To Green Angel Tower: Siege and Storm

Tad Williams

Memory, Sorrow and Thorn #3

Hodder & Stoughton

796 pages each

4/5

All I’m going to say is thank Christ for the summary at the beginning. I’d have been lost without it.

Summary: In order for the Storm King can cement his power over Osten Ard, he must find and defeat the rebel forces massing against him. But the rebels, led by the exiled Prince Josua, have rallied at the Stone of Farewell and are ready to fight the Storm King with every power they can muster. The key to their victory lies in finding the third sword of legend, Memory – but the sword has been lost for ages.

Lost, that is, until Simon Snowlock realises that he knows exactly where the sword is and how to recover it. The only problem: an undead army, bolstered by powerful magic, lies between him and his destination. It will take every ounce of Simon’s courage and intelligence to journey to and then recover the great sword Memory and bring peace to Osten Ard.

If Simon’s quest is to have any hope, Josua must move against the Storm King himself – a journey that will take him across endless seas, through ancient forests and into the stronghold of the Storm King himself.

Stats: Siege

Total Reading Time: 7h 52

Reading Speed p/h: 101.1

Most Pages Read in a Day: 200

Most Minutes Read in a Day: 133

Stats: Storm

Total Reading Time: 7h 39

Reading Speed p/h: 103.9

Most Pages Read in a Day: 200

Most Minutes Read in a Day: 120

And so we come to the end of the novel so long it had to be split into two parts. It’s a suitably epic conclusion for an epic series. It probably couldn’t have ended in a shorter fashion.

I will admit I did feel a little bit fatigued shortly after starting part two. I’m not sure if that’s because it was just so slow going at that particular point or I was just overwhelmed by the high page count but once I got over that it started to get rather interesting. The last half of Storm was very exciting to read and pulled the whole trilogy together into a conclusion that was satisfying on the whole.

I can see why this series might not be for everyone. It is almost old fashioned in its story telling, long and almost overly descriptive. The upside of this is that The world is incredibly detailed and although it takes a long time for Williams to say what he is trying to say he is still telling his story unlike The Priory of the Orange Tree, for example. No, I will never stop making digs at that book.

I enjoyed reading the characters. Sometimes Simon got a little bit whiny but he’s a teenager and teenagers are unbelievably annoying at times so I don’t suppose he was acting any different from any other teenager. It was good to see him grow up and into his role. I did enjoy Miriamele’s POV. Yes, she does come up with the half baked and possibly insane idea that talking to her father would help and then goes off at every opportunity to do what she wants rather than what is best for everyone else but that’s a very understandable and human response to your father being evil. She was interesting and I liked her.

To Green Angel Tower ended the trilogy in true epic fantasy fashion. Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is a very long trilogy to read but I think it was worth it. It is very much an old fashioned epic fantasy that you don’t see a lot of in modern fantasy fiction. It isn’t a trilogy that I think I will ever re-read, it just takes so much time to get through but it is one that I enjoyed on the whole.