like revisiting an old favourite haunt, and there is much to enjoy in the scenery even if it doesn't feel like it's moving past very quickly.

The book does end on a rousing, startling cliffhanger and at least the second half of the novel is complete (although being revised), but Into the Narrowdark ends up feeling exactly what it is: half a book, in urgent need of its conclusion.

Into the Narrowdark (***) is half of a potentially very interesting book, but until the second half is published, it's hard to fully appreciate if this novel's slow, slow-burning pace is justified. The novel is available now in the UK and USA and the final volume in the series, The Navigator's Children, should hopefully follow in 2023.

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Astra Publishing acquire DAW Books

One of SFF's longest-standing independent publishers has been snapped up. DAW Books have been acquired by Astra Publishing.

DAW Books was founded by former Ace Books editor Donald Wollheim and his wife  Elsie in 1971 to publish science fiction and fantasy. They kicked off with an Andre Norton short story collection and never looked back, enjoying commercial success as well as critical acclaim (their first Hugo Award winner was C.J. Cherryh's Downbelow Station). The publisher were also noted for a united cover design, which gave every book a distinctive yellow spine. After Donald's retirement in 1985 (he passed away in 1990), his daughter Betsy took over the company.

The publisher achieved enormous commercial success with Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy in the 1990s, marking the beginning of a career that eventually saw over 20 million books sold. Their biggest success came in 2007 with the release of Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind. Along with its (much-delayed) sequel, The Wise Man's Fear (2011), the two books sold more than 20 million copies between them.

DAW Books' fortunes seem to have wavered in recent years. The company entered a distribution deal with Penguin which was not a buy-out, but gave Penguin significant editorial control. During this period DAW was forced to drop Michelle West and had to abandon using acclaimed cover artist Michael Whelan for Tad Williams' new books. In July 2020, Wollheim unusually criticised one of her own authors, Patrick Rothfuss, for failing to produce the promised third and concluding volume in his Kingkiller Chronicle series, noting that publishers rely on their mega-selling authors to regularly produce books to allow the publishers to take a chance on other talent (in the two years since then, there has still been no sign of the book).

Astra Publishing was founded in 2020 from a merger of several smaller publishers. Its remit is to find new and exciting fiction for both adults, young adults and children, based on more than thirty years of experience in the business. DAW becomes its newest and oldest imprint, and also only its second imprint dedicated to adult fiction.

Brothers of the Wind by Tad Williams

Mortals have come to Asu'a from the west with dire news: the dragon Hidohebhi has descended from the mountains to wreak destruction and death on innocent farmers and settlers. The immortal Sithi usually pay little heed to the doings of mortals, but, recognising that the dragon presents a threat to everyone, the fiery and proud young prince Ineluki rides out to confront the beast. His steadier, calmer brother Hakatri rides with him, but the power of the dragon is greater than they could have feared. Their quest to slay the beast takes them far across the lands of Osten Ard, and their adventure is chronicled by Pamon Kes, Hakatri's faithful servant.

Brothers of the Wind is a stand-alone prequel to Tad Williams' masterwork of epic fantasy, the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy, and its currently ongoing sequel quartet, The Last King of Osten Ard. Set more than a thousand years before the previous books in the series, it chronicles an important event from the backstory to those novels. It is also a short, self-contained work which can be read as a standalone.

Williams is best-known for his immense doorsteppers of books. Case in point, the final Last King of Osten Ard novel was recently deemed unpublishable in a single volume and has been split in two. However, Williams is also a skilled writer of shorter fiction, in which his always carefully-crafted prose and finely-honed characterisation is also given an impressive sense of pace and focus. That could be seen in The Heart of What Was Lost, his 2017 short novel released as a prequel to The Last King of Osten Ard, and can be seen even more here.

Brothers of the Wind can be read as a tragedy. It has two lead characters, Hakatri and Ineluki, both seen through the eyes of Hakatri's servant Pamon. We get a much clearer view of Hakatri, whilst Ineluki - destined to become the Storm King of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn - is a more transient figure, flitting in and out of the story according to events and his changeable mood. Seeing mythical characters from one series, described in awe or terms of legend, as real flash-and-blood characters in another can be deflating, but the POV device Williams employs here lets us both get to know Ineluki better without damaging or reducing his mythic power.

The novel is divided into several parts. In the first part, the brothers seek out the great dragon to slay it, only to be comprehensively defeated. They find themselves wandering western Osten Ard in search of allies, lore or weapons that can help them in their quest. This part of the book is fascinating, as we see lands we know much better from the earlier novels in a more primitive state of existence: the people of Hernystir before the kingdom becomes known as that, and many more areas where the Sithi are still extant. Williams is a great travelogue writer and worldbuilder, and his skills here are put to good use, painting this earlier era of Osten Ard's history in as much colour and detail as his larger books.

In the latter part of the novel, the great dragon is once again confronted, but the consequences of that confrontation have wide-ranging affects. Those who have read the other books will get glimpses of the path that Ineluki sets out on that will lead to the events of the Storm King's War, but others will be more concerned with the relationship with Pamon and Hakatri, which takes an interesting turn. The story turns into one of a servant caring for his master and having to make hard choices on behalf of another, sometimes in ways that hurt himself.

