I owe Tad Williams a lot, as the fantasy author who I turned to when I wanted  to see what the world beyond Tolkien looked like, and his latest book is quintessential Williams: a complex, multi-stranded narrative, a seriously big book, oh, and the third time he has failed to finish a trilogy inside the planned three volumes. The series with which he made his name, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, notably had such a large final volume that it has to be split in to two (equally huge) parts, and the same has happened here: as Williams admits in a note at the beginning, his distrust of planning meant that it became inevitable that he could not wrap up all of the threads in this volume, and thus this is the first half of the final part (and in fairness I can’t really suggest much he could have cut). In reality, this feels like a classic mid-series fantasy novel, so the suggestion that this is still a trilogy seems somewhat forced, but Williams’ many fans have come to expect this kind of thing by now.

Fortunately, the only disappointing thing about Shadowrise is the fact that it doesn’t represent the promised end to the sequence – taken on its own terms, it’s some of Williams’ best work to date. His first fantasy series was a powerful and gripping piece of storytelling but the moral landscape was very clearly defined; the Shadowmarch trilogy quartet still showcases a powerful story, but you’re hard pressed to know who the baddies are, and in that way it reflects some of the changes to the fantasy landscape wrought by the likes of Steven Erikson and K.J. Parker. Ambiguity abounds, as we start to discover the true significance of Southmarch Castle to the increasingly tragic Qar, and the wrongs that the human race have perpetrated against them throughout their history.

In classic fantasy style, Shadowrise moves between following various groups of protagonists: Barick Eddon, lost behind the Shadowline with only the talking raven Skurn for company, finally leaving self-pity behind and embracing the mission he acquired in Shadowplay; his sister Briony, facing courtly intrigue as she attempts to find allies to relieve her besieged home; Ferras Vansen, delivered back to the Funderling town below Southmarch Castle, who, along with Chertz and the other Funderlings, must counter the subterranean incursions of the Qar; the enigmatic boy Flint, whose behaviour grows ever-stranger; the  increasingly erratic Autarch of Xis, who is coming ever closer to Southmarch on a mission only he understands; his unwilling wife Qinnitan, on the run, and many other characters besides. The lands of the Qar become a much more fully developed part of the story here, and by the end the People, as they call themselves, have transmogrified from scary beasts in to fully-fledged tragic aboriginals.

Williams keeps the plot moving along very nicely indeed, spending just the right amount of time with each character before switching perspective, and interweaving the narratives deftly. Both of the Eddon twins continue to develop, and all of the crucial characters move closer to the inevitable denouement at Southmarch Castle that will undoubtedly occupy much of the final volume, to be titled Shadowheart. Williams continues to improve as a writer, in my view, and Shadowrise proves he is still one of the authors to beat when it comes to high fantasy. If only he could count to three…

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