The series that inspired George R.R. Martin to write Game of Thrones is getting a sequel
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Michael Whelan/DAWMemory, Sorrow and Thorn finished with To Green Angel Tower in 1993. The hardcover was so big that it needed to be split into two 900 page paperbacks. |
In 1988, fantasy was a relatively simple genre, mostly consisting of fairly direct Lord of the Rings knock-offs (the Shannara series) or sexualized versions of Conan the Barbarian (the Gor series).
Many authors, such as George R.R. Martin, had mostly stayed out of the genre. Martin, in particular, had mostly staked his prose abilities toward science-fiction — which had a more varied and literary history — and superhero fiction.
Actually, that isn’t quite accurate. By 1988, Martin had, in fact, mostly abandoned his aspirations as an author and was working as an editor, and at his day job as the showrunner on Beauty and the Beast. The idea for his epic fantasy series “A Song of Ice and Fire” — which would later be adapted into Game of Thrones — was kicking around in his head, but he felt that the market wasn’t there for that type of story in long-form prose.
Williams changed this.
The “Memory, Sorrow and Thorn” series (Dragon Bone Chair, 1988; The Stone of Farewell, 1990; and To Green Angel Tower, 1993), redefined what traditional fantasy could be. Williams took the basics of Tolkien, deconstructed the story and put it back together in his own image; one fit for modern times.
The term “American Tolkien” is thrown around a lot when talking about big-book fantasy authors (the term has been used with Martin, Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind and, more recently, Patrick Rothfuss). Usually, what the person means by this simply boils down to “it was fantasy,” “the author was American” and “it was long.” Williams, on the other had, really did take the basic tropes of Tolkien and weave them into his own modern American context.
While “Memory, Sorrow and Thorn,” is clearly an epic adventure series at its heart, it lays out the story not with the stiff upper-lip of pseudo-historical British myth-making, but with a far more grounded naturalistic and human take on events.
Zooming in on the characters meant that Williams could ponder several things in the tome, including the nature of faith and spirituality, third-wave feminism, and the costs of war. All this while still maintaining, for the most part, the hero’s journey that’s core to epic fantasy.
It wasn’t a total take-down of the genre. Much like The Searchers pulled apart the Western in the 1950s, “Memory, Sorrow and Thorn” pulled apart fantasy in the late 80s. Both seeded the ground for a new, different resurgence of that same genre in the following decade. (To continue this Western analogy, A Game of Thrones would be The Wild Bunch.)
After reading “Memory, Sorrow and Thorn” (and having a somewhat sour taste in his mouth regarding television after Beauty and the Beast), Martin concluded that there was a market for his own modern epic fantasy trilogy. “A Song of Ice and Fire,” is far more nihilistic and cold compared to “Memory, Sorrow and Thorn,” and it certainly throws away many more tropes from the traditional hero’s journey, but its core is still based around the more ground-level, naturalistic take that was established by Williams.
Unlike Williams, however, Martin seems to have an issue with closing. Williams was (just barely) able to squeeze the entire thing into three books, over the course of about five or six years. Martin’s trilogy has ballooned to eight books, almost 20 years and has no firm end date coming.
In the 21 years since To Green Angel Tower came out, Williams has finished two other big-book series and numerous side projects. Now he’s finally working on a sequel to “Memory, Sorrow and Thorn” with “The Last King of Osten Ard.” I bet dollars to donuts it gets finished before “A Song of Ice and Fire.”
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