ThrowBook Thursday: To Green Angel Tower

Well, I finally finished it; the Osten Ard reread is complete. To Green Angel Tower only took me 5 months (which is longer than reading the two paperback volumes took me in high school; but then again, that was high school -- an age when reading time was far more abundant).

(By the way, TGAT -- book 3 of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn -- is actually longer in word count than the entirety of The Lord of the Rings, so don't let's have any of that nonsense about Tolkien being longwinded, yeah?)

And yes, there are SPOILERS ahead because I need to rant and rave about things. You have been warned.

Cover art by Michael Whelan

To Green Angel Tower picks up in the weeks following the climax of Stone of Farewell. Josua's rebel forces are largely sequestered on the stronghold of Sesu'adra. Pryrates' and Elias' plans seem to cement more each day. Miriamele and her companions are still trying to reach Josua, with an addled Sir Camaris in tow. Things are not yet at their bleakest, but the struggle to stop the Storm King's plans for world domination has to take the back seat to defeating Elias' armies which have come to put an end to the rebellion once and for all.

Romance

While this is one of the longest books in the English language, there isn't as much "fluff" as you might expect. (There is a bit of a stretch in the middle that feels a little too long for what's accomplished, but that's something I don't remember thinking my first time through more than a decade ago and that feeling could easily have been sparked by the fact I kept having to put this book down for library books, prolonging my time in the middle section; in truth, I tended to want to read as much at a time as I could once I was firmly back in the world of Osten Ard.) Williams tends to be a pretty tight plotter when it comes to Osten Ard (his Otherland books, on the other hand, feel a little too slow and padded for my tastes). One plotline in particular shone on this reread: Simon and Miriamele's romance.

The seeds of this story were planted back in the first book, The Dragonbone Chair, when Simon realizes who Miriamele really is and, in typical Simon fashion, daydreams that he can be devoted to her as a knight and thinks her emotional distance is her way of saying she's too good for him. Miri, on the other hand, can't decide whether she feels anything more than friendship for Simon and has a few other more important things to think about such as how to stop her father from destroying the world and how to be useful to the rebel cause. With the two of them apart for most of Stone of Farewell and the beginning of To Green Angel Tower, their romance is a plot which in less capable hands could be cliche or at least unbelievable. Each of them feels confused not only about the other's feelings, but their own, and Miriamele spends a large portion of the book grappling with her feelings of self-worth after her relationship with the domineering Aspitis in the last book. The scenes in the first half of the book in particular are a prime example of how romance can excel on the page. Their interactions are awkward and clumsy, but only enough to convey realism. It is obvious that they care for one another and don't know how to express those feelings (or don't feel that there can be anything lasting beyond those feelings). While the culmination of this plotline (their professions of love after the victory is won) feels a mite saccharine, it still feels satisfying because of the journey each has been through to reach the point of accepting the other's love.

Subverting Prophecy

One of the main reasons I have savored this series over the years (despite not rereading it until now) is its clever use of an old fantasy staple, prophecy, to twist readers' expectations. Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series does this in a different fashion, by creating prophecies in abundance that may or may not contradict each other and may or may not come to fruition. Williams uses a singular prophecy, a rhyme from a mad monk's lost book, to drive the story forward: the hopes of Josua's rebellion lie in three fabled Swords: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. The rescue of Thorn forms the final third of The Dragonbone Chair and Sorrow is in the hands of Elias in that book as well. It is not until the mountain-dwelling Hernystiri learn from the beings who made the Swords (a race related to but separate from the elf-like Sithi and their icy cousins the Norns) that the third Sword was renamed Bright-Nail that the heroes realize the third sword was buried in book one with the last king, Prester John, in the shadow of Elias' castle. After Josua's forces defeat the army Elias sent to crush them (resulting in one of many satisfying villain deaths and one of several tear-jerking heroic deaths), Miriamele and Simon set out to retrieve the Sword and stop Elias.

The problem, of course, is that the Swords are not the bane of the Storm King; they are the key which will allow him passage back into life. This realization in the final fourth of the novel was staggering to me the first time I read it. A prophecy that had been used by the enemy to deceive the heroes? What madness was this? And yet it works so well within the story. Even knowing this twist during this reread, I felt Simon, Miriamele, Binabik, and the rest reel beneath the knowledge that they had done precisely what the enemy intended all along.

Death Abounds

It's hardly avoidable in a climactic novel, especially in a series that has held few punches previously. What with Morgenes' death in the first book (and subsequent lack of resurrection a la Gandalf), Jarnauga's and Amerasu's deaths in the second, and various other characters along the way, Williams lets us know his world is one in which death is not held back for everyone just because they're central to the story.

