![]() To Green Angel Tower was especially lengthy, so they had to split it into two 800 page books for the paperback version (as it was physically impossible to make a paperback book big enough to hold the whole thing) this makes it longer than the first two books in the trilogy combined. ![]() One remarkable feature of most of Tad's books are their exceptional length, being typically in the range of 800 to 1000 pages. ![]() It has a vampire in it and is often panned by critics it and Caliban's Hour are often forgotten when listing Tad's works, as his other works are considered to be much stronger. Tad had noticed that the fate of the character Caliban was not entirely clear at the end of the play, and so he wrote this. At the same time, it's still a pretty magical place, with many elements one would expect any self-respecting fairy world to have.Ĭaliban's Hour is a sort of sequel to the Shakespeare play The Tempest. The twist is that this world of faerie is not some idyllic place of pixies &c, but is instead a distorted reflection of the real world, with many of the same problems and conveniences. After a little while of this, he gets drawn into this other world through a series of events I'll not relate here. As the book opens, his life takes a sudden turn for the worse, and he starts feeling a little sorry for himself. The guy in question (name of Theo) is in his thirties and going nowhere fast, being a singer in a none-too-successful rock band. The overall plot has been done before it's your standard "guy from this world gets sucked into the world of faerie" setup. On the other hand, The War of the Flowers breaks from this tradition. Don't let the cute kitties fool you, however: the book gets pretty dark towards the end. And, as mentioned earlier, his first book is essentially The Lord of the Rings with cats (though, in fitting with it being about cats, there's no fellowship, just the one cat). It should be mentioned that Tad himself has described MS&T as a "commentary on" LotR.) Otherland referenced The Lord of the Rings explicitly several times (one of these times, I admit, made me want to punch the author right then and there). (Tad's Sithi are only subtly different from Tolkien's elves the characters Elias and Josua have a relationship strikingly similar to that of Boromir and Faramir the dark lord character is a similar plot device there are, however, no Hobbits. He doesn't even bother to hide it: MS&T has many elements that are highly similar to certain elements in The Lord of the Rings. It is obvious that Tad's primary influence is Tolkien. Otherland is a good read as well, but I personally did not like it quite as much as MS&T, and it is also even longer, clocking in at closer to 4000 pages. If the reader enjoys what they read, then they might consider his approximately 3000 page fantasy trilogy.Īnother reason I would suggest starting with Flowers over MS&T is Dragonbone Chair was only Tad's second novel ever, and it does not start quite as strongly as his later works, taking about 150 pages to get going. Whether this book is better or worse than, say, MS&T is open to debate, but it is unquestionably shorter, and requires much less of a time investment on the part of the reader. I would recommend to someone wanting to get into Tad's works to start with his newest book, The War of the Flowers. Also, though many things in the books sound cliched in summaries or brief descriptions, they are still completely fleshed out he doesn't rely on cliches to tell any part of the story or characters for him, so everything is completely realised. This is primarily because Tad is a good writer, and his books are simply fun and interesting to read. Look a little closer and things are somewhat different. Tailchaser's Song was once described as " The Lord of the Rings with cats." Otherland is about a bunch of old rich guys who make a super-high-tech computer system with the aim of doing something or other that's evil, and a bunch of regular joes who embark on a quest ( et cetera). On the surface, his works may seem like standard cliched Tolkienesque fantasy fare: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn (hereafter abbreviated as MS&T) is about an evil dark lord-type who wants to destroy all of humanity, and the heros who embark on a quest ( et cetera). In addition to these, he has two short stories, The Burning Man and The Happiest Dead Boy in the World, which are set in the worlds of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn and Otherland, respectively they can be found in the Legends I and II collections. I will, however, say what I know about them.) (Having not read Caliban's Hour or Child of an Ancient City, I'm afraid I cannot comment on their relative merits. Child of an Ancient City (with Nina Hoffman).
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