Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Complete Monster: Pryrates. As one of the few even slightly Genre Savvy characters, he seems to go out of his way to make sure everyone knows just how far over the Moral Event Horizon he's gone.
    • Every single one of Elias's cronies is at the very least a Smug Snake, but Skali is probably the worst- his own soldiers helped Isorn escape because they were so sickened by Skali's orders to torture them for no reason. Later, he tortures Gwythinn to death and leaves his mutilated corpse for his family to find.
  • Goddamned Bats: Bukken, tiny diggers who like to burrow beneath the ground and swarm larger foes from below. They have a tendency to show up in the most inconvenient of places.
  • Growing the Beard: The pace of the story picks up noticeably about halfway through the first book and goes to warp speed by the end of the third.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Notably averted. Pryrates, being a Card-Carrying Villain from his first appearance, starts out beyond the M.E.H., but Williams goes to great pains to make sure the story's other antagonists, including the Big Bad himself, all remain to some degree sympathetic no matter how many awful things they do.
  • Nightmare Fuel: The ghant nest... shudder. The tunnel sequences with Simon can also be brutal for anyone who suffers from claustrophobia.
    • The fall of Naglimund, especially the bukken.
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequel: See Growing the Beard, above; the first book is not as good as the rest of the trilogy.
  • Trapped by Mountain Lions: The entire extended subplot involving Miriamele, Binabik, and Tiamak finding their way to the Stone of Farewell might qualify as this.
    • The key word there is "might"; their seemingly pointless wandering provides crucial world-building and adds depth to the main plot by putting viewpoint characters at key scenes/locations.
  • The Woobie: Examples of tragic suffering abound on all sides of the story. On the villains' side, there's Elias himself, who is tricked into the whole Evil Plan out of grief over his dead wife; not to mention poor Guthwulf -- as much of a Jerkass as he is to begin with, he doesn't deserve to be Mind Raped by Sorrow and blinded by Pryrates. Nearly every plot-significant protagonist suffers, too. Maegwyn and Leleth in particular seem to have been screwed over by a cruel deity just so they can sacrifice their lives to give Simon the strength to return to his body from near death.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Ineluki, the Big Bad. Even Utuk'ku, the Norn Queen, is played with a certain degree of sympathy; her desire to destroy the world comes from the dreadful ennui of eternal life coupled with a hatred of humanity stemming from the death of her son.
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