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4.0étoiles sur 5
The LONG journey to Green Angel Tower (Part 2)..., Mars 15 2004
Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series is certainly derivative. A young scullion with dreams of grandeur finds himself embroiled in an epic struggle to save the land of Osten Ard from the dreaded Storm King... Stop me if you've heard this sort of thing before. Even so, "The Dragon Bone Chair" (book one in the so-called four book 'trilogy'), was a compelling return to the undying genre of high fantasy, and fueled my interest in the series that ultimately lead me to the second offering, "The Stone of Farewell" - a book that was slow, ponderous, and anti-climactic. "To Green Angel Tower: Part 1" continued along those lines up until the last hundred or so pages. Fortunately, "To Green Angel Tower: Part 2" offers a less glacially paced read. Despite the size of the bloated second half, things move at a decent clip (finally!). The action is fast and dramatic, and all of it builds up to a suitably ominous confrontation with the Storm King. In due course, "TGAT: Part 2" redeems the series and lifts it far above its weakest points. The climax feels a little rushed, and somewhat anticlimactic (how could it not when you've turned nearly 3,000 pages to reach it?), but it's ultimately satisfying enough to make the series rather easy to recommend to patient fans of the genre who have not yet discovered it. The "prologue," so to speak, attempts, and mostly succeeds, at tying up all loose ends, but it could be argued that Williams opted to tack on a sort of ultra-happy ending that may or may not seem entirely appropriate in the context of the rest of the story. Without spoiling anything, Simon's secret heritage and secret destiny, when revealed, are enough to warrant a groan. Very predictable. Despite the faults of the series, Williams' world is an eerie construct, a bittersweet place where joy and sorrow are at perpetual war, and it's a place that will linger in the reader's mind long after that reader has finished... well, reading. If author Tad Williams had cut some of the fat from this monstrosity and offered a meaner, leaner yarn, I would scarcely hesitate to call it a contemporary classic. As it stands, it's exceptionally good.
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