The sheer size of the average Williams novel allows for a relaxed pace, sometimes too relaxed (the very first Osten Ard novel, The Dragonbone Chair, famously takes the better part of 200 pages to get moving), but Brothers of the Wind (****½) moves faster and with greater focus. It starts off as an adventure and gradually turns into a tragedy of genuine moving power, as well as foreshadowing events in the other books in the setting. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

The third volume in The Last King of Osten Ard, Into the Narrowdark, is due for publication in July, and should be followed by The Navigator's Children.

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Penguin Random House drops Michael Whelan artwork from future Tad Williams novels

In a bizarre move, Penguin Random House has decided to go with a different cover artist for future Tad Williams books, apparently being unwilling to stump up the money for further covers from acclaimed artist Michael Whelan.

Whelan is one of the highest-regarded artists working in science fiction and fantasy, and his critically-acclaimed cover art has adorned all of Tad Williams's Memory, Sorrow and Thorn books so far, as well as the first two volumes of the Last King of Osten Ard sequel series. Whelan has also created artwork for the likes of Brandon Sanderson, Melanie Rawn, Anne McCaffrey, C.S. Friedman, Robin Hobb, C.J. Cherryh and Tanith Lee, as well as Williams's Otherland quartet. When Darrell K. Sweet passed away whilst working on the final Wheel of Time novel cover, Whelan was the only choice to step in and replace him.

Whelan's artwork adorned The Witchwood Crown and Empire of Grass, but the remaining two books in the series, Into the Narrowdark and The Navigator's Children, will have new cover art from an as-yet unannounced artist.

The books are published by DAW Books, who are editorially independent but distributed by Penguin Random House, who also have a say in the company's financial affairs. Similar financial restrictions meant that DAW were forced to drop Michelle West's Essalieyan universe series in August. The author will now be completing that series with the help of her fans via Patreon. Seeing the same penny-pinching attitude applied to one of DAW's historically biggest-selling authors (Williams has sold over 17 million books) is quite strange.

Into the Narrowdark is currently scheduled for publication on 12 July 2022. The Navigator's Children is expected to follow in late 2022 or early 2023 (the two books were originally one volume but have been split in two for publication due to length).

New Tad Williams novels get new titles and a possibly accelerated release schedule

As related previously, Tad Williams shocking failed to break with convention by writing the concluding volume of his new Last King of Osten Ard sequence as so long that it had to be split in two. Publication plans for these two volumes are now becoming clearer.

First up, the books will be given their own titles. The first volume - now Book III of The Last King of Osten Ard - will be called Into the Narrowdark. The second - now Book IV of the untrilogy - will retain the original title of The Navigator's Children.

The books also look like they might come out sooner than expected, with the publishers considering a spring 2022 release for the first volume and a late summer 2022 release for the second, just a few months later. Previously the publishers had been considering 22 October 2022 for the first volume and an early-to-mid-2023 release date for the second, so it appears they've shuffled things up, which is good news.

Ahead of those two volumes, a shorter novel in the same setting, Brothers of the Wind, will be published on 4  November this year.

Shocking no one, the next Tad Williams book will be published in two volumes

In news that will not be a surprise to anyone, the final volume of Tad Williams' Last King of Osten Ard series, The Navigator's Children, will be published in two volumes.

This is a matter of history repeating itself. To Green Angel Tower, the final volume of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, Williams' prior work in the same world and possibly the longest epic fantasy novel ever written (and around the fifth-longest SFF novel of all time), was split into two volumes in paperback. The final book in the Shadowmarch series was also split into two volumes for publication, Shadowrise and Shadowheart. Williams deliberately paced his Otherland series as four volumes, fearing the same thing would happen again, and very nearly extended that series to five books as the final volume came in so long, but they were able to keep it to four.

At the moment it is unclear if the two volumes will be published as "Part I" and "Part II" or if they'll have to be retitled. Tad is currently rewriting and editing The Navigator's Children with a view to Part I being published in 2022 and hopefully Part II six to twelve months later.

Williams' next novel, Brothers of the Wind, a prequel to the entire Osten Ard saga so far, will be published this November.

New Tad Williams novel gets cover blurb

The publishers have confirmed a blurb for Brothers of the Wind, Tad Williams' next novel set in the world of Osten Ard.

This isn't the concluding novel in the Last King of Osten Ard trilogy, The Navigator's Children, which is expected later (Williams has already completed the novel and has been revising it for some time), but a new, short prequel book set a long time before the events even of The Dragonbone Chair (the first novel in the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy).

Pride often goes before a fall, but sometimes that prideful fall is so catastrophic that it changes history itself.

Among the immortal Sithi of Osten Ard, none are more beloved and admired than the two sons of the ruling family, steady Hakatri and his proud and fiery younger brother Ineluki - Ineluki, who will one day become the undead Storm King. The younger brother makes a bold, terrible oath that he will destroy deadly Hidohebhi, a terrifying monster, but instead drags his brother with him into a disaster that threatens not just their family but all the Sithi - and perhaps all of humankind as well.

