The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
The debut that announced the decade's defining new voice — Locus First Novel winner, Hugo/Nebula finalist — and opened the door the Broken Earth would later walk through with three Hugos in hand.
Book Entry · Fantasy
The Dragonbone Chair
by Tad Williams · 1988 · Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, book 1
What is The Dragonbone Chair about?
Simon, a daydreaming scullion in the vast castle of the Hayholt, is apprenticed to the doctor Morgenes — scholar, secret historian and member of the League of the Scroll — just as good King John dies and his heir Elias accepts counsel from the priest Pryrates, who has been talking to something under the castle. The Storm King's bargain, the three Great Swords, and the flight north to the Norn-haunted wastes assemble with deliberate slowness (Williams's famous three-hundred-page fuse) into the epic that taught the next generation: the elves (Sithi) were here first and were wronged, the mad king has his reasons, and the prophecy is the trap.
Why it matters
The founding text of revisionist epic fantasy: George R. R. Martin has repeatedly credited it as the proof that the post-Tolkien form could carry moral complexity — A Song of Ice and Fire's acknowledged direct ancestor.
Where does it sit in the series?
Simon the scullion, three swords of legend and a dark lord whose grievance is justified: the revisionist epic that taught the next generation — Martin explicitly included — what the form could carry.
In the Guide from Memory, Sorrow and Thorn:
- The Dragonbone Chair (1988)
Read next
The Lord of the Rings
The most influential fantasy work ever written and among the most-read novels of the twentieth century: the genre's commercial category, quest architecture and worldbuilding standard all descend from it.
Lyonesse: Suldrun's Garden
The trilogy's later volumes took the World Fantasy Award (Madouc, 1990); its blend of folklore and statecraft visibly influenced Gaiman's Stardust and modern fairy-tale epic alike.