Paul reviewed The Dragonbone chair by Tad Williams (Memory, sorrow and thorn -- Bk. 1.)
Slow
3 stars
I found this to be really, really slow going. I can see that the author is trying to immerse the reader in his world-building, but it really didn't work for me and I think there are two reasons for this. Firstly, the religion. The main belief system is basically Christianity with a few minor tweaks, and I found this really jarring. Secondly, and probably more significantly, not much happened for most of the book.
Having a detailed world is great and all, but you still need either a plot of some characters to hold the reader's attention. And, for me, this had neither. In=stead, we had a few characters trudging around having lengthy conversations, and not really getting anywhere.
Things do pick up by the end of the book, but this then introduces the problem of there being too many characters being introduced too quickly, making it difficult to keep …
I found this to be really, really slow going. I can see that the author is trying to immerse the reader in his world-building, but it really didn't work for me and I think there are two reasons for this. Firstly, the religion. The main belief system is basically Christianity with a few minor tweaks, and I found this really jarring. Secondly, and probably more significantly, not much happened for most of the book.
Having a detailed world is great and all, but you still need either a plot of some characters to hold the reader's attention. And, for me, this had neither. In=stead, we had a few characters trudging around having lengthy conversations, and not really getting anywhere.
Things do pick up by the end of the book, but this then introduces the problem of there being too many characters being introduced too quickly, making it difficult to keep track of what all of them are doing.
I think there is a good story under all of this, but the pacing really does leave a lot to be desired.