Set a thousand years before the events of Williams's The Dragonbone Chair, the tale of Ineluki's tragic boast and what it brings is told by Pamon Kes, Hakatri's faithful servant. Kes is not one of the Sithi but a member of the enslaved Changeling race, and his loyalty has never before been tested. Now he must face the terrible black dragon at his master's side, then see his own life changed forever in a mere instant by Ineluki's rash, selfish promise.

Kes and his master will range the world, risking countless dangers and meeting both mortals and immortals of many kinds as they try to undo the tragedy that springs from Ineluki's fatal pledge. During this journey, the seeds are planted for events that will culminate centuries later in the Storm King's War in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn and the dreadful Norn Queen Utuk'ku's assault on humanity in The Last King of Osten Ard.

In the end, Pamon Kes must question everything about his life - and risk everything, too - as he struggles to save his beloved master, Hakatri. But will anything Kes does be enough? Or has Ineluki's rash promise already set the entire world on an unstoppable course toward destruction?

Brothers of the Wind was previously scheduled for release in June 2021, although the UK publishers and several online bookstores are now showing it for release in November 2021, with The Navigator's Children to follow in October 2022. These dates are likely placeholders and I hope to confirm those soon.

Tad Williams breaks own record to deliver the longest epic fantasy novel of all time (before editing)

Tad Williams has broken his own record to deliver the longest epic fantasy novel of all time, at least before the editing process is completed.

Williams' 1993 novel To Green Angel Tower, the concluding volume of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, is 520,000 words in length, or around 60,000 words longer than even the complete Lord of the Rings. In fact, the only even vaguely SFF novels longer than To Green Angel Tower are firmly in other subgenres: Varney the Vampire, Atlas Shrugged, Jerusalem and Infinite Jest. To Green Angel Tower is as long as the first two books in the trilogy (The Dragonbone Chair and Stone of Farewell) combined and is often only available in two volumes.

Fittingly, Williams' new, record-breaking novel is the concluding volume to Memory, Sorrow and Thorn's sequel trilogy, The Last King of Osten Ard. The Navigator's Children currently clocks in at "bigger" than To Green Angel Tower.

The novel is being "prodigiously cut" and may end up coming in shorter than the published To Green Angel Tower, but whether that happens or not remains to be seen.

The Navigator's Children is currently tentatively scheduled for release in late 2021, and will be preceded by a short novel called Brothers of the Wind (previously known as The Shadow of Things to Come), which focuses on the backstory of the Storm King, Ineluki, and his brother Hakatri.

CORRECTION: It's been noted that Tad has completed the first draft of The Navigator's Children and is now revising, but has not delivered it to DAW as yet.

Empire of Grass by Tad Williams

The kingdoms of Osten Ard are in turmoil. A resurgent Norn threat in the north threatens Rimmersgard and northern Erkynland. The tribes of the Thrithings are in turmoil, a conflict that threatens to spill across the borders into Nabban and Erkynland. Hernystir is in danger of falling under the power of a dark cult. Civil war threatens in Nabban. The High King Simon and the High Queen Miriamele both try to tackle these issues, but the number of their reliable allies is falling and their grandson and heir is missing. But the threat is greater and closer than they think, as for the first time in thousands of years, the deathless queen of the Norns prepares to leave her stronghold.

The Witchwood Crown marked the start of The Last King of Osten Ard, a fresh trilogy picking up thirty years after the events of Williams' break-out work, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. It was a slow-paced novel but one that had to set up an awful lot of plot points, as well as revisiting characters from the first trilogy and introducing new ones. At the end of the book things kicked off, with Prince Morgan fleeing into the Aldheorte Forest, Unver beginning his unification of the Thrithings tribes, Miriamele setting off on a dangerous mission to Nabban and a band of Norns confronting a dragon.

Empire of Grass picks up on these plot points and expands on them, ticking along at a faster pace than the first novel (helped by it being a slightly shorter book), with us rotating between events in Nabban, the Hayholt, Aldheorte, the grasslands, Nakkiga, Naglimund and other locations quite rapidly. The key difference between the two trilogies is that Memory, Sorrow and Thorn was focused very tightly on Simon with occasional cutaways to other characters, but Last King is a broad-spectrum, multi-POV, multi-location, full-on epic fantasy series with a lot more going on in different places. The loss of tight focus may be bemoaned by some, but it does at least present us with a really epic story told on a huge scale.

Empire of Grass is also important in that it identifies the long-missing children of Josua and Vorzheva, whose identities and destinies have driven a lot of discussion by fantasy fans for well over a decade. We learn more about the twins and where their paths have led them, with a real sense of mythic power that both may hold the fate of the world in their hands, despite not being primary POV characters. We also learn more about Vorzheva, but Josua remains missing, with a hunt for him by agents of the crown forming an intriguing subplot through the novel.

As usual, Williams' gifts remain in atmosphere, with his stately worldbuilding and measured prose, and characterisation. I've seen criticism of the first book stemming from Simon's apparent lack of success in being king, but I see this as Williams simply furthering his subversion of epic fantasy tropes that began way back in 1988 with The Dragonbone Chair: it turns out that a kitchen boy with no background in statecraft might not be the best person to make king. It's made clear that the more experienced Miriamele is a far better ruler and the real power on the throne, which helps better explain why things get worse once she leaves for Nabban. The assumption that the guy who saved the world in the first series would automatically be a greater ruler who never did anything wrong is a bit odd, and is Williams' exploration of the question George R.R. Martin asked of Tolkien about Aragorn: yes, he may have been a great warrior, but does that mean has great insights into tax policy and crop rotation techniques?

