My latest: on fantasy and theology in The Christian Century

In the latest issue of The Christian Century I have an essay on the divine comedy of epic fantasy, or as the editors titled it, “Gods Who Make Worlds.” It’s ostensibly a review of the final volume of Tad Williams’s quartet The Last King of Osten Ard, which is itself a sequel series to the original trilogy Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn—not to mention a prequel, a bridge novel, and a companion volume—for a total of ten books in this world. The name of that world is Osten Ard, and I use the glories of Osten Ard to think aloud about epic fantasy as a genre and its relationship to Christian faith.

Here are the opening paragraphs:

Three decades ago, Tad Williams published the final volume in the best epic fantasy trilogy written in English since The Lord of the Rings. Called Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, the series ran from 1988 to 1993 and totaled over a million words. Half of those words came in the final book—one of the longest books ever to make it onto the New York Times bestseller list.

There is no overselling the significance of Williams’s achievement: the biggest names in fantasy in the intervening decades all acknowledge his influence, from Brandon Sanderson to Patrick Rothfuss to Game of Thrones creator George R. R. Martin. (There is no Westeros without Osten Ard, Williams’s fictional world.) Yet, although Williams is hyper-prolific and widely admired, he has never had the success or name recognition of these other authors. No streaming service has yet broken the bank in adapting Williams’s magnum opus.

Why have these books sold well but never set the world on fire?

Three reasons come to mind…

Click here to read the rest. Thanks again to The Christian Century for letting me write about these books and this topic—a big ask, given my lack of qualifications.

Every fantasy a comedy, every comedy a theodicy

Recently I wrote about returning to Osten Ard, the fantasy world of novelist Tad Williams in his two series Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn and The Last King of Osten Ard. One of the things I’d forgotten about the first series, a trilogy written from 1988 to 1993, is its interest in theodicy. Multiple characters throughout the books wonder, both aloud and to themselves, about the existence of God (or the gods); about their power; about their goodness; about the supposed truths taught by priests and monks; about the myths of old, handed down for centuries; about whether a world such as theirs—namely, a world of unremitting pain, illness, suffering, violence, and death, all apparently senseless, random, and unrectified—is one a just God would either create or sustain. As the lead character Simon realizes at one point: he no longer feels himself capable of praying to such a God even if he does exist. Yet this very realization is itself an indication that there is no such God, since he would not correspond to “the old stories.”

I do not know whether Tad Williams, the author, believes in God, nor can I say just what his aim was in posing these theodical questions throughout his trilogy. I’ve not yet re-read the second half of the third book in the series, so my memory may be wrong, but I don’t recall him resolving these questions in a clear or satisfactory way. That’s fine. Theodicy is usually a dish best served incomplete anyway.

Here’s the thing, though. Williams’ story wraps up beautifully. Every narrative thread is woven, by story’s end, into a gorgeous tapestry clearly thought through and planned out from the beginning. This is what makes the epic tale so marvelously told. There is not a character forgotten, nor a plot device left by the wayside. By the final pages, it’s as though behind this seemingly senseless drama stands an author, an author with meaning and purpose, whose design may have been hidden before but has now been made manifest.

It seems this way, because it is this way. The author isn’t a hypothesis we are forced to postulate in order to make sense of a story we otherwise couldn’t make sense of. We know the author’s name. The story is a novel. He wrote it. He planned it. He designed it. Duh.

But there’s the rub. If, outside the text, there stands an author, then inside the text, within the story, there must likewise be an Author. The perfect pleasing blueprint of the thing works because there is an architect. The fact of there being an architect is itself an answer to the characters’ ponderings about God. The characters wonder to themselves whether they are living in a meaningful story or a meaningless chaos. Well, we know: it’s the former, not the latter. The end of the story clears that right up. More to the point, the fact that they are characters inside a story written by an author for readers’ pleasure is as direct an answer as one could have. It may not be an answer available to the characters, within the story, but it’s a meta-textual answer available to us, the readers of their story.

