TITLE: The War of the Flowers
AUTHOR: Tad Williams
GENRE: Fantasy
PUBLISHED: 22/04/2003
RATING: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism
Review: That’s it. I give up. I’m officially dumping this one on the DNF pile. And you know there’s something seriously wrong when even the introduction of dragons isn’t enough to make me give a damn about where this story is going.
The War of the Flowers takes quite a while to get going. Theo Vilmos is a very bland 30-something whose life has gone nowhere. Although we’re repeatedly told that he had a great deal of potential in his youth, that potential has been wasted, and blah, blah, blah. Nothing fantastical happens for some time, during which we are subjected first to the miscarriage of his pregnant girlfriend and the death of his mother by cancer. Only after this is Theo attacked by a horrible demon creature, from which he is rescued by a tiny pixie and whisked away to Faerie, aka, Fairy Land.
And I just. Didn’t. Care.
Theo is, frankly, a bit of a dick. To be fair, Williams seems fully aware of this, since Theo’s dick-ishness is repeatedly commented upon by those around him, so I assume that Theo undergoes some transformative arc that will end with him being…not-a-dick. But he’s also incredibly boring, and incredibly stupid. One of the things that always drives me up the wall is how unprepared most characters in portal-fantasy seem to be. Intellectually, I know that most people don’t know what a kelpie is or how to spot a changeling, and yet these things are so basic to me that it just annoys me to see characters fumbling around trying to sort out what’s going on. Even allowing that your average American male doesn’t know the first thing about European faeries (which most of Williams’ faeries seem to be based on), Theo is an idiot, unable to work out the most obvious of developments on his own, constantly managing to insult or upset those around him, and forgetting things of vital importance. What made me actively loathe the man was how he so blithely drove home drunk early in the novel; I can’t decide whether Williams doesn’t feel as strongly about drunk-driving as I do, or whether he was using it as another example of how much of a dick Theo is. Either way, no, I didn’t care one bit about Theo and his oh-so-special arc – not even the one I saw coming from the second chapter, which made the big revelation halfway through the novel ever so slightly anti-climatic.
Williams had crafted a very interesting version of Faerie; far from being quasi-Medieval, the otherworld Theo visits is in its own Industrial Revolution stage, which made for a nice change. I also liked how the faeries had their own technology, everything from electric-but-not-electric lights to laptops, and trains and cars. (I did not enjoy how Theo was constantly shocked that Faerie had these things. Get over yourself, you irritating overgrown brat!) The Faerie originally introduced to us, however, was horribly dull; Theo inherits a kind of journal from his uncle which chronicles, in the most pretentious manner possible, an earlier Faerie that sounds much more Medieval. I do not understand why Williams chose to make the journal’s extracts so long, when they were so incredibly boring and irritating.
After such exhausting researches (and after so many failed attempts!) to behold at last that fabled metropolis standing before me, the teeming streets and the shining towers that so few men have seen, and fewer still have returned from, was to understand once and for all that Science is a sham and what we call "human knowledge" a compendium of evasions and half truths…
Good gods, shut up already!
However, even though Faerieland itself is quite interesting, the bombardment of tropes killed my interest very quickly. There’s Applecore, a tiny winged Tinkerbell with a dirty mouth (although she’s my favourite character, the cliché of it made me cringe); the beautiful Goth stranger who saves Theo from Certain Doom, and who we know is destined to end up with him (after a few misunderstandings, of course); the constant committing-action-before-thinking-about-consequences – and then, oops! consequence; and then the fact that NO ONE is willing to answer Theo’s questions. Ever. Because mysteryyy~
Honestly, I was banging my head against the table pretty often by that point.
Why did I stick with it? I guess because Tad Williams is a famous fantasy author, and The War of the Flowers is a book I’ve wanted to read for years. (Also, there was a momentary inclusion of a unicorn, and I love unicorns unabashedly). Seriously though, there are flashes of genius here; the already-mentioned magical technology of Faerie was an interesting and original concept, and phrases like this kept me hoping for a while that the book would get better...
He looks like an angel that tells you you’re not getting into heaven because you didn’t make a reservation,
Or this one...
the towers of the city’s greatest houses spiked the skyline like the unfolded components of a Swiss army knife
But really, the world-building isn’t that great. There is only one country and one city – really? Come on. That just doesn’t fly anymore. Especially when you have a country where bits of it move around all the time – I mean, just imagine the fun that could be had with that idea! But no. As with the main character, all the potential of the novel is completely wasted.
I can’t put it into words. This should have been a good story. There was court intrigue, with the varying factions of the Faerie noble families, and brewing war, and a couple of mysteries… But I just didn’t care. About any of it. Reading this felt like a chore; from the beginning, which stretches on too long for no good reason; to the parts in Faerie, which are limited by the fact that they’re conveyed through such an awful protagonist as Theo. I reached 56% on my kindle, after unicorns, demons, portals, and a realistically dangerous dragon, and I still just didn’t care. I have my theories about how things turn out, but honestly, I could very happily live the rest of my life without knowing what happens. The War of the Flowers is a mess of clichés massed around a truly unlikeable, uninteresting main character. I’m amazed I stuck with it so long, and the sense of relief now that I’m putting it aside truly cannot be described.
Fingers crossed that my next review will manage to be a positive one!
