The War of the Flowers
US Hardcover Edition
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| Author | Tad Williams |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Michael Whelan |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fantasy novel |
| Publisher | DAW Books |
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Publication date
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May 6, 2003 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 704 (Hardback) & 832 (Paperback) |
| ISBN | (Hardback) & ISBN (Paperback) |
| OCLC | 52112768 |
| 813/.54 22 | |
| LC Class | PS3573.I45563 W37 2003 |
The War of the Flowers is a fantasy novel by Tad Williams about a rock-and-roll singer who is drawn into a magical world while reading a book.
Theo Vilmos is a thirty-year-old lead singer in a marginally successful rock band. Hitting an all-time low, he seeks refuge in an 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. Before Theo can disregard the account as nonsense, he too is drawn into a place beyond his wildest dreams.
Theo Vilmos is a thirty-year old musician who plays in a band consisting mostly of much younger players, who fears that he may have wasted his youth with nothing to show for it. The incredible charisma he once possessed has faded. After Theo's girlfriend Catherine ("Cat") has a miscarriage and dumps him while recovering in the hospital, his life goes from bad to worse and he learns that his mother is dying of pancreatic cancer. He watches his mother wither away and die from the cancer and slips further into depression. After his mother's death, he discovers a book written by his great-uncle, Eamonn Albert Dowd, among his inheritance. Theo assumes the book is a work of fiction as it describes a character who travels the world and eventually discovers an ancient passage into another world full of fairies and other mythical creatures. He quickly discovers the true nature of his uncle's book as he is rescued from the clutches of an ancient disease-spirit known as an irrha by a small fairy named Applecore.
Theo finds himself in the magical world described in his uncle's book. He quickly discovers the world to be unfamiliar and dangerous. Fairies come in a range of humanoid and nonhumanoid forms. The more powerful fairies (who look like extremely beautiful humans with elvish features and, unlike fairy commoners, lack wings) are known as Flowers and are divided into several influential families, each named after a different type of flower. Seven great family houses rule over the rest of the houses: Thornapple, Hellebore, Violet, Lily, Daffodil, Hollyhock and Primrose, but the Violets are now extinct, having been wiped out by an alliance of the other six great houses in the last War of the Flowers. Other prominent families include Daisy and Foxglove. The families are divided into three factions, those who believe that the fairies should coexist with humans, called Creepers, those who believe that humans should be eradicated, called Chokeweeds, and those who are uncertain what to do, called Coextensives. Passage between the worlds is restricted by the Clover Effect. Each person, human or fairy, has one exemption from the effect; in other words they can only travel once to the other world and then back to their own.
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