#the last kings of osten ard

[crown-and-stallion]

90 pages into The Navigator's Children and I'm going crazyyyyyy it's so good.

And here's Nezeru giving Morgan some major side-eye! She's probably my favorite character, and so far this book is not changing that.

I've def been having some art block, so it was really refreshing to have this idea, sketch it, and draw it all within a couple hours. Plus I'm very satisfied with the outcome :)

I'm still not super confident drawing humanoid figures, but this definitely makes me feel better about it!

[codenameantarctica]

Someone‘s here early

Official release is on the 12th but the company I ordered it with sent in out early 😱🤩

[clumsybutterflies]

Left: what just arrived in the mail and what I want to read right now

Right: what I should and want to read first to properly appreciate it

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

[satsukifowl]

I finished Into the Narrowdark, and now I will twiddle my thumbs awaiting the final book. I’m fine. It’s fine.

[alteredphoenix]

The cosmic irony in picking up The Dragonbone Chair (the first book of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series) yesterday on my PC for Kindle app only to see The Witchwood Crown (the first book of The Last King of Osten Ard series following Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn) on sale today.

[stormlanterns]

My motivation to draw is coming back slowly and I started with Muyare Sey-Iyora, a character from Tad William's Osten Ard saga.

He isn't mentioned so often but he left an impression on me I can't quite explain. Maybe this strange mixture of strength and vulnerability Idk.

Anyway, I hope I can color these drawings soon and I try to draw more characters (again) of this wonderful and amazing fantasy saga. My last ones were from 2004 *cough*

[oropher]

[drconstellation]

Replying to @aduckwithears

favorite color: blue

last song: can't remember. I stopped listening to much music after the death of a close friend, it was too painful.

last movie: Pixar's Elemental (thats the only one I can recall right now)

currently watching: Loki S2, OFMD, The Witcher S3

other stuff i watched this year: The Bad Batch and Ahsoka, because I'm a Star Wars fan, although it was interesting to watch DT as the droid Huyang in Ahsoka. Foundation.

currently reading: Stardust, and my niece has loaned me one of her favorite books The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, which I must get through and back to her.

currently listening to: one of my favorite authors, Tad Williams, read from his own books twice a week. He's just started The Witchwood Crown in the lead up to the publishing of the last book of the Osten Ard saga and I'm dying to get my hands on it. But probably got another 12 months waiting, publishing date yet to be announced...

currently working on: finishing up a mega-meta about King Arthur that I'm about to drop, the Tadfield Manor training initiative paintball fight, N/newts, rounding up the horses - in all their forms, the lions, reviewing and tidying up a couple of my old posts, making a an index for others to find my metas, whatever thought a post I read accidentally sparks...

current obsession/s: Good Omens, of course!

Tagged by @dancingcrowley - ty !

TAG SOMEONE YOU WANT TO KNOW AND/OR SOME OF YOUR BESTIES

favorite color: blues, sometimes greens last song: Bohemian Rhapsody ;D last movie: Mad Max Fury Road - truly the movie ever (i actually had an alternate main that was basically a mmfr account... that i lost access to... might migrate that to a side blog if that fandom gets back in gear) currently watching: ofmd, rewatching gomens (obviously) - i actually have very little watching time other stuff i watched this year: vox machina, the great, wwdits, rewatching all of new who with my little duck (in this way i learned that loving dt may be a genetic trait) shows i dropped this year: ghosts - i want to get back to it but just haven't for whatever reason currently reading: The Crow Road for reasons that should be clear. let's just say that Muriel is gonna get... an education. Also just finished Persuasion currently listening to: my gomens playlist which is basically every song known to humankind at this point. also The Lucky Die podcast currently working on: a meta about celestial radar, have an idea for some gif sets, continuing my little things series, have an idea for some art... its been a hot second since i arted tho current obsession/s: Good Omens. Full stop. every time i think it may be cooling off we learn some new insane detail (do it again) and i get sucked right back in.

