The War of the Flowers by Tad Williams

Title: The War of the Flowers
Author: Tad Williams
Type: Novel
Genre: Fantasy
Series: No

Pages: 686
Copyright: 2003
Publisher: Daw Books, Inc 
Rating: 3 out of 5

This is the first book that I will be reading where I have someone cover the cover for me and read the book. Books that are read in such a way will be labeled "Cover Blind". I will not be seeing the cover of these books until after I have rated the book and created a rough design of what I think the cover might look like. My cover will be included in the post as will the real cover. I'm hiding mine down at the bottom because my artistic skills don't seem to extend to cover design.

Cover Rating: 1 out of 5
It should be noted the the entirety of the review was written without having seen the cover. This is the only section that was written after having seen the above cover image.

I would not have read this book if I had seen the cover first. The above image is the cover on the edition of the book that I read. I looked at a few of the other cover images, such as the one included to the left which I would have been more likely to pick up and read, but none of them really made me want to pick up and read the book. The one of the left is for the paperback edition of the book and it is by far the best cover of all that I saw. So if we go by this one book I defiantly need to stop judging books by their cover because I did enjoy this book.

Before I reveled the cover!

Summary: from GoodReads.
Returning to the fantasy genre that made him a coast-to-coast best-selling phenomenon, Tad Williams has written a new stand-alone contemporary novel set in Northern California-and also in the strange parallel world that coexists in the farthest reaches of the imagination.

Theo Vilmos is a thirty-year-old lead singer in a not terribly successful rock band. Once, he had enormous, almost magical, charisma both onstage and off-but now, life has taken its toll on Theo. Hitting an all-time low, he seeks refuge in a isolated cabin in the woods-and reads an odd memoir written by a dead relative who believed he had visited the magical world of Faerie. And before Theo can disregard the account as the writings of a madman, he, too, is drawn to a place beyond his wildest dreams...a place filled with be, and has always been, his destiny. 

Feelings:
At first I found this book hard to read. I thought Theo the main character was a little bit whiny. He isn't the most fun to spend time with. But I give a book as long as this one at least 100 pages to get good before I say no and move on to the next one. I ended up needing all 100 pages to get really into the story. I wondering if seeing the cover would have made it easier for me to read the book. I think it could easily have helped make me more interested in the story, it could also pushed me more into the why am I reading this category as well. I did really like the story in the end.

The War of the Flowers is in many ways a fairytale with a bit of a twist. What you have is two coexisting worlds that seem to, maybe, inhabit the same planet. I'm a little bit iffy on the exactness of the relationship between the mortal world and Fearie mostly because no one seems to understand it. In Fearie there are seven flower families, six when Theo arrives, and they disagree as to what to do about the power problems they are having. Something in the mortal world seems to be affecting it thous you have some that think it is best to get rid of the mortal problem and others think that there should be some kind of coexistence between them. A political drama that is confusing. I do see one problem which wasn't address which is, is it really coexistence if one side doesn't know the other exists? I'm drifting from the book, however, because this question is not addressed.

Because of it's political aspects the story is at times hard to follow. I did figure somethings out about  characters before they happened but it didn't take away from the book. At times I found some of the longer sections with lengthy explanations a bit hard to get through. This is already a long book and at times I thought maybe it was just a bit to dull in places. That doesn't sound very nice. It can't be all action all the time. Sometimes we have to slow down and get a better understanding of what is happening. While these slow downs were necessary for the story I found myself wanting to skip ahead. Applecore made the book readable in the slow sections because she was an entertaining character. I think if the book had followed Theo and not had Applecore and later Poppy as major supporting characters it would have been less appealing to me.

Back to the fairytale part; it follows a similar arc to most fairytales yet there is some question of happily ever after at the end which I appreciated. The ending of the book was the hardest part for me to swallow of the entire story, thus the 3.5 rating. I thought maybe there were a few to may bows and a few epiphanies that seemed a little late in the coming. The story was a good one and I really did enjoy reading it even without seeing the cover.

I would recommend this book to those that want an adult fairytale and like fantasy.

Cover Blind: 
This is just a rough sketch of what I think the cover might look like. I really home the actually cover is much better than what I came up with because if it isn't I guess I'm glad I read the book without a cover.

So if I was going to make this a little less rough of course I wouldn't have a colougue of images. Once I created what I was thinking it didn't actually seem as appealing as when I was imagining it. I wanted to include images of all seven of the flower houses, Hellebore, Daffodil, Foxglove, Thornapple, Primrose, and Violet. However, once I got the images around Theo and Applecore it didn't end up looking as good as I hoped it wold. Since this is a fairytale I think I would try and have a more fairytale feeling. The image below has some of the appeal of what I think of as a fairytale. I use one of the fairies from this image but the style of this image seems a bit more what I think of when I think of a typical image you might see on the cover of a book of fairytales.

There is only one problem with using this style, The war of the Flowers is a darker story. And thus this is a bit to light hearted for the actual story. I also thought about the possibility of having an image that was a little more interesting at least in my opinion of just a fairy, however, Theo is the main character and that seemed to have little to do with him or the war between the two worlds mortal and Faerie. I did find the image of the fairy by herself to be much more interesting. But it has little to do with the story so you have to incorporate other things into the cover as well. I don't think a cover should miss lead it's reader.

So while I like the image of just the fairy alone I don't think it is appropriate which is why in the end I created a cover that had Theo, I know Theo has longer hair I couldn't find an image I liked, and Applecore in the center and each of the flowers incorporated around the edges.

Four fairy panel credited to: http://www.layoutsparks.com/pictures/fairy-63

Fairy sitting Image credited to: www.hiresimg.com