In this way, Williams is unable to render a negative answer to the theodicy his narrative is meant to embody, however ambivalent his own intentions may be. Merely by authoring the story and having it make some kind of sense, he answers his own question: Yes, there is a God. In a word, it’s him. He’s the deus ex machina. He’s the one behind the curtain. There’s someone pulling the strings. It’s him. And if he exists, then the existence of God (or the gods) within the world he’s created is a given. Of course he (they) exist. Otherwise the story wouldn’t unfold the way it does; wouldn’t be orchestrated and choreographed in such a supremely fitting and satisfying manner.

This, in turn, becomes an extra-textual answer about our world, not just Osten Ard. There is a God in our world just as there is in that world, as evidenced by the fact that we make worlds like Osten Ard. Human sub-creation imitates and exemplifies divine creation. In the words of poet Franz Wright:

…And the way, always, being 
a maker 
reminds:

you were made. 

What I mean is this. Insofar as a fantasy is a comedy, it is also a theodicy: it poses and answers whether there is a God and, if he exists, whether he is both all-good and all-powerful. There is and he is, fantasy replies. For in a comedy, the Good triumphs in the end—ultimately, in some way, to some degree. This is why Dante’s masterpiece is called, simply, La Commedia. It’s the comedy, and therefore the divine comedy. This world is a comedy, for all its evil and suffering. It is not a tragedy.

For modern fantasy to avoid theodicy, it would have to embrace tragedy. Not darkness, not “grittiness,” not violence and sadism and gratuitous sex and playing footsie with nihilism. Actual, bona fide tragedy. I’ve not encountered fantasy that does that. And even then, if there’s a human author doing the tragedy-writing, there’s a case to be made that it can’t fully escape the pull of theodicy. It seems to me you’d have to go full Sartre and write a fantasy akin to La Nausée. But what world-building fantasist wants to do that? Is even capable of stomaching it?

We write because we are written. We make because we are made. We work providence in our stories because providence works in ours. We give the final word to the Good because the Good has the final word in our world—or will, at least; we hope, at least.

This is why every fantasy is a theodicy. Because every fantasy is a comedy. And comedy is a witness to our trust, howsoever we deny it or mask it, of our trust that God is, that God is good, and that God will right all wrongs in the End.

To Osten Ard

I first journeyed to Osten Ard in the summer of 2019. Osten Ard is the fictional world of Tad Williams’ fantasy trilogy Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. It came out about thirty years ago and comprises three books: The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Stone of Farewell (1990), and To Green Angel Tower (1993). The last book, if I’m not mistaken, is one of the largest novels ever to top the New York Times bestseller list. At more than half a million words, it is so big they had to split it in two volumes for the paperback edition.

I enjoy fantasy, but I’m no purist. I’ve not read every big name, every big series. Nevertheless, not only is MST my favorite fantasy series. It’s the most purely pleasurable and satisfying reading experience I’ve ever had.

I remember wanting, at the time, to write up why I loved it so much. I had a whole post scribbled out in my head. Alas, I never got around to it. But I’ve finally decided to revisit Osten Ard, so I’m taking the chance now.

The reason? A full three decades after the publication of The Dragonbone Chair, Williams decided to write a sequel trilogy. That trilogy has expanded into a tetralogy, accompanied by three different smaller novels: one that bridges the two series (The Heart of What Was Lost [2017]), plus two distinct prequels set thousands of years in the past (Brothers of the Wind [2021] and The Splintered Sun [2024]). As for the tetralogy, it’s titled The Last King of Osten Ard, and includes The Witchwood Crown (2017), Empire of Grass (2019), Into the Narrowdark (2022), and The Navigator’s Children (2023). That last novel is finished and due to be released this November.

Since first reading MST in 2019 I’d been waiting for a definitive publication date for the final book of the sequel series before plunging in. Now that it’s here, I’m ready to go. But in order to prepare, I’m rereading the original trilogy via audio. It’s even better the second time round. Narrator Andrew Wincott is pitch perfect. The total number of hours across all three books is about 125—but already the time spent listening has been a delight. And then, once I’m done, I’ll open the bridge novel and the final four books that bring the whole 10-book saga to a close.

I’ve buried the lede, though. What makes these books so wonderful?

In a word: Everything.

