Tad Williams is the best and this book is excellent!! A great sequel to The Witchwood Crown!! The Memory, Sorrow, Thorn universe is so rich and epic and awesome; I am so glad he has returned to this world with this new trilogy. I will definitely recommend this to my Epic Fantasy loving customers!!

Empire of Grass, book two in The Last King of Osten Ard series, begins right where book one, The Witchwood Crown, left off. Multiple storylines have been put in motion and Empire of Grass takes all of those storylines and escalates them. It’s not quick read, rather you chew it slowly so you get all the juice and flavor from the imaginative descriptions. Dragons and giants and shapeshifters—Oh My! Just like the action builds and the relationships become more complicated, Williams’s world building continues with consistency and complex imagery.

Characters too are developed along with their storylines. All the key players, a few new ones, and some we’ve heard about before but haven’t meet until now, are all changed. Crown Prince Morgan probably undergoes the greatest change as he receives the education of experience his grandfather, King Simon, had hoped for. Although, I’m sure no grandfather would want it to come at such a high price. It was not only a relief to see Morgan leave his spoiled, whiny persona behind, but the ways in which he’s beginning to mature and change into someone you might actually want to know—someone who could possibly succeed his grandfather as high king.

Like The Witchwood Crown, there is no resolution which denotes the end of the book. Rather each storyline hits a peak crisis and we’re left with multiple cliff-hangers. Ordinarily I’m put off by cliff-hangers, but I will admit, I’m very anxious to see how Williams is going to pull them all together in The Navigator’s Children. (Tentatively scheduled for release in Oct 2020.) I don’t see a massive war where all the different factions converge like Tolkien’s Return of the King, but I predict that based on the skirmishes and even battles being fought throughout Empire of Grass, they will all touch before the story is complete. I have so many questions and I’m looking foward to what will, no doubt, be an epic resolution.

My Rating: A- Enjoyed A Lot

Surpassed my expectations. It’s been 30 years, but the transition was smooth and seamless. I can’t wait for the third installment.

I have conflicting feelings about this novel. It’s very well written, of course; Tad Williams knows how to write a story. Yet even though I liked the story overall, I struggled a bit to get through it.

Part of the issue is that it is very clearly the middle book of a series, and the author is engaged in moving his pieces into place for the final act. That’s not to say that the plot doesn’t include any action, because it definitely does. At the same time, a fair amount of the story involves characters moving from crisis to crisis and slowly uncovering bits and pieces of information that will presumably play a role in the next (final?) volume. For example, there’s Simon’s grandson Prince Morgan. He seems to be following in his grandfather’s footsteps in wandering through the mysterious forest of Aldheorte, sometimes finding aid but often encountering danger, until he winds up in the hands of another important character. Then there’s Brother Etan, sent off to find out what happened to Prince Josua. His travels slowly uncover some clues, but readers will have to wait for a resolution to that mystery.

The other thing that made this book difficult to read is that I am increasingly uncertain about how the series will end, and that ratcheted up the tension for me. Forget a happy ending; I’d settle for a bittersweet one. But the series title is The Last King of Osten Ard, and I’m thinking that readers might want to take that literally. The level of chaos just keeps increasing throughout the story, and while part of the conflict is driven by the Norns and their dark magic, part of it is simply humans blindly pursuing their own interests, including a desire for power. Whatever happens, it’s hard for me to see how order could be restored under the rule of a high king. What that means for Simon and his family, I hesitate to guess. Simon never wanted to be king, but kings don’t often get to settle into peaceful retirement, unfortunately. Fingers crossed that I'm just being pessimistic!

Of course, my fear of an unhappy ending won’t keep me from reading on in the series. For one thing, several characters are left in dangerous straits at the end of this one, and I need to find out what happens! Also, where DID Josua get off to? (A whole lot of trouble could have been avoided if that man had made better life choices.) Most interesting to me are the hints that the Tinukeda’ya may have a central role in however the story develops. The shapeshifting folk have been on the fringes of the action in the past, frequently disregarded by humans, Norns, and Sithi alike. I’m just speculating here, but that may have been a mistake.

So, I’m left waiting impatiently and a bit fearfully for the next book. Bring it on!

A copy of this book was provided through NetGalley for review; all opinions expressed are my own.