If Williams does have a slight weak spot it's political intrigue: Nabban sets up the facade of being a hotbed of double-crosses and Xanatos gambits, but the final revelation of what's going on in Nabban is more than a little simplistic and lacking, with the villain explaining why they are doing everything and might as well have twirled a moustache in the process. There's also a decided lack of explanation as for why the powers in Nabban think they can win a multi-pronged conflict against multiple enemies simultaneously, which is what they seem to be setting up at the end of the book.

There's some great battle scenes, as the Norn invasion gets underway in full, and some excellent character beats (particularly among the Norns and half-Norns of Operation Dragon Retrieval, probably the best storyline in the new series). There's also some decided repetition stemming from Williams' decision not to expand the story to new geographical areas. The big battle takes place on the site of an already massive battle from the first trilogy, and seeing Morgan struggle through Aldheorte Forest for dozens of pages on end might have been more compelling if we hadn't seen Simon do exactly this in the first trilogy, even visiting many of the same exact places along the way.

Where Empire of Grass is most successful is furthering the themes that The Witchwood Crown explored so thoroughly: ageing, losing loved ones and the younger generation not listening to its elders and making the exact same mistakes all over again. There's a melancholy strain in this trilogy which recalls Tolkien at his best.

Empire of Grass (****½) is a somewhat tighter and better-paced book than its forebear, developing the first book's stories, characters and themes well, and setting things up splendidly for the final novel in the series, The Navigator's Children, which I would be expecting to be published in 2021. The novel is available in the UK and USA now.

Tad Williams Signing and Q&A Report

Last night Tad Williams was in London to do a signing at Forbidden Planet and also to take part in an interview and Q&A session. I had the pleasure of meeting him for the first time and it turns out he's a really friendly and nice guy.

New information from the signing: Tad confirmed that Empire of Grass, the second volume of The Last King of Osten Ard, is complete but needs to be edited. The publishers are mulling over when to release it: if they go for an early release (presumably in 2018), Tad will immediately start writing the concluding book of the trilogy, The Navigator's Children. If they decide to hold off until later, Tad will write the second short prequel novel, The Shadow of Things to Come, first. Unlike The Heart of What Was Lost, which was a bridging novel between the two trilogies, Shadow is a completely self-contained story with no connections to the latest work; in fact, it's more about Sithi and Norn characters from the first trilogy in the heyday of Sithi civilisation (Sithilisation?), so can come out before or after the trilogy is done.

Otherland remains under a film option but Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is not under any option at the moment, despite some vague interest from time to time.

Tad prefers writing his shorter novels like the Bobby Dollar books, which only took four to five months each to write rather than two to three years like his big epics. We may see more shorter books from him in the future.

When asked which of his fictional worlds he'd like to live in, he replied "The one with the best toilet facilities".

Video blogger Kitty G recorded the interview so keep an eye on her YouTube channel to see when it goes up.

The Witchwood Crown by Tad Williams

Thirty years have passed since the Storm King's War. Simon and Miriamele have ruled Osten Ard well, keeping the peace between the nations that make up the High Ward and the noble families within them, but their life has been tinged by the tragic death of their son. Their grandson Morgan stands to inherit the throne, but he is a wastrel more interested in drinking and wenching than in learning what he needs to rule. The heroes of the old war are passing and a new generation is coming to power, one that is less impressed by stories of old conflicts that they only half believe.

But in the far north, Stormspike is stirring. The Norn Queen has awoken after a long sleep and the lust for vengeance against humanity is resurgent. A band of Norn and half-Norn warriors strikes out on a quest they only barely understand. In the far south the kingdom of Nabban is on the brink of civil war. The Sithi have gone silent, their last messenger shot with arrows within sight of the Hayholt. The long peace is coming to an end, and the fate of the world again hangs in the balance.

The Witchwood Crown is the first novel in the Last King of Osten Ard trilogy, which sees Tad Williams return to the setting of his classic original trilogy Memory, Sorrow and Thorn (The Dragonbone Chair, Stone of Farewell and To Green Angel Tower) and the short novel The Heart of What Was Lost, published earlier this year. It's been twenty-three years since Williams last wrote in this world, the author wary of "franchising" his earliest and most iconic work until he had a story that was worth telling.

There is much to admire about The Witchwood Crown. Williams is telling a very large story from a large number of points of view. The original trilogy was very focused in the Hayholt and told a more linear, focused narrative which only gradually expanded outwards. This novel starts with a more George R.R. Martin-esque approach of having a larger cast in disparate parts of the world. One second we are with a slave living in the depths of Stormspike and then we're a thousand miles or more away in the palaces of Nabban, riven with Byzantine plotting. Old favourite characters return, including Simon, Miariamele, Tiamak, Eolair and Binabik, but there's a lot of new characters such as Morgan, as well as the return of characters like Porto from The Heart of What Was Lost. The worldbuilding is more in-depth, with reflections on time passing (Erchester is now a real city rather than the more modest town of the previous trilogy). Epic fantasy, as a genre, is at its best when it can indulge in "long-breathed storytelling" and The Witchwood Crown certainly does that. This is a marathon, not a sprint, and Williams develops his story with surety, confidence and time.