Plot, prose, character, world-building—it’s all magnificent and then some.

1. Plot reigns in fantasy. Without a good plot, there’s no story worth telling. And what a story MST tells. It’s a slow burn in the first book. The first quarter sets a lot of tables before any food is served. I’ve had multiple friends begin the book and not make it past the halfway point for this reason. I get it. But I don’t mind the pace. All the pieces on the board have to be in the right place before the action begins. Besides, Williams’ leisurely pace is a welcome break from needing to Begin The Adventure! on page one.

Williams plots out everything in advance, and it shows. He also clearly loves four-part stories over three-parters. Every other series he’s written besides MST has entailed four books—and the third book in this trilogy is the size of the first two books put together! In any case, Williams always knows where he’s going, and he’s going to earn every step of the way. He never cheats. Never. That’s what makes To Green Angel Tower so extraordinary. Every single thread finds its way woven into the tapestry, always at just the right moment, when you least expected it. By novel’s end, the final achievement is a marvel to behold.

And even granting the slow burn of the first novel, by two-thirds of the way through, it’s off to the races, and you never look back or slow down.

2. The prose is delightful. Not showy, but not inert either. Williams has style. Above all, it’s not a failed attempt at Tolkienese. It’s “modern,” if by that one means tonally consistent, character-specific, emotionally and psychologically rich, morally complex, and written for adults. But not “adult.” Williams comes before George R. R. Martin—many of whose themes and even plot devices are lifted right off the page of MST—and beats him to the post-Tolkien punch, without any of the lurid, gratuitous nonsense. There’s neither sadism nor titillation on display here. Neither is it for kids, however. My 9-year old is reading Lord of the Rings at the moment. He won’t be ready for Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn until he’s in high school.

All that to say: For my money, granting that the genre is not known for its master stylists, Tad Williams writes the best prose in all contemporary fantasy. You’re always in good hands when you’re reading him.

3. The characters! Oh, the characters. Just wait till you meet them, till you’ve met them. Binabik, Isgrimnur, Morgenes, Jiriki, Tiamak, Josua, Miriamele, Pryrates … and so many more. One of the delights of rereading (=listening to) the trilogy is spending time with these old friends (and not a few enemies) once more.

And again, thankfully, we don’t have a Fellowship redux. There is a wizard-like character, but he plays a minor role and is nothing like Gandalf. There is more than one “good king,” in this or that kind of exile, but not only are our expectations of their “return” turned upside down; they aren’t cast in the mold of Aragorn (or David or Arthur or Richard the Lionheart or whomever). Likewise there are elf-like creatures, but they aren’t patterned on Legolas or Galadriel or the other elves of Middle-Earth. So on and so forth.

Two further comments on this point.

First, speaking of LOTR, here’s one way to understand what Williams is up to in the series. Tolkien famously ends his story with Aragorn’s accession to the throne and his long future reign and happy marriage. Williams begins his story where Aragorn’s ends: after 80 years of a happy, just, and celebrated royal reign. I.e., with the death of a universally beloved “good king.” In a sense, his story poses the question: Okay, suppose an Aragorn really did rule with peace and justice for as long as he lived. What happened next?

And then he asks: And what if this Aragorn had demons in his past, skeletons in his closet, bodies buried where no one thought to look? What if he had secrets? And what if those secrets, once brought to light, had costs?

To be clear, Williams is neither a cynic nor (like GRRM on his lesser days) a nihilist. But he wants to tell a full-bodied story about three-dimensional characters. No one’s a cardboard cutout; nobody’s perfect. That’s his way of honoring Tolkien without aping him.

Second, the protagonist of MST is a boy named Simon (Seoman) who, for much of the story, has a lot of growing up to do. He’s an orphan scullion in his mid-teens, as the story begins, and the truth is he’s petty, immature, self-regarding, self-pitying, and annoying. A real whiner, to be honest. And some folks I’ve known who gave Dragonbone Chair a chance finally put it down because they simply didn’t like Simon.

I get it. He’s not likable. He’s Luke from A New Hope, only if Luke was the same restless spoiled brat for multiple movies, not just the opening hour. Who wants to watch that?