OK, first of all, I’ve got to give this book an automatic four stars just because it actually has a “previously in Osten Ard” prologue. I mean, seriously people. TV shows give us a recap of what happened six days of real time and an hour of episode-time ago, and you can’t offer up a damned reminder of what happened a year or two (or five!) and six hundred pages ago? Really? So props to Tad Williams for taking pity on us hapless readers. A four is the floor for you. May others go to school on your noblesse oblige.

I’m also going to offer a slow clap to Williams for going all in with on the epic in epic fantasy with this nearly 700-page tome. Did he need all those pages? No. No, he did not. But you have to be impressed by the utter lack of apology here. You want a slow circular meander through a trackless forest that feels like a slow circular meander through a trackless forest? Not really? Who cares? Not Williams. You’re getting it anyway. Slowly. Circular-ly (yeah, yeah, not a word, I know). Complete with fruit peeling, river bathing, star gazing, tree climbing, and all the other action-packed highlights of a stroll through the woods. You can almost hear him muttering, “You wanna call an 80-minute TV episode ‘epic’? Hold my cluster of ‘newly-discovered berry branches or hazel shedding ripe nuts’ GoT. I’ll show you epic.”

So yes, I have to admit there were times I was tempted to skim (but didn’t — these are the arrows we reviewers take for you readers). All in all, I’m thinking lopping off a 100 or so pages (conservatively) wouldn’t have greatly harmed the story in terms of plot or character. But truth is, once you realize early on the pace and rhythm, it’s pretty easy to settle in and just ride the prolix wave all the way home.

The plot, as one might imagine, is complex and, as usual, presents multiple arcs scattered across the land. Let me explain. No, let me sum up:

In the Hayholt, King Simon is wrestling with ruling a chaotic kingdom amidst worsening news of threats from within and without: evil cults, restless plains people on the border, Norns gearing up for another attack on humanity, unexpected deaths in his own castle, and various economic issues). All of which he has to handle without Queen Miri, who is in Nabban trying to tamp down the political unrest threatening to explode into violence and tear that province apart. Their grandson and heir Prince Morgan is lost in the great woods (see circular, see trackless) after an attack on his party by a group of grasslanders and the troll family (Binabik et. al.) searching for him. Also as a result of that raid, Count Elohair, after being captured, has been taken to the great meeting of the clans as they try to determine whether a true Shan (one to rule them all and bind them in the darkness, wait, not that last part) has arisen to lead them to war.

On the non-human (mostly) side of things, the quest to find a live dragon begun in the prior book, The Witchwood Crown, is nearing its end, leaving the human hunter Jarnulf trying to figure out how to achieve his goal of killing the Norn Queen, the Norn warrior Nezeru continuing her path toward questioning her own people’s goals, and the Norn Singer Saomeji still rubbing his hands and cackling evilly. Elsewhere, half-human/half-Norn Tzoja, who escaped her slave role in the prior novel is trying to hide out all alone in her secret place (as one might imagine, she doesn’t succeed, as that would be pretty dull). And finally, the Norn Builder Viyeki, who like Nezeru has begun to question his Queen’s plans, is set to the task of uncovering a great tomb so as to further said Queen’s said plans, a minor issue being that said tomb lies under a fortress manned by lots of pesky humans. By the way, “finally” means I’ve ended the synopsis, not that Viyeki’s is the last POV, because oh boy is he not. I skipped over lots of other storylines and POVs, including but not limited to a scholar’s search for a long-lost prince, a child’s discovery that all is not what it seems in the palace, and a soldier’s frantic attempts to warn Simon of human treachery. As noted, there is a lot going on here.

Which makes it all the more impressive that Empire of Grass is not a hot mess. Instead, Williams shows his oft-proven deftness at handling complicated plots ranging across a host of POVs and a wide range of territory with fluid aplomb. Each thread is skillfully woven together to create an immersive, engrossing, and yes, massive tapestry, albeit one that sags here and there due to employing a bit more thread than required.

That sagging weight does slow momentum down in several of the arcs. For instance, I really wished Miri’s storyline had been streamlined so as to heighten what is an already often-tense subplot centering on an ever-rising political tension ready to boil over at any time. Or if not Miri’s story itself, some of the other ones that pulled us away a bit too long from it or similarly fraught plotlines. A balance needs to be found of course, some relief from tension, some quiet moments to counter frantic action, but I can’t say Williams quite nailed that balance here, though its lack was more of a niggling complaint than anything that truly marred the reading experience. It’s a sighing impatience rather than a bellowing “get on with it!” sort of readerly response. An impatience more than a little ameliorated by the fact that Williams’ prose, even when there’s a bit too much of it, is always such a smooth, rewarding pleasure to read.