Enter my two most grieved deaths of this series (after Morgenes and Amerasu): Deornoth and Geloë. The latter I remembered because of the fallout (Leleth fades into death because Geloë can't call her back to life, Jeremias is left without his love when Leleth dies [something that I remember strongly from my first reading but which seems very understated this time around], and the heroes are left without any of the old Scroll Bearers in their ranks]). The former death, Sir Deornoth's, I had scrubbed from my memory, probably because I hated it so much. Though I didn't mention it in my review of Stone of Farewell here on the blog, in my comments on Goodreads I mentioned needing a scene of Deornoth reading to Father Strangyeard. They discuss such a happy future happening after Elias' defeat, and while the scene is tender and hopeful, there is something tense in it that suggests such a thing will never come to pass.

And it doesn't.

And I hate it.

Which just demonstrates Williams' ability to make me care for his characters.

Speaking of which, there's one more death to address that has stuck with me all these years.

Let's talk about Cadrach. A disgraced monk (of indeterminate order) and former Scroll Bearer, Cadrach is easily one of the most complex side characters in the series. Tormented by Pryrates into turning traitor on the League of the Scroll, Cadrach spends most of his time in the story either trying to charm money out of his companions or keep them as far away from Pryrates as possible. He's often cowardly and depressed, but he's still one of my favorites. Why? Because of how his story ends (assuming Williams doesn't resurrect him in the sequel). In the final chapters, Cadrach has reached his nadir; he has betrayed his oldest friends and allies and, what's worse, kept back crucial information from the heroes. There is, in his mind, no hope for victory over the Storm King. But because of Miriamele's former kindness toward him, Cadrach continues to follow and help when he is reunited with her in the tunnels beneath her father's castle. They face Pryrates in their attempt to stop the Storm King's plans, and Cadrach cannot stand before the man who broke him years before.

Miriamele leaves Cadrach below as she ascends Green Angel Tower to confront her father. And after the Storm King is defeated and the tower begins to collapse, Cadrach is waiting on the stairs to provide them with passage across the gap of missing stairs. He uses the last of his strength in the Art (what passes for magic in Osten Ard) to provide Miriamele and her companions a way to safety, but he cannot cross the gap himself. Though he had no hope and felt himself the weakest and worst of men, he found a way to be more than Pryrates' pawn in the end. Reading this series with Cadrach's ending in mind made it that much more rewarding because despite his self-loathing and hopelessness, in the end he finds hope and value. And that is something worth celebrating.

Villains, Redeemed and Otherwise

Williams does a fine job writing the endings for his villains in this book. Fengbald, who burned down his own lands and killed those under his protection because they could not pay the taxes he demanded, is sent to an icy grave by the survivors of that rampage. Inch, responsible for Pryrates learning of Morgenes' involvement in Josua's escape in book one, is crushed by his own machinery in the forges beneath the castle. Nessalanta and Benigaris, who betrayed her husband and his father Leobardis, find their ends in suicide and a duel with Camaris, respectively. Pryrates (after a false death at Miriamele's hand -- and how could we fall for that after Rachel's failed attempt in the last book?) is consumed by his own greed when he fails to turn the tables on his master the Storm King during the ceremony that will bring the Storm King back into the living world.

And then there are the villains who find some modicum of redemption. Guthwulf, Elias' right hand, becomes the thrall of the Swords during his blindness following his defense of Rachel from Pryrates in the last book. Rachel, herself in hiding beneath the castle (there are SO MANY TUNNELS beneath this castle), leaves food out for Guthwulf, keeping him (and later Simon, though she doesn't know it) alive while he wanders through the catacombs. Guthwulf later frees Simon from Inch's tortures and unites Simon with the Sword Bright-Nail, dying not long afterward. It's not a huge redemptive arc like Zuko's on Avatar: The Last Airbender, but it is something more than Gollum's usefulness in The Lord of the Rings.

Elias finds his humanity in the end, after losing much of it under Pryrates' care. He remembers Miriamele and his love for her, where Pryrates had twisted that love into hate. Again, it is a small redemption, but it is satisfying to see Elias as something more than a monster.

And then there is Ineluki, the Storm King. He finds not so much redemption as understanding. Simon recognizes the sorrow in the Storm King's face; of course he does, for it mirrors Simon's own sorrow at the many deaths he has witnessed, the friends and family he has lost. In the end, he tells Ineluki, "I'll fear you, but I won't hate you." That lack of hatred, that understanding, saps much of the power in the spell bringing Ineluki to new life, and the Storm King's distraction allows Miriamele to kill the body Ineluki is claiming as his own -- that of her father, Elias.

When I read The Heart of What was Lost, I thought Williams' focus on the Norns as people rather than the scary monsters they appeared to be in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn was an innovation, but the seeds of it are in these books. The reminders of Jiriki and other Sithi that the Norns are still their family, whatever grievances lie between them, Simon's recognition of Ineluki's sorrow, the myriad cultures that the heroes come from and encounter all feed into the notion of understanding those who are other than oneself, and I expect that's a theme that will carry on through The Last King of Osten Ard.