Stick with it, is all I have to say. Williams doesn’t cheat here either. His depiction of Simon is honest and unflinching. Who wouldn’t be self-pitying and immature growing up in the kitchens of a castle without mother or father, aching for glory but ignorant of the world? Williams won’t let him grow up too fast, either. It takes time. But the growth is real, if incremental. And by the time he fully and finally grows into himself, you realize the journey was worth it. You learn to love the ragamuffin.

4. What fantasy is worth its salt without world-building? Middle-earth, Narnia, Westeros, Hogwarts, Earthsea, the Six Duchies … it either works or it doesn’t. When it works, it’s not only real, not only lived in, not only mapped and named and historied in painstaking detail. It’s appealing. It’s beautiful. It draws you in. It’s a world that, however dangerous, you want to live in too, or at least visit from time to time.

Osten Ard fits the bill in spades. It’s got all the trappings of the alt-medieval world universally conjured by the fantasy genre—fit with pagans and a church hierarchy, castles and knights, fiery dragons and friendly trolls, magical forests and mysterious prophecies—but somehow without staleness or stereotype. The world is alive. You can breathe the air. You can, once you master the map, move around in it, trace your steps or others’. It’s a world that makes sense. There’s not a stone out of place.

It’s a world with real darkness in it, too. Not the threat of it. The genuine article. Pain and suffering, remorse and lament, even sin find their way into the characters’ lives. As he wrote To Green Angel Tower, Williams was going through some real-life heartache, and you can feel it in every word on the page. But it’s not for its own sake. It serves the story, and it’s headed somewhere. If I said above that I’ve never been more satisfied by a reading experience, then I’ll gloss that here by saying that I’ve never had the level of catharsis that Williams provides the reader—finally—in the final two hundred pages of this trilogy.

And yet, apparently, that isn’t the end of the story! Williams is a master of endings, and I can call to mind immediately the closing scene, even the final sentence, of each of the three books. The first is haunting and sad; the second is mournful though tinged with hope; the third is full of joy, so much so it makes me smile just thinking about it.

But there are four more books to go! Another million (or more) words to read! A good friend whom I introduced to the original trilogy says the new series is even better than the first. Hard to believe, but I do. Between now and November—or should I say Novander?—I’m making my return to Osten Ard. Like Simon Pilgrim, I’m starting at the end, or perhaps in the middle. Usires Aedon willing, I’ll see you on the other side.

2021: the year of Martin, Rothfuss, and Williams?

Could 2021 see the publication of long-awaited sequels to three major fantasy series?

It would mark a full decade since George R. R. Martin published the fifth entry in his Song of Ice and Fire. He's been writing pages and pages since then, or so he says. He turns 72 this month, and following the TV adaptation of Game of Thrones concluded, then living through a global pandemic, he's had nothing but time to write. In any case, even after #6, he's got at least one more book in the series to write, assuming it doesn't keep multiplying and fracturing indefinitely. One can hope, no?

It's also been a decade since the second book in Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicle trilogy was published. Four years spanned the first two books. Perhaps ten will span the second and the third? Rothfuss insists that he is hard at work on The Doors of Stone, yet reacts cantankerously to continuous "Are you finished yet?" queries. It's unclear whether it's the perfectionist in him or whether, like Martin, the sprawl of the story plus the lure of other projects is keeping completion just over the horizon.

Speaking of completion: A full three decades ago Tad Williams published his extraordinary trilogy Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. He sat on it, sat on it, and sat on it some more—then finally made good on some hints and gestures in the closing pages of the final volume, To Green Angel Tower, with the publication in 2017 of a "bridge novel," The Heart of What Was Lost (a more Williams-esque title there never was, plangent and grand in epic lament as so much of his work is). Thus began a new trilogy, The Last King of Osten Ard, with volumes published in orderly sequence: 2017, 2019, and, in prospect, October 2021. (A second short prequel novel will be published in the summer.) Once he breaks the story, the man knows how to tell it, and how to finish it.

In sum, these are three great fantasy novelists working to complete three much-beloved fantasy series. And we could have all three authors publishing eagerly anticipated books in the next 15 months. Let it be so!