Monthly Archives: October 2018

The Notorious Notebook – Du Sverdinvyrd

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osten ard y

esterday, 30 years after The Dragonbone Chair was published I posted a few pages of the notebook that proceeded the book. Tad gave me the notebook this Summer when I visited him and Deborah for a few days and it was a true joy to browse through it, read here and there, look at long lists of names of language creation, timelines and the like. To me it was a true treasure and I excitedly read it for hours and hours … then I talked to friends about it and they were excited, too and a bit jealous, too so I asked if I could take pics and share them and Tad in his unlimited generosity agreed.

So this is what will happen here: in loose and unregular sequence the content of the notebook will be posted on this site. I’ll tweet (@ylvs) about new posts under the header  #TheNotoriousNotebook and if you want to be sure to miss nothing there is an email alert thingy somewhere on this  site.

And now without further ado, here is the rest of the notes about the three swords:

NissesENissesF

NissesG

I love how the last verse is seemingly hastily scribbled down and Tad not even bothered to write out the last line. I love that Du Svardenvyrd started out as Du Sverdinvyrd and how all the info from these pages made into MS&T yet in a very different form.

This is the most awesome and interesting part of the notebook as it is “story”, but for proper MS&T geeks like the runners of this site there is more rewarding stuff to come.

It was 30 years ago today …

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ot that Sgt Pepper taught the band to play but that
THE DRAGONBONE CHAIR by Tad Williams hit the book stores for the very first time.
DBCpic

To adequately celebrate I’d like to start sharing a true treasure I was given when visiting Tad and Deborah this Summer:

Notebook Cover

This is Tad’s original notebook from the late 80’s containing everything he jotted down while writing Memory, Sorrow and Thorn! Ostenard.com has the privilege to share its content with our fellow Taddicts  – thank you so very much for this permission, Tad!

Let’s start with my favourite find. This is a bit of continous text on the making of the three swords. Enjoy!

NissesANissesBNissesC

To be continued very soon …

The 30th Anniversary of the Classic “Memory, Sorrow, & Thorn” Novels

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his month marks the 30th anniversary of The Dragonbone Chair, first volume in the immensely influential “Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn” fantasy series written by Tad Williams. The first volume was published on October 25th, 1988, and it soon became a national bestseller, inspiring fantasy authors George R. R. Martin, Patrick Rothfuss, and Christopher Paolini to write their own hugely successful series, and in the process changing the landscape of fantasy fiction.

The Dragonbone Chair, book 1 of Memory Sorrow and Thorn

Cover of The Dragonbone Chair, the first volume of “Memory, Sorrow and Thorn”.

Writing for Barnes and Noble, Aidan Moher states, “Williams’ trilogy is quietly one of the most influential fantasies of the past 30 years, and is, in large part, responsible for the resurgence in the mainstream popularity of fantasy via HBO’s Game of Thrones, the television adaptation of  Martin’s hugely popular A Song of Ice and Fire novels—after all, Martin credits Williams’ books as a primary inspiration.

“On the surface, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn sounds like a paint-by-numbers secondary world fantasy: there’s an ancient evil threatening the medieval-flavored land of Osten Ard, a boy with a mysterious past, a scrappy princess, an evil prince, a dying king, and more magic swords, dragons, elves and dwarfs than you can shake a wand at (even if they’re referred to by different names.) It never eschews these tropes—though at the time they were less tiresome, as fantasy-readers reveled in the post-Brooks/Donaldson revitalization of secondary world fantasy. Instead, Williams’ trilogy feels like a surgically-precise dissection of those tropes.”

The Dragonbone Chair was followed by sequels Stone of Farewell (1990) and To Green Angel Tower (1993), and nearly three decades later by The Heart of What Was Lost (2017), The Witchwood Crown (2017), and the forthcoming Empire of Grass, The Navigator’s Children, The Shadow of Things to Come, as well as a few stand-alone stories, each set in Williams’ world of Osten Ard. Williams will be honored as the Writer Guest of Honor at the 2019 World Fantasy Convention.

sleeping_queen_by_kiraathu_webAs a way of celebrating the 30th anniversary of this seminal series, artist Jessica Steinke has created a beautiful illustration from The Witchwood Crown, showing the sleeping Queen of the Sithi, Likimeya y-Briseyu no’e-Sa’onserei. (The full resolution version of the piece is available on DeviantArt).

Steinke writes, “Since I read MS&T 20 years ago for the first time, the aesthetic concept of the Sithi have been a constant factor in my art and a most rewarding motiv. So I wanted to contribute something for the 30th anniversary of Osten Ard that could be shared with all fans out there. I’m looking forward to all future Osten Ard tales and many more Sithi to sketch.”

We at Treacherous Paths are honored to showcase Steinke’s beautiful art work as the fantasy world celebrates 30 years of Williams’ Osten Ard novels.