The Dragonbone Chair by Tad William

Sometimes you want Chateaubriand and sometimes you want hamburger. Feeling in the mood for a little stereotypical fantasy I borrowed The DragonBone Chair from my local library.

The author has an introductory passage where he warns us that we should set aside any preconceptions we may have. He then proceeds to fill the work with every hackneyed fantasy trope he can find. Medieval European analogs, check. Elves (albeit slightly Japanese in culture) by another name, present. An evil lurking in the north, yep. Magical swords, not one, not two but three. An inept young hero thrust into peril, you bey ya.

And yet none of this really bother me. I can even ignore the young protagonist's wise mentor with his Yoda like speech patterns. No what annoys me is the writing itself. The pacing is poor. The editing even worse. The author is far too enamoured of the world he has created and wants to show us too much. There are any number of segments dedicated to the musing of secondary character.I think Mr Williams was worried the reader might miss what he was trying to achieve and so lacks all subtlety in his exposition.

And then there is the pacing. Glacially slow at first and then it rushes to a wholly unsatisfying conclusion. The main Character Simon is probably the whiniest protagonist in fantasy. Yes is is in constant danger for two thirds of the book, but rather than experiencing his fear all we get is a teenage whine.

That said I did enjoy the story in parts. With better editing and more attention to character I think it might have been a decent Tolkien pastiche. It's possible William matured as a writer over the subsequent volumes so I may give them a go at some point.