In addition, the length and detail certainly makes for an immersive experience, both in this world as it is and in the world as it was. One of the more pleasing aspects is how much more we learn of the deep past, how the Sithi and the Norn, as well as the Tinukeda’ya are related and why they’re estranged. Though of course, it comes to us via story and myth and who knows how reliable such tales, not to mention the tale-tellers, are.

The length also goes a good ways toward the creation of rich, complex characters who change (if they do) at a realistic pace. It’s all well and good to have a character face an immoral or unethical act and immediately turnabout to “the light”, but a) light and dark are seldom so cleanly separate and b) even in moments that seem starkly clear, people don’t often turn against their own people, their own history, their own upbringing quite so easily and “heroically. And thus we end with movement toward change that in this novel at least varies between a fully active shifting of sides to more cautious exploration of one’s own stance. More authors should take the time to show such changes in this fashion.

Most of these characters are in the midst of or on the cusp of learning that things are not as they have been or as they have seemed to have been. Often it’s an emotional revelation, as when one notes that “once the gate of pity had been opened, no matter how narrowly, it could not easily be closed again. Where will it end?” Sometimes it’s political, as when two characters debate whether the old cliché that “peace never lasts” is a cliché because it harbors an actual truth or because it acts as an excuse. But in any case, most discover, or are heading toward the discovery, that “the world she had greeted morning was not the world she had thought it was, and she was lost and alone on a world of water.” In the next novel, which I greatly look forward to, the question to be answered by so many is what they will do with that epiphany.

The reader should be prepared for a complex, rather slow moving fantasy. Some will have the feeling that it takes until the end of the book (and it is not a short one) for the plot to start moving. Since this will be a multi-book series, that will be just fine with many, but others will become impatient. Empire of Grass is also quite dark. Of course, everything has to go wrong before something can go right (in following books)!

At this point in Tad Williams Osten Ard books readers probably know exactly what they're in for. If you liked the previous book you will probably like this one. Tad Williams' writing is always good, and he has created an admirably complex world with danger lurking around pretty much every corner. "Empire of Grass" picks up right where "The Witchwood Crown" left off. Morgan is lost in the Aldheorte, Miriamele is off to Nabban, Tzoja is in hiding, Nezeru and Jarnulf are off in the wilderness, things are stirring in the grasslands, and poor Simon gets to sit at home while bad news just keeps coming at him from every direction.

I have to admit that I had a lot of trouble getting through this book. I've read pretty much everything that Tad Williams has published, and my biggest problem with him over the years has been that I think he needs an editor to sometimes step in and help him with his pacing. He also seems to have a weird obsession with characters who spend large portions of books lost, whether in a cave system, ancient tunnels, or here a mythical forest. I couldn't help but wish that Morgan spent less time wandering aimlessly and climbing trees before getting to his next bit of plot.

My other major issue with this book is just that everything is so bleak. None of the characters ever really exhibit joy, or humor, or much of anything except depression and irritation. Even characters who are supposed to care for aone another come off more as aggravated then loving. It's honestly hard to tell whether any of the people in this book really even like each other. I was interested in the plot and wanted to know what was going to happen (especially with Nezeru and the Norn characters), but the general atmosphere just made it hard for me to push through.

It's very possible that I was just in the wrong mood for this book right now. It is well written, continues the story begun in Witchwood Crown, and juggles several very different plot threads. I can't yet get a good feel for the shape of the ultimate story. Hopefully by the time book three comes out I will be less fatigued and able to devote my full attention. If you enjoyed "The Witchwood Crown" you will probably enjoy this book. If you did not like it then this book isn't going to change your mind.

An excellent second entry in the series. The plot moves at a decent pace considering how many different plot lines and characters we have been introduced to. The book overall is like a chess board where all the pieces are being moved around to prepare for the final book in the trilogy but this doesn't make the book seem slow. I highly recommend to fans of the series and fans of epic fantasy in general and look forward to reading the next entry.