War Of The Flowers,The (Paperback)

by Tad Williams (Author) "THEO felt a small flutter of guilt as he turned the cell phone back on, especially when he noticed he'd left it off for more..." (more)
Key Phrases: ogre bodyguards, wild goblins, fairy lord, Cumber Sedge, Eamonn Dowd, Lord Hellebore (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Travel into another dimension is a popular fantasy ploy, but rarely accomplished with such humor, terror and even logic as in this stand-alone by bestseller Williams (Tailchaser's Song, etc.). After losing his girlfriend, Theo Vilmos, a singer in a humdrum northern California rock band, finds in his late mother's remote cabin an amazing if incomplete manuscript left by his eccentric great-uncle, Eamonn Dowd, about a fairy world purportedly visited by its author. Unsurprisingly, Faerie turns out to be a real place. Applecore, a short-tempered, red-haired sprite, abruptly appears before Theo just as a horrifying monster starts banging on the door. At Applecore's command, Theo swoops her up and pops through "the Gate" into a magical realm that proves initially beguiling, later strange and finally deadly. Ironically, Faerie is a distorted image of our own world, ruled by cruel fairy tyrants. The powerful classes, each named for a flower, wage war against each other, using colossal dragons as the equivalents of nuclear bombs. Theo discovers love as well as unsuspected secrets of his own birth and family. Williams's imagination is boundless, and if this big book could have been shorter, it could just as easily have been longer. The incorrigible Applecore continually delights, as in her comment on a famous J.M. Barrie character: "`If you believe in fairies, clap your hands'? If you believe in fairies, kiss my rosy pink arse is more like it."
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
Williams' latest is unsurprisingly large but is billed as a single-volume work, which is pretty flabbergasting coming from a writer addicted to series of massive tomes. The story begins with the fairly conventional device of a mundane (i.e., a person from our world) stumbling into Faerie. Marginal California rocker Theo Vilmos has just lost his pregnant girlfriend when he discovers an old, handwritten book in a rural cottage. The gritty and even rather grim faerie world to which it leads him is hardly a refuge from reality; indeed, it is so full of depressing details that those who are already somewhat down should consider reading the book only in bite-size chunks. The war of the title is one of numerous factions fighting among themselves, and with it, Williams darkly satirizes every sort and condition of politics, ideology, religion, and other human foibles, much as he did in the Otherland saga. Reader and hero alike remain in some confusion for some while, because Theo's Faerie guide, an obnoxious entity named Applecore, seems to have an agenda of his own and certainly has a stevedore's tongue. Williams has a supremely powerful, if not altogether disciplined, imagination, so that, like Theo, readers may feel they are encountering much that is dreary and dull on the way to the good parts. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 832 pages
• Publisher: DAW (May 4, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 075640181X
• ISBN-13: 978-0756401818
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 4.2 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (95 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #331,530 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Solid but unspectacular., October 29, 2003

By	V. K. Lin (Eugene, OR United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The War of the Flowers (Hardcover)

Tad Williams is turning into a hit or miss for me. I
loved Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. One of the few books/series
to ever make me cry. Otherland just didn't do it for me. Too
much. This, his latest, The War of the Flowers, is somewhere in between.

First we have to take into consideration that it is one book,
not one book in a series. There is one major character,
someone from our own 21st century world-- a down and out singer
with personal issues. He gets transported into the world of
Faerie,an interesting interpretation of Fairyland on Tad
Williams' part. I suppose that fans of Fairy-like things will
find his interpretations and extrapolations interesting. But I
wasn't all that impressed. Compared with the detail and
richness of the worlds in his other books, even Otherland
(Otherland's storyline didn't grab me, but his world and
descriptions were nice, and some of the characters were nice),
this one was a bit-- not shallow, just underexplained.

Sometimes, IMHO, Williams tends to describe so you can picture
something, but there isn't as much soul or substance underneath
as I would like.

The protagonist is pretty straight-forward. He matures,
evolves, and becomes a better person. The issues aren't
complex.

Neither is the plot. The protagonist struggles to survive
through Fairyland, and somehow manages to triumph by a
combination of inspiration and coincidental timing (ie luck)
over impossible odds. There is betrayal, love, and friendship,
but it is all understated. The action is basically running.
Magic doesn't play an overt role, but is more profound than in
Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn.

A solid fantasy all in all.

25 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Fantasy Book of 2003, December 1, 2003

By	B. Davis "HakMajik" (Fort Mill, SC USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The War of the Flowers (Hardcover)

Tad Williams struck a resonant chord with me with "The War of the Flowers". I should state that I read a good bit of Fantasy fiction, including some of Mr. Williams other books, and do generally consider him, Robin Hobb, George RR Martin and Robert Jordan to be the apex of current fantasy writing.

With that being caveat, it should not be surprising that just as that Tad Williams' prior books tended to focus on in depth-characterization and setting, rather than raw action or discordant perspectives (Martin), so too does 'The War of the Flowers'. Moreover, 'The War of the Flowers' utterly succeeds within that caveat.

Set in the land of 'Faerie', a mortal, Theo Vilmus, arrives through suspect means. A 'loser' at ~ age 30 in 'mortalia' prior to his advent, Theo comes of age while unwillingly, and to some degree, unwittingly, assisting in a civil war.

This relatively simple story succeeds in several outstanding ways:
(1) It, like many non-Fantasy fictional brethren, is told in 1 book-- and not scattered over many.
(2) The setting is fabulous: Sprites, Nixies, Doonies, Goblins, Grims, et al. In place, used 'accurately'. The class warfare(neo-marxist???)/condemnation of industralization may, to some, go over the top, but it's appropriate for the Neo-Victorian backdrop of Faeries
(3) The primary Protagonist is fabulous: Theo, as with Simon way back in 'The Memory...' Trilogy, is an angst-ridden, relatively indecisive ne'er-do-well at the beginning, who successfully migrates to adulthood by the end (nevermind that he's 30 to begin with as age doesn't make one an 'adult').
(4) The secondary characters are outstanding, with special kudos to both Hellebore and Applecore.

This book sat on my bookshelf for nearly 5 months before I read it. What a mistake. Being followed closely by only "Golden Fool" by Robin Hobb, this is unquestionably the best Fantasy book of 2003. Finally, while it was self-contained in only 1 volume, I assuredly hope Tad Williams revisits the land and time he created. Wonderful. Magnificient.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fantasy & Reality Meet in the land of Faerie., May 14, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The War of the Flowers (Hardcover)

If you've read any of Tad William's previous works (Otherland), and you enjoyed them, then this book is just for you.

War of the Flowers is about a regular man, 30 year old Theo Vilmos, whose life is falling apart all around him, losing a gf, going through tough family issues; a lost soul who just doesn't know what to do with his life. Just when he thinks things can't get worse, he stumbles upon a book from his Great Uncle, a book that will definately change his life. Theo finds himself cast into another world of faeries, goblins, ogres, ghosts, pixies, and a billion other things that he thought were not possible.

The story follows Theo as he is thrown into a new place wondering how his life went from just being bad, to being bad but in a world where little pixies mouth off and curse at him.

The book is a bit long and at times it gets depressing but there are a lot of surprises and if you're a Tad Williams Fan then this book won't let you down. I reccomend it if you enjoyed Otherland and Tailchaser's Song. William's has always been able to describe strange and fantastic worlds in such a way that the reader is very much "there."