Customer Reviews

Arcady

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've read just about every sci-fi fantasy there is, and this one is truly different. Rarely is religion, adventure and characters mixed together like this. The pace stars slow, but bear with it and enjoy the scenery, because when the plot takes off, it goes in directions you'd never have guessed. For wimpy readers who are used to D&D or cute little unicorns? Way to deep for you. Go home. This is for readers who don't want everything spelled out plain as day. Get some tea on a rainy day, unplug the phone and go to it.

I admit,<Arcady> was not the easiest book to read. However two years after finishing the last page, I am still haunted by its powerful images and moody gothic atmosphere. If you liked <Little Big> by John Crowley and <Hound of Baskervilles> A.K.Doyle,this is the book for you. I am about to start rereading both <Arcady> and its less successful but still icredibly affecting sequel <Allamanda>. These books should be the cornerstones of modern fantasy literature. I can not believe that Michael Williams also used to write novels for TSR. Go figure

This wonderful, though at times difficult book, contains such atmospheric and descriptive writing that the images remain with you for a long time, like flashbacks from a particulary vivid dream. Everytime I see a castle or historic building, crumbling under the wait of time and ivy, I think of this book. It may take you a long time to read Arcady, and its equally compelling and confusing sequel Allamanda, but the visions of the this beautiful and terrifying world, as well as the consistent and sympathetic characterisation, make it well worth the effort.

P.S. Buy the UK paperback edition with the wonderful cover by Mick van Houten

This book starts at a leisurely pace: always intriguing, though sometimes it seems that things are happening a little slowly. But what that does is create plausible, downright moving characters and a brilliant, fantastic setting. So when the plot actually begins to take flight, it is that much more powerful. This book should be included in any library of serious fantasy.

For a person whose forays into the fantasy genre began and ended with Tolkien, I was always disappointed to find later authors the palest of comparisons to that master. Michael Williams' Arcady is one of the freshest and most intriguing additions to the fantasy genre. At the same time, I must say that the book is so different from anything I've encountered on those shelves, that it may be doing the book a disservice to limit it to that genre. In very lush descriptive passages Williams has created a place at once familiar and exotic, leaving this reader with the feeling of a pleasant deja vu. The world of Arcady appeared to me to be a post-apocalyptic throwback to the late 18th- early 19th centuries, where a bucolic culture is threatened by the forces of an encroaching industrial revolution. It's an interesting twist for those of us schooled to venerate the Age of Reason, and the human progress it supposedly entailed. This same quandry is played out in the Hawken family, the focal characters of the novel, whose members have taken opposing sides in this struggle. The bucolic culture of Arcady has its spiritual foundation in verses of the Romantic poets of that period, especially William Blake, and the book sent me back to some of my college anthologies to re-acquaint myself with his poetry. I recommend this work highly, and congratulate the author for his successful creation of a new and vibrant world out of our own not-yet-distant past.

If you're not a fantasy veteran, then my advice: forget this book. I read about 90% before finally giving up. I'm pretty new to fantasy and this book was just way too confusing and muddled for me to even begin to understand what was happening.

It's rare that I can't get through a book, no matter how tedious. Generally, I can often skip a few superflous pages of a book and continue on to its eventual end. Sadly, Arcady got the better of me. I gave up in the middle. The premise (which made me buy the book in the first place) seemed excellent. However, the tale started off rather blandly and it just went downhill from there. There seemed little point to any of the book. Hints of characters that could have been interesting were never developed (at least not in the first half of the book that I did read). Descriptions of the fantastical creatures that inhabited the borders evoked no imagery at all. Liked the idea, hated the book.

Arcady is an extremely well written fantasy, positively bursting with the most sumptuous, sensual and evocative language. The chapters are like a series of dream-like tableaux, containing vivid and startling images that will remain with the reader for a long time. Why then does such an original and visionary novel fall somewhere short of providing full satisfaction? Perhaps because the surfeit of wondrous descriptive prose cannot entirely compensate for the sheer lack of pace and direction. The paucity of any significant action, particularly in the first half of the book, is likely to drive many readers to give up on Arcady. Even the most beautiful dream can become wearing in its monotony. If you persevere with Arcady though, you will ultimately be well rewarded by this memorable and innovative novel. It may, however, put your staying power to the test.

I got lost. I had absolutely no idea what was going on. Some priest left his house, came home to a house that did...or didn't (one of the parts that lost me) have LIVING people in it, and overall, I think I was as confused as he was. I honestly gave up on this after trying to get somewhere in it for three weeks. The storyline..if there is one..isn't worth following. Try Rawn, Jordan, Friedman, or the Deathgate Cycle.