That was fun - thanks so much for the tag! Super non-pressure tags: @ok-sims @indigovigilance @speikobrarote @bluberryfields @drconstellation @actual-changeling @lineffability @lazulibundtcake... ahhh there's so many more but i'll stop. If anyone sees this and wants to play pls do!

[crown-and-stallion]

Nezeru and the baby dragon. Not 100% happy with this one but oh well.

Re-reading The Last Kings of Osten Ard (just started Into the Narrowdark) and Nezeru might be my favorite character!

[codenameantarctica]

Cover for Tad Williams’ “The Navigation’s Children” by DAW Book

Look for preordering here

[clumsybutterflies]

"I have faith that learning will always frighten stupidity, and that stupidity often strike back, sometimes murderously."

Tad Williams, The Witchwood Crown

Huh. Depressingly relevant these days.

[westrangecountry]

Review: Brothers of the Wind (2021) by Tad Williams

Mention the word prequel and what comes to mind? Star Wars, probably. Maybe Better Call Saul. Tad Williams’ newest novel in his world of Osten Ard is more Better Call Saul than Star Wars.

Set 1,000 years before his classic fantasy trilogy Memory, Sorrow and Thorn this book is a similar story type shift to the lawyer spinoff of Breaking Bad. Memory, Sorrow and Thorn inspired George R.R. Martin and led to Game of Thrones: an army of pale elf-like people called the Norns descend from the snowy North, beyond a wall called The Wall, during an all-consuming winter to seek revenge.

That trilogy is a quest narrative that still wanted to add complexity to the genre, especially for 80s fantasy. The enemies have a genuine motive beyond evil to avenge a genocide, even if they are misguided and misled. Even on the good side, no one is too ready to help each other for petty reasons. Cultural differences prevent those that do. Etc. But Brothers of the Wind is set at the tail end of a Golden Age for the Norn and their “cousins,” the equally immortal Sithi, and presents a different picture of the world some might know and others might discover.

This book’s plot is very simple, very welcoming to new readers: a dragon is killing in human lands and the prideful Sithi Ineluki swears an oath to kill the dragon himself. Ineluki’s brother, Hakatri pursues him to try and stop him from killing himself, while a loyal servant named Pamon Kes narrates.

Rare for a fantasy book, no one is at war or threatening to go to war in the entire novel. Tangents are Williams speciality—his strength, in truth, for creating such dense worlds that they feel more real—but Brothers of the Wind is a focused narrative. The other Osten Ard books are third person, but this is first person.

At first our narrator Pamon Kes, a servant from a race formerly fully slaves to the Sithi, seems curiously without interior. This is completely intentional. As the novel develops, a novel that he insists is only about those greater than himself, like his master Hakatri or the prideful Ineluki who will go on to become one of the central villains of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, Kes develops that missing self. In the early sections, he had only been living for those who look down on him (if they even look on him at all). It couldn’t be written in anything other than first person.

This main thread of the quest to kill the dragon lets Williams show that despite the world being in a Golden Age, with no war threatened and even their more violence loving Norn cousins up North freely welcoming to a visit, the seeds of this society’s destruction is plain. Nor is this Golden Age innocent.

Kes encounters ghettos of his own people while the surrounding Sithi go on with self-involved happiness, barely aware of the suffering they profit from. This isn't the generic whips and slurs portrayal of prejudice from other fantasy novels, but a more realistic one, done with a welcoming smile.

Elsewhere, some ignore a threat as basic and universal as a rampaging dragon. We're not effected right now, maybe we will be in the future but that's not now, so it's not our problem. There are no looming threats, as I said, but self-interest rules: what else could bring about actual threats in future books but that?

The first half of Brothers of the Wind is the quest to kill the dragon, but Osten Ard fans will know this is only the start of the story. The outcome of Ineluki’s pride is that Hakatri is horribly burned by the dragon’s fire. The rest is surprisingly sprawling for a sub-300 pages novel, taking readers on a whirlwind tour of places only whispered of as once existing in the main Osten Ard novels.

