The Navigator's Children

If you've been visiting this blog for a while, then you know that I've always been a big Tad Williams fan. In my humble opinion, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn remains a seminal work of fantasy, one that many consider one of the very best series of its era. Unfortunately, with The Last King of Osten Ard the author completely failed to recapture the magic of its predecessor. Both The Witchwood Crown and Empire of Grass were veritable slogs to go through and major disappointments.

I was wondering if Into the Narrowdark could somehow save this new series? Understandably, I was dubious, especially when it was announced that the final volume of the saga would have to be split into two installments. In the end, Into the Narrowdark was just the first half of what was meant to be The Navigator's Children and thus it read like the first half of a complete novel. There was no saving grace, nothing which allowed The Last King of Osten Ard to level up to some extent. While some storylines finally moved forward a little more, most of them continued to stagnate or go nowhere. Still, it was the best volume yet, so there was hope for a grand finale.

Alas, though the culmination of all the threads connected to the Norn queen ultimately delivered an interesting and somewhat exciting endgame, Tad Williams' desire to tie up all the loose ends sunk The Navigator's Children into a morass of boring and superfluous sequences and perspectives that make Brandon Sanderson's bloat feel concise in comparison. Which is too bad, for the novel actually had good momentum until the resolution of Utuk’ku's plotline.

Here's the blurb:

The latest saga in the New York Times bestselling world of Osten Ard concludes in the fourth and final Last King of Osten Ard novel.

The Hayholt is besieged by the Norns. Once the home of their immortal brethren, the Sithi, now capital of the kingdom of men, the fabled castle is under attack. And as the world is distracted by this strike against humankind, the Norns’ deathless witch-queen Utuk’ku turns towards the mysterious fateful valley called Tanakirú—the Vale of Mists.

Meanwhile, Queen Miriamele hurries to save the Hayholt and capture the treacherous noble Pasevalles, but arrives to discover the traitor has escaped.

And inside Tanakirú, Vale of Mists, the bond between Prince Morgan and Nezeru, a renegade Norn, has become something deeper and stranger than either of them could have anticipated. They journey ever deeper to the heart of the valley’s mystery, encountering wonder and horror, and come face to face at last with the ancient secret that has kindled the Norn Queen’s war—a secret that will destroy immortals and humans alike.

As always with Tad Williams, the superior worldbuilding really shines again in The Navigator's Children. In that regard, as was the case with the previous three installments, this one shows a Tad Williams writing at the top of his game. As mentioned in my past reviews, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn was vast in scope and vision and this new series builds on storylines that already echoed with much depth. Several new dimensions were added to what has always been a multilayered work of fiction, and on this front at least The Last King of Osten Ard has delivered from the start. To finally get the chance to discover more about the inner workings of the Norn society continues to be the most fascinating aspect of this new series. We finally discover the truth about the Garden and its demise, as well as how the Norns, the Sithi, and the Tinukeda'ya journeyed to Osten Ard aboard the Great Ships. We also learn more of the reasons why a schism occurred and grew between the immortals and how it led to their becoming enemies. The secret of the Witchwood Crown is also unveiled and its implications could change the world forever.

As was the case with the Shadowmarch series, one of the most important shortcomings of The Last King of Osten Ard remains its incredibly poor political intrigue. As I said before, Williams excels in many different facets when it comes to writing SFF novels, but politicking is definitely not one of them. Instead of playing to his strengths, perhaps to have more appeal with fans of George R. R. Martin's immensely popular A Song of Ice and Fire (which was inspired by Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn) and other politically-involved fantasy series out there, Williams put political intrigue at the heart of numerous major plot threads. Which, due to the clumsiness in execution of such intrigues, put the Hernystir, the Nabban, and the Thrithing plotlines on very shaky ground from the get-go, with everything going downhill the more the story progresses. Add to that the fact that Simon and Miri continue to make for particularly inept and occasionally dumb rulers who have surrounded themselves with not necessarily the brightest of people at court, and you literally end up with a recipe for disaster that keeps on giving. As a result, since a large part of The Last King of Osten Ard hinges precisely on political intrigue, even with the closure provided by this last volume, it often stretches the bounds of credulity beyond their breaking point.

Once again, the characterization remains the novel's biggest flaw. Which, as I mentioned in my previous reviews, along with worldbuilding, is habitually one of the aspects in which Williams truly shines. Like its three predecessors, The Navigator's Children is another mess of points of view. I'm persuaded that The Last King of Osten Ard would have benefited from a lesser number of perspectives. I've lost track of how many POVs there are in this series. Regardless of the exact number, it's no secret that there are way too many of them. While a number storylines can be engaging, at times some perspectives are downright boring, which bogs down the narrative with pointless scenes that go nowhere. Why the author elected to introduce so many disparate characters and give them their own POV, I'll never know. But it continues to kill momentum as you skip from an interesting sequence to an unnecessary conversation or info-dump that brings little or nothing to the tale. Plotlines featuring Tiamak, Binabik, Aelin, Eolair, Snenneq, Jesa, Tzoya, etc, made me roll my eyes in frustration time and time again. Even though we're reaching the resolution of basically all of them by the time we get to the last page, this poor characterization precludes any kind of tight focus on any of the important storylines, and in the long run it hurts this novel in a myriad of ways.

As far as the rhythm is concerned, the pace, at least in the first portion of the book, flows better than it did in Into the Narrowdark. Which is not surprising given that this is the second part of what was meant to be a single novel and that we are finally approaching the endgame. Don't get me wrong. It's still a mess of perspectives. Again, I feel that a good chunk of pages could have been excised without the plot losing anything important. And though the pace has improved, it's a chore to get through to the more compelling sequences because very little actually happens in many chapters and all the good stuff is buried so deeply under superfluous scenes that it robs them of most of the desired impact. Having said that, things are finally moving toward the convergence at the valley of Tanakirú and we reach the end of Queen Utuk’ku's plotline. Until that point, The Navigator's Children is by far the best volume in the series, warts and all. Sadly, the author came up with an anticlimactic and somewhat underwhelming finale that is a world away from the thrilling endings that closed the show in both To Green Angel Tower and Sea of Silver Light. À la Robert Jordan in The Wheel of Time, though great battles have been fought and the end of the world averted, only one of the good guys ultimately dies. Which makes little sense considering the odds they were up against. Still, it would have been good enough to cap off The Lost King of Osten Ard that way. Problem is, there is about 300 pages left in the book. What follows is an extremely long epilogue/set-up for future sequels that totally kills whatever the novel had going for it until then. A tribute to Tolkien's the Scouring of the Shire maybe? In any event, every single POV character gets his/her story told in this interminable recounting of the war's aftermath. Most of these plot threads were already past the point of interest for me, but somehow Williams thought that they deserved even more air time. So more Pasavalles, which could be one of the lamest villains in the history of the genre, Eloair, Unver, Viyaki, Jarnulf, and many, many more until we finally reach the very end. If the climax of the war with the Norns was interesting, this long and pointless epilogue turned out to be the slog of slogs.

I love Tad Williams and Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn remains one of the most beloved works of fantasy out there, but I feel that this new series is not a worthy sequel. If there are future novels set after The Last King of Osten Ard, I sincerely hope it will be centuries in the future. I for one don't want to see most of these characters ever again. From the first volume to the last, this series was a major disappointment. And I had such lofty expectations for it. . .

The final verdict: 5.5/10

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