[Abyss]

I did not love MS&T, i was not the market for a sequel series, and i did not try it. I did read enough reviews and comments from people i trust to get the sense the new series was, at best, more of the same - old school fantasy complete with travel chapters and vague elfpeoples and evil overlords who are evil because evil.
MS&T concluded in 1993. He 'returned' to that world in 2017 and... we'll i'm sure there are still piles of fantasy fans who loved that series and can't get enough of more of it, but the YA market, the grimdark market, the sff fans who want fast paced 3-400pages and a trilogy completed within four years, it seems to me that they were unlikely to bite and no amount of cool covers or marketing blast were likely to bring them to the table. Sure, Williams could have killed it with a glorious triumphant return that reset the bar on fantasy lit for the millennium but who is anyone kidding, that was not going to happen. Authors like Martha Wells who return from near obscurity and grab everyone's attention are the exception, and that took her writing something completely new - Murderbot - that played to a completely new audience, not a sequel to her fantasy series from decades ago.

[worry]

Those covers are cool though! We should really stop being so hasty to judge books by their insides.

[pat5150]

There's a lot of truth to what Abyss said.

Even if as a Tad Williams fan I don't want it to be so. . .

[Abyss]

pat5150, on 19 July 2022 - 02:21 AM, said:

There's a lot of truth to what Abyss said.

Even if as a Tad Williams fan I don't want it to be so. . .

Y'know what else bugs me.... after the OTHERLAND trilogy into 2001, he wrote the SHADOWMARCH series from 04-'10. Then he wrote a YA series and the Bobby Dollar urbfant. He even wrote some comics. The man has not been sitting around doing nothing. Why the jump backwards unless his publishers really truly believed this what was the market wanted? Who thought that? Who looked at the state of fantasy now, and seriously thought a return to MS&T was the way to invest their dollars? I dunno... just seems like a serious misread.

[Tiste Simeon]

Abyss, on 21 July 2022 - 04:55 AM, said:

pat5150, on 19 July 2022 - 02:21 AM, said:

There's a lot of truth to what Abyss said.

Even if as a Tad Williams fan I don't want it to be so. . .

Y'know what else bugs me.... after the OTHERLAND trilogy into 2001, he wrote the SHADOWMARCH series from 04-'10. Then he wrote a YA series and the Bobby Dollar urbfant. He even wrote some comics. The man has not been sitting around doing nothing. Why the jump backwards unless his publishers really truly believed this what was the market wanted? Who thought that? Who looked at the state of fantasy now, and seriously thought a return to MS&T was the way to invest their dollars? I dunno... just seems like a serious misread.

I suspect it was more a case of him saying he wanted to write more in that world and them figuring he was a big enough name and MST just popular enough that it would work...

[QuickTidal]

Tiste Simeon, on 21 July 2022 - 06:06 AM, said:

Abyss, on 21 July 2022 - 04:55 AM, said:

pat5150, on 19 July 2022 - 02:21 AM, said:

There's a lot of truth to what Abyss said.

Even if as a Tad Williams fan I don't want it to be so. . .

Y'know what else bugs me.... after the OTHERLAND trilogy into 2001, he wrote the SHADOWMARCH series from 04-'10. Then he wrote a YA series and the Bobby Dollar urbfant. He even wrote some comics. The man has not been sitting around doing nothing. Why the jump backwards unless his publishers really truly believed this what was the market wanted? Who thought that? Who looked at the state of fantasy now, and seriously thought a return to MS&T was the way to invest their dollars? I dunno... just seems like a serious misread.

I suspect it was more a case of him saying he wanted to write more in that world and them figuring he was a big enough name and MST just popular enough that it would work...

Actually, he went into this in his newsletters and he said that his publishers OFTEN asked him to write more Osten Ard, but he refused for many years because he didn't want to just do it to do it and make a buck he would want it to mean something...but then he said one day an inkling of an idea came to him about how the story might continue and as he began to explore that he realized that it was a bigger story than he thought and one he was happy to explore.

For what it's worth, the Last King books have been some of the mans FINEST work. Tightly paced and plotted and really take everyone in fascinating directions, while really blowing open parts of the world that were only touched on before this. I say this as someone who really enjoyed MS&T....LKoOA is ten times the series that one was.

EDIT: And I mean, he's written 6 more books in the series and all of them got made, so someone cares.

--------

Oh and the DAW authors (Kristen Britain, and Julie Czernada) have already started to note some hinky shit going on with their newest books and deliveries and whatnot and referenced Astra....so I feel like DAW is about to be stripped of anything decent.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 21 July 2022 - 12:24 PM