The War of the Flowers by Tad Williams

Tad Williams is one of the fantasy/sci-fi authors I've been intending to check out for a while now. I've always heard he's a good writer with original stories. After reading his stand-alone novel, The War of the Flowers (TWotF), I have mixed feelings.

TWotF is an alternate-reality fantasy novel. I think the best way to give you an idea of the plot would be to say it is a grittier version of Alice in Wonderland. Basically, the main character, Theo, a down-and-out loserish rock-and-roll singer gets pulled into an alternate reality universe called Faerie, and the adventure goes from there. I'm not keen on giving a lot away on plot (I rarely read more than the first sentence on the back of a book), so I'll leave it at that.

I'll start with the bad, which concerns two major issues of the book--the characters, and the writing. First (and the main offender), the characters. The story mainly focuses on the protagonist, Theo, a, for lack of a better word, bum. He's pretty much a loser. Now, of course, with books like these I doubt I'm giving much away by saying as the story progresses he "grows" as a person. The real problem with Theo is not that he is a bum--this is the very allure of his character--but that he is stupid. There were many times when something happened to him (maybe he is trying to solve some predicament, or he was having a simple conversation), and I just wanted to yell at him, "She means so-and-so, you idiot!" Now, a stupid main character isn't bad in of itself, but it has to be done correctly--the character has to be humorous, or innocent, or even lovable. Something that makes that stupidity redeemable. But the stupidity Theo displays is just frustrating. Add to that the inexplicable and occasional moments of genius he has to foil the bad guy, and it just becomes absurd. Plus, along with Theo, his main partner, a fairy in the vain of Tinkerbell, is an extremely annoying, Irish-accented "sassy" character that was very irritating.

The second problem is the writing, which is pretty good except for some very cringe worthy cliches that are used. It really hurts the writing. Here's an anecdote to explain: When in high school, I wrote a short story that was well-received by my teacher except for one thing in particular; I used the term "one-in-a-million." Now, she didn't really deduct points for it, just circled it and wrote "cliche" next to it. I didn't get it then, but I do now. That little phrase took down my story a little bit, and TWotF is riddled with them. Unfortunately, it isn't as if TWotF is the only fantasy novel to use cliches--they all do, and TWotF is far from the worst offender that I've read, but they're still there, and they can be distracting. There were also what felt like a lot of forced literary allusions (a couple comparing things to Dante's Comedia, for example) that seemed to just be saying, "See, I read the deep stuff, too." Good for you, Tad; it doesn't do anything for your story, though.

Where the book does a good job, though, is the story. It is well paced and interesting, and really kept me wanting to read to find out what was going to happen next, even if I wasn't too crazy about the characters. This really is a testament to how good the story is, because if it makes me overlook bad characters, it definitely has some power behind it. His ability to craft a good plot is what has led me to not write Williams off for good and probably give him another try. He also builds a very unique world in "Fairie," something that is always hard to do in fantasy. He writes some wonderful descriptions of scenery and characters, and seems to have a very good handle on knowing when enough is enough. He gives the reader enough detail to give a picture, and lets the reader fill in the rest. When reading a 700+ page book, the last thing one needs is a description of every crack in the bricks of a building.

So, all-in-all, I just can't recommend this book. It isn't horrible. The story is very good page turner and the world he creates is wonderfully unique. Even if the story kept me reading, bad characters just can't be overlooked.

5/10.