Well, you can’t win ‘em all. The Heart of What Was Lost is Williams’ reentry into the world of Osten Ard that he left in 1993. Now, 24 years later, we return to Simon and Miriamele’s kingdom in order to set up the sequel trilogy, “The Last King of Osten Ard.”

The Heart of What was Lost is a short novel that serves as a coda to the events of the “Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn” trilogy. The Norns have been defeated, the Storm King banished, but there’s still some mopping up to be done. It strikes me that this is precisely the sort of material that J. R. R. Tolkien included in the closing chapters of The Return of the King. Some appreciate it, others find it anti-climactic—or should I say, post-climactic.

I read the first two volumes of the new trilogy: The Witchwood Crown and Empire of Grass before this. Perhaps that was my mistake. The events of Heart are assumed and mentioned in the new trilogy proper in ways that make them feel more real than this 200 page treatment.

If you’re reading Williams’ high fantasy, you’ll naturally want to read this—just don’t expect too much. Williams is at his finest (and no one is better) when writing behemoth-sized four-volume trilogies.

Williams, Tad. The Heart of What Was Lost: A Novel of Osten Ard. DAW, 2017.