This does mean that The Witchwood Crown is a slow-paced work. Major plot revelations are separated by many chapters in which apparently little happens (although it does, it's just a lot more subtle). Although Williams tries very hard to make this book approachable for new readers, there's some instances of self-indulgence as Simon catches up with Binabik and asks about his family and his wolf, but this is generally kept to a minimum. The reason this book is so large (700 pages in hardcover) and so deliberately paced is because he is setting up a very big story and it's only towards the end of the novel that he fires the starting pistols which really get the narrative fired up.

This slow pace could be a bigger problem - and it's certainly put some other reviewers off - if Williams didn't also take his time to explore thematic ideas of ageing, grief and the passing of the years. Simon and Miriamele are now grandparents in their early fifties and apparently slightly baffled that so much time has passed so quickly. Those of us who read the original books when they first came out or shortly afterwards can sympathise: I finished reading the first trilogy on a fine summer afternoon in the park behind my old house almost exactly twenty years before I started reading this book, and a similar shock at the passage of time went through me. The characters are also haunted by the memory of the death of their son, John, and how this has impacted not just them but his son Morgan. Ironically, the joint grief they share has also divided them, with the natural lack of understanding between the generations preventing them from reaching an understanding.

This thematic idea gives the book a somewhat melancholy aspect. We also learn a lot more about the Norns and even sympathise with them (or at least some of them): they are a slowly dying race and their constant search for blood and vengeance seems pointless, corrupting further what was once a noble people. When they gain access to a new supernatural weapon, the reaction from some of the Norns isn't triumphant but instead weariness at the idea of yet another war, yet more pointless slaughter. The Witchwood Crown, on this level, is an epic fantasy that rejects some of the martial triumphalism and blood-letting that other epic fantasies revel in.

At the end of the book, some long-standing questions are raised, some long-missing characters return and other characters are left on immense cliffhangers, their fates unclear. Fortunately, we will not have to wait to learn more: the second novel in the trilogy, Empire of Grass, is already complete and should be published in late 2018 or early 2019.

The Witchwood Crown (****) is slowly, deliberately-paced and sometimes meanders or is allowed to become self-indulgent rather than being tightened up. It's certainly a slower novel than even the original Dragonbone Chair, and Tad Williams newcomers may be put off. But it's also wonderfully well-written and explores ideas of ageing, dying and living which are universal. For the most part the new storylines are logically extrapolated from the original trilogy without lazily rehashing it and confirms that yes, the return to Osten Ard is (so far) worth it. The book is available now in the UK and USA.

The Longest SFF Novels of All Time

With the recent news that Brandon Sanderson's Oathbringer is going to be very big indeed, I thought it'd be interesting to look at the longest SFF novels and series.

These lists are not exhaustive and consistency of reporting these figures can be quite variable. I have opted for word counts as the most accurate way of estimating length, as page counts can vary immensely based on page margins and font sizes.


Longest Novels

1. Varney the Vampire by James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest
667,000 words • 1845-47

This long novel was serialised in "penny dreadfuls" of the mid-19th Century and chronicles the adventures of Sir Francis Varney, a vampire. This book's genre credentials have been disputed (with the suggestion that Varney is actually a madman rather than a real vampire), but there seems to be a general acceptance that the book is a genuine work of the fantastic, and the longest SFF work ever published in one volume (which it was in 1847). The book was also influential on Bram Stoker's later Dracula (1897) and introduced many of the tropes of vampire fiction, including the "sympathetic vampire" protagonist.


2. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
645,000 words • 1957

Highly debatable as a genre work rather than a political novel, although the story is partially set against a dystopian background and genre historian John Clute identifies the novel as SF (plus it inspired the very SF Bioshock video game series and fantasy Sword of Truth series), so okay, we'll count it.


3. Jerusalem by Alan Moore
615,000 words • 2016

Alan Moore's prose magnum opus is a massive, dizzying and baffling journey into the surreal. It's so huge that it is available in a two-volume edition in a nice slipcase.


4. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
545,000 words • 1996

Infinite Jest has primarily literary allusions, although the book's setting - a North American superstate consisting of a unified Canada, USA and Mexico - is a futuristic dystopia. The book could have even been bigger, with 250 manuscript pages trimmed for length by the publishers.

5. To Green Angel Tower by Tad Williams
520,000 words • 1993

The concluding volume of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is bigger than the first two novels in the series (The Dragonbone Chair and Stone of Farewell) combined. A titanic, shelf-destroying novel, it is only available in mass-market paperback in two volumes, subtitled Siege and Storm.


6. The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon
502,000 words • 2001

The fifth volume of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander historical romance series, spiced up by a time-spanning culture clash, is absolutely gigantic.


7. A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon
501,000 words • 2005

The sixth volume of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander historical romance series doesn't quite match its predecessor.


8. Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle
500,000 words • 2000

Mary Gentle's novel is a dazzling mix of SF, historical drama, fantasy, alternate history and generaly bizarrity. The novel was published in one volume in the UK, but the American publishers released it as four in the USA.


9. Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson (estimated)
495,000 words (estimated) • 2017

The final word count could go up or down, but Brandon Sanderson has estimated that the third volume of The Stormlight Archive will be 25% longer than the already-huge second volume.

10. The Stand by Stephen King
472,376 words • 1978

Stephen King's biggest novel in a single volume, notable for also foreshadowing The Dark Tower series. The above word count is for the expanded and revised edition.

11. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
470,000 words • 1954-55

This book needs no introduction. The most influential fantasy novel ever written, often incorrectly cited as the biggest genre novel of all time. Due to paper shortages after the Second World War, the book was released in three volumes, inadvertently creating the classic fantasy trilogy at the same time.


12. The Naked God by Peter F. Hamilton
469,000 words • 1999

The biggest space opera ever written, even more remarkable because it was the concluding volume of an even bigger trilogy, The Night's Dawn.


13. It by Stephen King
445,134 words • 1986

Arguably Stephen King's most famous single novel.


14. Sea of Silver Light by Tad Williams
443,000 words • 2001

This is the concluding volume of Tad Williams's fantasy/cyberpunk mash-up Otherland. Williams likes to end big.


15. A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin
422,000 words • 2000

George R.R. Martin started his Song of Ice and Fire series being somewhat concerned about the word count and went to great lengths to keep the first two books down to a friendly 300,000 words or so apiece, dropping chapters back into the next volume if necessary. However, with Martin planning a five year time-jump after this book, he had no choice but to write the story to its natural conclusion. The result was a book that pushed the UK publishers to the limits of what they could publish in one volume. The paperback version, in fact, was released in two volumes.


16. A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin
420,000 words • 2011

The difficult-to-write fifth volume in A Song of Ice and Fire ended up being somewhat longer than A Storm of Swords, but Martin cut it down to slightly shorter in the final sweat and edit.


17. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
415,000 words • 1999

Neal Stephenson's first gigantic book, but not his last (although this remains his longest book) is an interesting romp through WWII history, cryptography and weirdness. A stand-alone, but it also acts as a thematic prequel (and actual sequel) to his later Baroque Cycle.

18. An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon
402,000 words • 2009

The seventh Outlander novel is huge, but feels quite modest compared to the longest books in the series mentioned above.


19. Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon
401,000 words • 1996

The fourth Outlander novel. Given the several books in the series that are just under 400,000 words, I can only assume that the author gets through a lot of keyboards.


20. The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
400,000 words • 2011

Patrick Rothfuss's sequel to The Name of the Wind is considerably larger. It remains to be seen if the final volume of The Kingkiller Chronicle, The Doors of Stone, will be bigger still.


21. Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson
400,000 words • 2014

The second volume of The Stormlight Archive is about to lose its record-setting status as Sanderson's biggest novel and the biggest novel in the series to Oathbringer. But it's still pretty big.

Below 400,000 words, the number of fantasy and SF novels in that size bracket shoots up massively. So rather than try to come up with an exhaustive list, here's some notable SFF novels with their word counts:

• Lord of Chaos is the sixth and longest Wheel of Time novel, clocking in at 395,000 words.
• Toll the Hounds is the eighth and longest Malazan Book of the Fallen novel, reaching 389,000 words.
• Maia, by the late Richard Adams, is 379,130 words.
• Magician, by Raymond E. Feist, is a relatively breezy 313,410 words (about 330,000 words in the 1992 extended edition). Which makes the decision to publish the novel in two volumes in the United States (as Apprentice and Master) all the weirder.
• Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell is 309,000 words.
• Temple of the Winds, the longest Sword of Truth novel, is a modest 307,520 words in length.
• The Order of the Phoenix, the longest Harry Potter novel, is 257,045 words in length. That's over three times the length of the shortest novel in the series, The Philosopher's Stone. 
• The Sword of Shannara, the novel that gave birth of the modern fantasy genre, is a relatively modest 228,160 words. It's also still Terry Brooks's biggest novel, by far; none of the other Shannara novels top 200,000 words and only three top 150,000 words.
• SF is generally a lot shorter than fantasy, but the fact that Frank Herbert's seminal Dune is only 188,000 words - shorter than three of the Harry Potter books! - might be surprising.

The Longest SFF Series

This is a much more debatable list, since some series are more diffuse than others. The Riftwar books, for example, form nine distinct series, but also have narrative elements spanning all twenty-nine books in the series. The same is true of the Shannara series. The Discworld books I haven't even attempted to fit on here for this reason. This list is therefore a bit more speculative.

