YMMV / Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn

• Cliché Storm: Definitely a positive example; yes it's a Standard Fantasy Setting, but the series makes a point of subverting, playing with, and deconstructing the numerous tropes and clichés featured.
• Complete Monster: Pryrates is an Evil Sorcerer whose only established motivation is the thirst for knowledge — all knowledge, no matter how dark or forbidden. He first shows up as a junior member of the League of the Scroll, a group devoted to preserving ancient knowledge against the possible return of the Storm King. When Cadrach, a fellow member, unearths du Svardenvyrd, a forbidden book containing a prophecy of the Storm King's return, Pryrates tortures and Mind Rapes him for its secrets. He then ensnares King Elias in a web of deception, posing as a trusted adviser who can help him communicate with the spirit of his dead wife, but instead leading him into selling his soul to the Storm King for the promise of immortality. He provokes Elias to war with any who threaten this goal, including Elias’ brother Josua, whom he captures and attempts to sacrifice. To further his plot, and out of personal pride, he personally murders the Lector of the church of Usires Aedon (equivalent to the Pope). His quest for power is not stopped until he finds out that betraying the Storm King is not a good idea. And if this weren't enough, his Establishing Character Moment is crushing a puppy to death beneath his boot while the hero is watching, just because he can.
• Funny Moments:
  • When Morgenes sends Simon away, he gives him the manuscript of his book about the life of Prester John, because if he keeps it Pryrates will get hold of it and Morgenes "begrudges him the pleasure of criticism." It's kind of hilarious to realise that yes, knowing Pryrates he probably would read through it just so he could write snotty little comments in the margins!
  • An ominous, threatening character is introduced, and Miriamele is duly frightened by him into following him to his master's office. When she gets there, Streáwe, his master, is much friendlier than anticipated:
    Miriamele: If your intensions were honorable then why did you invite us here under threat of knives?
    Streáwe: Did Lenti tell you he had a knife?
    Miriamele: Certainly he did. Are you meaning he doesn't?
    Streáwe: Of course he does. All shapes, all sizes, some sharpened on both edges, some forked into double blades. No, it's just that I keep telling him not to announce it constantly. Around town he's known as Avi Stetto.
    Miriamele: What does Avi Stetto mean?
    Streáwe: It's Pendruinese for "I have a knife."
  • Lenti is later warned of a dangerous area and is asked if he carries a weapon. He draws himself up proudly and says "I have a knife."
  • Duke Isgrimnur calling 40-year-old Prince Josua "pup" and threatening to "knuckle his ears" or "throw him over a broad knee".
• Goddamned Bats: Bukken, tiny diggers who like to burrow beneath the ground and swarm larger foes from below. They have a tendency to show up in the most inconvenient of places.
• Growing the Beard: The pace of the story picks up noticeably about halfway through the first book and goes to warp speed by the end of the third.
• Moral Event Horizon: Averted. Pryrates, being a Card-Carrying Villain from his first appearance, starts out beyond the M.E.H., but Williams goes to great pains to make sure the story's other antagonists, including the Big Bad himself, all remain to some degree sympathetic no matter how many awful things they do.
• Nightmare Fuel: The ghant nest... shudder. The tunnel sequences with Simon can also be brutal for anyone who suffers from claustrophobia.
  • The fall of Naglimund, especially the bukken.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: See Growing the Beard, above; the first book is not as good as the rest of the trilogy.
• Trapped by Mountain Lions: The entire extended subplot involving Miriamele, Isgrimnur, and Tiamak finding their way to the Stone of Farewell might qualify as this.
  • The key word there is "might"; their seemingly pointless wandering provides crucial world-building and adds depth to the main plot by putting viewpoint characters at key scenes/locations.
• The Woobie: Examples of tragic suffering abound on all sides of the story. Nearly every plot-significant protagonist suffers.
  • On the villains' side, there's Elias himself, who is tricked into the whole Evil Plan out of grief over his dead wife.
  • Guthwulf — as much of a Jerkass as he is to begin with, he doesn't deserve to be Mind Raped by Sorrow and blinded by Pryrates.
  • Cadrach despite all the mess he helped stir up.
  • Maegwin and Leleth in particular seem to have been screwed over by a cruel deity just so they can sacrifice their lives to give Simon the strength to return to his body from near death.
  • In the end Josua even remarks on how earlier suffering ended saving his life with the manacle he kept from his brother's dungeon getting in between his neck and the edge of Sorrow.
    Josua: My brother and Pryrates forgot the gift they had given me. There is some poetry in that - or perhaps God wished to send a message about the value of suffering.
• Unwitting Pawn: It remains ambiguous whether Elias actually knew about Pryrates abducting and imprisoning Josua. In the months after his brother vanished, Elias eventually tells Guthwulf to keep an eye out for him in Hernystir, even though the man was his ally and would not have cared if Elias stabbed Josua in plain sight. Thus there was no reason to pretend in front of Guthwulf. On the contrary it seems as if Elias in fact wondered and worried about what his brother was up to and therefore cautioned his friend. Furthermore, when him and Pryrates come to the Thisterborg for the Human Sacrifice, Elias seems suprised if not truly shocked by realizing whom - instead of the subsitute Count Breyuga - had actually been supposed to be murdered there. None of that is to say, however, that he would have stopped Pryrates. And, at the very latest, he crossed the Moral Event Horizon that night, anyway.

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