“The Heart of What Was Lost” by Tad Williams

I read Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series back in 2012, and while I didn’t absolutely love it (see my review here), I still have pretty good memories of it. I was excited to hear that the author was finally going to be returning to the world of Osten Ard with a whole bunch of new books, beginning with this short novel – The Heart of What Was Lost.

At the end of To Green Angel Tower, the Norns have been defeated at Hayholt, but wars are not generally over with a single decisive battle. As the Norns retreat, they pillage and destroy villages, and the new king sends his armies to make sure the Norns don’t bother his kingdom again. This novel tells the story of the actual end of the war from different perspectives – the commander of the human army Duke Isgrimnur (who was pretty prominent in the original trilogy), human soldier Porto, who is far from home, and Norn engineer Viyeki, who is with the force retreating from Hayholt.

This is very much a grim war book, and it made for more intense reading than I expected. It was very interesting to see a Norn viewpoint – they were faceless implacable enemies previously, and now we know a lot more about their culture and motivations. They’re the ones we end up rooting for (despite some horrible acts they commit), because the alternative seems to be genocide, and now that we know they’re not just evil killing machines, they don’t deserve that.

I think this book would work perfectly well as a standalone and as an introduction to the world of Osten Ard. I didn’t remember much of the events of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, and I thought it was a complete story. Having said that, I liked the complexity that it added to the ending of the original series, one of my biggest complaints was that everything was tied up far too neatly in To Green Angel Tower. And the ending of The Heart of What Was Lost is most definitely not “happily ever after” – it makes me look forward to reading The Witchwood Crown (the first book of the new trilogy) when it comes out later this year. I’m especially excited that Viyeki is confirmed to be in it.

Also, this is completely unrelated, but fantasy books need more original names. I recently read The Shadow of What Was Lost by James Islington, this one is The Heart of What Was Lost. To make things even more confusing, the second James Islington book is going to be titled An Echo of Things To Come, and Tad Williams is writing another Osten Ard book called The Shadow of Things To Come…

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