bookoftheweek: Shadowmarch

The latest bookoftheweek is Shadowmarch, by Tad Williams. Now, the only other work I had read was the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series, which was good, but dragged sometimes. I look back fondly at that series, though, so I decided to give Shadowmarch a chance.

How do I describe Shadowmarch? Well, I think of it as Song of Ice and Fire meets Dragonlance Legends. Song of Ice and Fire because, well, there's the nobility, there's the imminent threat of the China/Japan "other race" (think the Horselords in ASoIaF), you have a woman who is suspiciously like Daenerys, being wed to a powerful man kinda like Drogo (although more powerful and more eeeeeeeeeevil). She's also on a collision course with the Western kingdoms (although without dragons...unless bees can be considered dragons). And then there's the Shadowline creatures (the names escapes me at the moment), who are eerily similar to the Others (those fine folk beyond the Wall). Legends because, well, two of the main protagonists are twins, with one being strong (Briony) and the other weak (Barrick), but somehow has "mysterious" powers. The added twist is that Briony is a girl!

It's an okay read (although it took me nearly two weeks to get through...not as gripping as Covenant), but you can sense that he was really trying to channel George R. R. Martin. Kinda like Martin-lite, but not really succeeding in doing so. Gregory Keyes (Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone) did a better job at this, in my opinion.

There are some interesting characters, though, and the story picks up at the end, but it doesn't stack up to the world building of Tolkien, Martin, Donaldson or Jordan (or even Glen Cook). I'll finish the series to find out what happened, though.