The Dragonbone Chair

I've been reading a little fantasy lately. It began with Stephen Lawhead's Arthurian cycle, which I liked quite a lot, although it didn't achieve Tolkienesque status, mind you. Then my son and I decided to read a series by George R. R. Martin, but by the second book I had grown quite tired of what seemed to me the rather vile content at times. So I dropped that finally, deciding that life is too short to read thing that make you feel, well, dirty.

Not giving up, though, I picked up the first of another cycle (why can't fantasy writers write single novels?) by Tad Williams. The book is called The Dragonbone Chair (Book 1 of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn) and after a rather slow start it has now achieved verified page-turner status for me. A young boy of no apparent quality, scullery lad in a medieval-style king's stronghold, finds himself mixed up in a war of good vs. evil that has a, well, ummm, Tolkienesque comprehensiveness. That is, the fate of whole civilizations hang in the balance, but the reader sees it all from the point of view of this rather unimpressive lad, who finds himself needing to mature quickly in order to survive.

It's the first of a 4-part cycle, and I fully intend to read this one to the very end.