• The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson (15 volumes): 4,360,000 words.
• The Shannara Series by Terry Brooks (28 volumes, incomplete): 3,865,000 words.
• The Riftwar Cycle by Raymond E. Feist (29 volumes): 3,831,670 words.
• The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson (10 volumes): 3,274,000 words (5.5 million including all related works by Erikson and Ian Esslemont).
• Outlander by Diana Gabaldon (8 volumes, incomplete): 3,227,000 words.
• The Cosmere by Brandon Sanderson (11 novels/1 anthology, incomplete): 2,971,940 words.
• The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind (11 volumes): 2,761,170 words (3,643,650 including the sequels).
• The Wars of Light and Shadow by Janny Wurts (9 volumes, incomplete): 2,600,000 words.
• The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson (10 volumes): 2,062,000 words.
• The Belgariad/Malloreon by David & Leigh Eddings (12 volumes): 1,861,000 words.
• A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin (5 volumes, incomplete): 1,749,000 words.
• Worm by John McCrae (30 "arcs"): 1,680,000 words.
• Crown of Stars by Kate Elliott (7 volumes): 1,622,720 words.
• The Solar Cycle by Gene Wolfe (11 volumes): 1,368,000 words.
• The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson (3 volumes, incomplete): 1,275,000 words.
• The Dark Tower by Stephen King (8 volumes): 1,256,000 words.
• The Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton (3 volumes): 1,247,000 words.
• Otherland by Tad Williams (4 volumes): 1,189,000 words.
• The Second Apocalypse by R. Scott Bakker (7 volumes, incomplete): 1,172,000 words.
• Memory, Sorrow and Thorn by Tad Williams (3 volumes): 1,126,000 words (1,542,440 including The Heart of What Was Lost and The Witchwood Crown).
• The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson (3 volumes): 1,125,000 words (1,540,000 including Cryptonomicon).
• Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling (7 volumes): 1,084,170 words (1,183,370 including The Cursed Child).
• Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (6 volumes, incomplete): 1,077,560 words.
• The Elenium/Tamuli by David Eddings (6 volumes): 1,006,000 words.
• The Sword of Shadows by J.V. Jones (4 volumes, incomplete): 945,047 words.
• Dune by Frank Herbert (6 volumes): 839,000 words.
• The Expanse by James S.A. Corey (6 volumes, incomplete): 834,000 words.
• The Acts of Caine by Matt Stover (4 volumes): 768,000 words.
• The First Law by Joe Abercrombie (3 volumes): 618,000 words (1,216,000 including the stand-alone sequels).

Why Page Counts Vary

It's remarkable what difference shifting a margin over by a few millimetres can make. One-volume editions of The Lord of the Rings, for example, can vary from 750 pages (for tiny-font editions on onion paper) to the better part of 2,000 (for large-print versions for readers with bad eyesight). Back in 2001 Pan Macmillan were able to squeeze thepaperback of The Naked God (469,000 words) into almost the exact same page count as its predecessor novel, The Reality Dysfunction (385,000 words) despite being significantly longer, just by manipulating font sizes and margins.

This is why page count is a poor guide to working out a novel's true length, and word count is more reliable indicator.

Word counts can also differ, depending on the programme used (most modern word counts come from the ebook editions) and how they count punctuation. Some counters will also include cast lists, footnotes and appendices, others will disregard them. The publishers may even give differing word counts because they did a count before the last edits were finalised, or they forgot that the new edition has more stuff in it.


Sources

SFF blogger Abalieno has been keeping tabs on book lengths over on Looping World for many years and some of these figures come directly from there. Excellent work from him there.

Reading Length is a great site which extracts book lengths from multiple sources and then works out how long it will take to read the book. It tends to the conservative, so some of the above figures may actually be less than what is actually the case. However, it does make mistakes: its word count for Dune, for example, is for the 50th anniversary edition which includes several hundred pages of bonus material which isn't part of the novel.

Novel Word Count doesn't seem to be as exhaustive as it was planned to be, but its Stephen King page is pretty good.

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Cover art for THE WITCHWOOD CROWN unveiled

Tad Williams has revealed the American cover art for The Witchwood Crown, the upcoming first volume in his Memory, Sorrow and Thorn sequel series, The Last King of Osten Ard.

As with the original trilogy, The Witchwood Crown's cover art is by genre star Michael Whelan. It depicts Hjeldin's Tower in the Hayholt, the great castle around so much of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn revolved.

The new book picks up thirty years after the events of To Green Angel Tower and the recent bridging novel, The Heart of What Was Lost. The novel will be released on 27 June.

The Heart of What Was Lost by Tad Williams

The Storm King has been defeated, his army of Norns driven off and peace returned to the lands of Osten Ard. King Seoman and Queen Miriamele have taken the throne in the Hayholt and a new age of peace beckons. But for Duke Isgrimnur of Rimmersgard the war is not entirely over. Along with the famed warrior Sludig, Isgrimnur has been given command of an army with orders to pursue the fleeing Norns back to Stormspike and ensure they are destroyed forever.

The Heart of What Was Lost acts as a bridge between the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy by Tad Williams and its upcoming sequel series, The Last King of Osten Ard. The first novel in that trilogy, The Witchwood Crown, will be released in June 2017. This book is useful for laying some groundwork for that trilogy and wrapping up some loose ends from the earlier series that Williams was unable to address at the time.

The Heart of What Was Lost is short, focused, lean and mean. Just 200 pages long in hardcover, making it barely a short story by the author's normal standards, it moves with pace and energy. As a war story it has quite a bit of action, but also with some strong moments of character-building as characters reflect on what is going on.

