Empire of Grass starts off just after the events of The Witchwood Crown. By the end of Book One, many of the characters readers had grown to know and love from the original Osten Ard series, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, have lived the past 30 years recovering from the Storm King's War. While King Simon and Queen Miriamele have done their best to help Osten Ard recover from the fight, they find that unrest has started brewing in several of the kingdoms under their charge. In one, an old religion with a dark history seems to be coming back; in another, border skirmishes with the wild Thrithings-Folk is sparking a civil war, and to make matters worse, it seems the immortals to the north are stirring again.
When Empire of Grass starts, Miriamele is forced to go south in order to help ease the civil unrest before all out war breaks out, while Simon is left in the capital city to help keep the business of the kingdom moving. Unfortunately for Simon, he has a traitor in his midst and they see this is the right time to start making moves, the least of which is the murder of Simon's daughter-in-law.
Simon and Miramele's grandson and heir, Prince Morgan, finds himself in an even worse situation. He and a small troupe were sent to track down the Sithi, a different breed of immortals, in the hopes of asking for help against the growing northern-threat, but when the camp is attacked, Morgan gets separated from the group and ends up lost in the large Aldheorte Forest. Of course, the strange magics that surround the Sithi land only make it harder for Morgan to keep track of where he is going. Morgan must quickly learn how to survive on his own and he will have to do some quick growing up if he is going to survive the time ahead and, hopefully, make his way back to his homeland.
Meanwhile, Morgan's companion and Hand of the Throne, Count Eolair, ends up captured in the same raid that Morgan flees from. As a captive of a band of Thrithings outlaws, Eolair learns of some unexpected, and unwanted, stirrings among the Grasslanders. It seems that a particular chief is gaining a following. Some even claim that this Unver is the prophesied Shane, a chief among chiefs that will unite the clans and bring victory to the Thrithings. Unbeknownst to Eolair, Unver is actually one of Prince Josua's long-lost children. Both Simon and Miriamele promised to find out what happened to her uncle's family during the events of the previous book, and it seems like they might not like what they learn if and when those events are revealed to them.
Meanwhile, in the homeland of the Hikeda'ya, a slave woman named Tzoja (secretly Josua's long-lost daughter) strives to stay alive as plots in Nakkiga under the re-awakened Queen's control come to fruition. At first, she tries to just find a way to hide, but she quickly becomes thrown in the center of the action, but it's unclear exactly why she is chosen. Could Queen Utuk'ku know her true identity? Could it have to do with her master, Lord Viyeki, the High Magister of the Order of Builders; or maybe the Queen's attention is because of Tzoja and Viyeki's half-breed daughter, Nezeru, a member of the Order of Sacrifice and one of the Queen's Talons. She will have to think fast in order to stay ahead of the trouble that is brewing all around her.
Both Viyeki and Nezeru have issues of their own to deal with. Viyeki finds himself on a strange mission where, despite his rank, he is told very little of what he and his team are expected to do. He finds himself deep in mortal lands confronting a massive undertaking and wondering if his orders are really from the Queen or from one of her advisers claiming the Queen's involvement. Meanwhile, Nezeru's mission to claim a living dragon for the Queen has had its own set of problems. While they do have a young, but still massive, dragon captured, the toll the battle had on her team was heavy. Their leader is all but dead, two others are dead, and the group's Singer has taken control of the mission. To make matters worse, the mortal that has joined the group, auspiciously to help guide them, is secretly hoping to get close enough to the Queen in order to kill her. As the mortal, Jarnulf, spends time with Nezeru, she finds her confidence in her place in the world shaken and she even starts to ask questions she never would have dreamed of mere months before.
A lot happens in this tome of a book. There are a lot of major characters, many more secondary ones and they are all moving around causing many pieces to shift. While some minor mysteries are resolved, most of them just lead to more questions. One of the interesting aspects of this book is that, now that the reader knows who Prince Josua's long-lost children are, we get many glimpses into their history and we learn how they got to their current places. Since this was some of the last reveals at the end of The Witchwood Crown, readers were left wondering how Josua's children came to be so far apart and walking such drastically different lives. Granted, there are still many events surrounding those times that are unclear, but as those events are revealed, it tells an interesting tale about what happened in the 30 years between trilogies, all while the current events unfold in intriguing ways. I can't wait to see what Tad Williams has in store for Book Three, The Navigator's Children, a name that invokes some fascinating possibilities for the Tinukeda'ya, a race about whom, until this book, I hadn't realized just how little we knew.
