The War of the Flowers by Tad Williams

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Let me begin by saying that I am loath to write a bad review of something that someone has worked so hard upon, especially within a field in which I place myself. That being said, please enjoy the following diatribe.

608. That is the page number at which I found myself enjoying this book. Page 608 of 749. How do I remember that number, you ask? Because the first 607 pages had been such a colossal struggle that I made a note of the page at which it took a turn for the better. That glimmer of hope, however, was swiftly extinguished by the subsequent 141 pages, and what should have been a thrilling and nail-biting ending was instead a spectacularly disappointing return to the dull plod of the rest of the book.

The main character, Theo Vilmos, is, from the outset and continually, a non-entity. He is not engaging, or enigmatic, or even likeable. There was nothing to draw me into him or his plight, and more than once I hoped his death lurked in nearby pages so that either the story might end or at least have a dramatic twist in it. A self-declared musician of average ability, he lacks any skill useful throughout all of this adventure, with the exception of being able to sing with a group of goblins around the 550 page mark. This becomes of significance later when, at the culmination of these radical events which see Theo thrust into an alien world, and without involving spoilers, the one figurehead of power and evil in all of Faerie is nearly (but not quite) toppled by goblin music. Oh yeah.

Do you like repetition? Then this is the book for you! Granted, nigh on 800 pages of text will make it considerably harder to avoid repeating oneself, but at some point it becomes either laziness or a lack of imagination. Not only in descriptions of places or people, or backstories repeated to keep them fresh in the reader's mind, but conversation as well, and that for me was too much. At one point, relatively early on in the story, our beloved Theo is dragged into this Faerie world by a foul-mouthed sprite. Now, granted he is a stranger there and ignorant and terrified of nearly everything, but for what felt like a quarter of the book, the sprite just called him an idiot - or rather - an eejit. And not even in increasingly creative ways. The same insult, again and again, in response to the heroic Vilmos saying something stupid. It was tiresome and boring to say the very least.

Did I mention the repetition?

"Why stick with it then?" some people might ask, "if it were as terrible as you claim?"
To that I would reply, "an ironclad determination."
Curiosity, too, drove me onward, and it would be unfair of me to say otherwise. I was curious as to what the author had planned; as to what would come next. Curious, but not intrigued. Barely interested. I found myself glazing over as I read; words going in but not registering in my mind. A shame, given that I had entered with such high expectations of this book, given Williams' extensive catalogue of works.

While I do concede the ideas conjured up by Williams are fantastical in places, and the intertwined nature of our world and that of Faerie using fairytale lore was very good at times, it is all that spared this book from a 1 star rating, though not enough to salvage this story altogether. The ending, anti-climactic as it was given the epic build up of 700 pages, left me only with a lighter heart that I might pick up something better to read next.

Again, I did not enjoy writing this review any more than I enjoyed the book; it is only my opinion and, while I have been discouraged from reading any more of Williams' novels, I hope not to dissuade anyone else from reading one of his many successful works.



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