The book is related from three different points of view. Porto is an ordinary soldier in Isgrimnur's army who yearns for an end to the war so he can go home, but is distracted when he befriends a terrified younger fellow soldier and tries to keep him alive. Isgrimnur, a returning character from Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, is the gruff general and old warrior, still charismatic and skilled at warfare but hurting from the death of his son in To Green Angel Tower. Viyeki is a Builder, one of the main orders of Norn society, tasked with maintaining walls and fortifications, and the first Norn POV character in the series.

This POV rotation is effective, although Porto's contribution to the story is limited. I suspect Porto, or maybe his offspring, will play a role in the upcoming trilogy otherwise I can't see much reason for him being in this book. Still, he provides an interesting ground's eye view on the battles. Isgrimnur is the same world-weary warrior we met in Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, but fleshed out as he grapples with the fall-out of his son's death. Williams is successful in making Isgrimnur's grief raw and convincing, given he last wrote for the character some twenty-three years earlier. The most successful character is Viyeki, who gives us a much-needed "bad guy" perspective on events. Although the first trilogy successfully established why the undead Ineluki wanted to destroy the world, it was less clear on why the Norns would support him. This book goes much deeper into their motivations, backstory and histories, fleshing out an under-explored area of the original trilogy's worldbuilding.

The story is short, mostly concerned with moral concerns as Isgrimnur ponders the wisdom of trying to make the Norns extinct and the Norns' battle for survival and hope to leave something for future generations to build upon. But it is powerfully and effectively told. Williams slips back into Osten Ard like he's never been away, and the novel feels weightier than it could have been, as the author slips extra moments of worldbuilding and foreshadowing for the future books into the narrative. There's also some nice misdirection. At one point the Norns outline a plan which feels almost like it could be the plot synopsis for the next trilogy, but this is then abruptly undercut when a major character dies and the plot takes an unexpected 90 degree turn onto a different path. Ultimately, this makes the book more self-contained than I was expecting. Certainly there is pipe-laying for The Last King of Osten Ard trilogy, but it's done very subtly.

The Heart of What Was Lost (****) is not just an effective scene-setter and palate-cleanser for the new trilogy, but a strong self-contained story in its own right, with more twists and turns than you might expect for its short length. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

Read THE DRAGONBONE CHAIR for 99p

To celebrate their acquisition of the Tad Williams back catalogue, Hodder & Stoughton in the UK are offering the ebook of The Dragonbone Chair for 99p for a limited time.

The Dragonbone Chair is the opening novel of the epic Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy and the first of a planned total of eight (or nine, depending on how you count it) novels set in the world of Osten Ard. You can read my full review of The Dragonbone Chair here. You can also read my assessment of the impact of the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn saga on the history of epic fantasy here. The full list of Tad Williams' novels is as follows:

Novels of Osten Ard
Memory, Sorrow and Thorn
The Dragonbone Chair (1988)
Stone of Farewell (1990)
To Green Angel Tower (1993, often published in two volumes subtitled Siege and Storm)

Stand-alone Novels
The Heart of What Was Lost (2017)
The Shadow of Things to Come (forthcoming)

The Last King of Osten Ard
The Witchwood Crown (2017)
Empire of Grass (forthcoming)
The Navigator's Children (forthcoming)

Other Works
Otherland
City of Golden Shadow (1996)
River of Blue Fire (1998)
Mountain of Black Glass (1999)
Sea of Silver Light (2001)

Shadowmarch
Shadowmarch (2004)
Shadowplay (2007)
Shadowrise (2010)
Shadowheart (2010)

Bobby Dollar
The Dirty Streets of Heaven (2012)
Happy Hour in Hell (2013)
Sleeping Late on Judgement Day (2014)

Solo Novels
Tailchaser's Song (1985)
Child of An Ancient City (1992)
Caliban's Hour (1994)
The War of the Flowers (2003)

THE WITCHWOOD CROWN by Tad Williams delayed

DAW Books have confirmed that The Witchwood Crown, the first novel in the Last King of Osten Ard trilogy by Tad Williams, has been delayed. Fortunately, only by a few weeks.

The Witchwood Crown will now be published on 27 June 2017 rather than April. Apparently this is because DAW took longer than expected to complete preparatory work on the manuscript and marketing wanted more time to build up excitement for the novel.

The short "linking novel", The Heart of What Was Lost, which takes place shortly after the events of the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy, will still be published next week, on 4 January.

New maps of Osten Ard

Hodder & Stoughton have released the new maps which will adorn the UK editions of The Heart of What Was Lost, as well as their cover art and that of the new editions of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn they will be releasing shortly.

The Heart of What Was Lost will be published on 3 January 2017. It is a short (150-page) novel set between the end of To Green Angel Tower proper and the epilogue set several years later.

Presumably these maps will also appear in The Witchwood Crown, the first novel in The Last King of Osten Ard, which will be published on 4 April 2017. A much longer novel (650+ pages), The Witchwood Crown picks up the story of King Simon thirty years after the events of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn.

Cover art for THE HEART OF WHAT WAS LOST by Tad Williams

DAW Books have revealed the cover art for The Heart of What Was Lost, the new Osten Ard novel by Tad Williams taking place between the original Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy and the new Last King of Osten Ard series.

This book will be published on 3 January 2017. It will be followed by The Witchwood Crown, the first novel in the Last King of Osten Ard trilogy, on 4 April 2017.