Meanwhile, hints for the currently ongoing sequel books The Last King of Osten Ard are drip fed in and pieces of the overall series lore are even delivered up. One scene in particular will leave readers of the sequels debating until the conclusion of Last King is released.

In other words, this is way more book than you would expect. A story of brothers. A story of self-realization from Pamon Kes. A story of a world teetering, not yet on the brink, the brink not even visible, but too busy patting itself on the back over past glories to realize it is there.

Like the best prequels, it adds to what came before instead of taking away with meaningless fan service. Certain tangents in Memory, Sorrow and Thorn take on far more meaning. Depth is added to a supporting character from it and the Last King books by seeing her as a small child.

I won’t reveal how, or why. But most of all, the story of Hakatri we had heard—and his brother Ineluki with him—is revealed to be a glow up. “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there,” as L.P. Hartley wrote. Differently in people’s cases tends to mean better. More as we wished it had been done. The Tolkien comparison is overused in fantasy reviews, but it fits here: this is tragic myth, melancholic and wistful.

As much as the new books in this world have impressed me for their massive scope, complex plot, sense of approaching doom, subtly, and weaving of themes tightly into narrative I am once again left surprised by a new Tad Williams novel. Brothers of the Wind is not what I expected, which makes it the perfect prequel in a landscape of Star Wars prequel wannabes.

Where should you start these Osten Ard books? That's up to you. This one is a welcoming pick up to new readers, since Kes is writing a memoir he can quickly explain a custom or person to the reader, the shorter page count commitment, and focused narrative. Of course, this novel will pay off some lore mysteries built up in the others, which is part of what makes it such an effective prequel, one missing tile to a vast, beautiful mosaic.

[satsukifowl]

Re-visiting Tad Williams’ Osten Ard

After reading Brandon Sanderson’s The Lost Metal, which went about 8,000 miles per hour, I wanted to read something the really slows down, digs deep and takes its time. I very much enjoyed TLM, but have been missing novels that really linger with the characters. So I thought maybe it’s time to reread some Tad Williams. I was thinking the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy. Here’s beautiful cover art by Michael Whelan:

Then lo and behold, turns out there’s a sequel series to MSaT! Yes, please!! I’m so behind the times. I don’t remember many details from the first trilogy, but decided to jump right into The Last King of Osten Ard. Here’s more beautiful cover art to enjoy, though the copy of The Witchwood Crown I checked out had the colors very very dark so I couldn’t quite tell what I was looking at. The second book, Empire of Grass, has to have one of my favorite covers of all time!

Despite wanting the slow and lingering story-telling, I’ll admit to becoming impatient and reading ahead about some of my favorites. :3 I’ve really enjoyed the read though, and being immersed back into this world Tad Williams has crafted. Of course I didn’t check to see if the series was complete before I began reading, and it’s not ... but hopefully, with how slow I’m going, I won’t have too long a wait once I finish book 3.

Now, I still have A LOT of reading to do. XD

[theartofmichaelwhelan]

EMPIRE OF GRASS (2018) by Michael Whelan

This illustration for the book by Tad Williams was an instant fan favorite with the cover reveal, but Michael has since made some changes to the original painting.

The book is out today and the print (available in two sizes) is now available for pre-order in our shop. Pre-orders ship the week of 5/20/19.

https://www.michaelwhelan.com/shop/empire-of-grass/

[geekynerfherder]

'Empire Of Grass' by Michael Whelan, cover art for book two of the 'The Last King of Osten Ard' trilogy, written by Tad Williams. Open edition giclee print in a signed 36" x 24" edition for $95, and a signed 24" x 18" edition for $50.

Also available in a two print set with 'Darkness Over Hayholt', cover art for book one 'The Witchwood Crown', for $90. On sale now from Michael's website.