![]() ![]() “ Tad Williams is the brightest and best of the fantasists working in what is so often, and so inaccurately, described as ‘the tradition of J.R.R. The answers will only be found in Otherland. Is he part of The Grail Brotherhood? Does he oppose them? Or, as he sits like a spider at the center of a vast web, does he have ambitions of his own? However, youth and frailty are not enough to get you excused from saving the world.Īnd Mister Sellars, a strange old man on a military base, a prisoner of both the government and his own body, may be the greatest mystery of all. As he flees from the bloody battlefields of World War I to a castle in the sky, and onward to lands beyond imagining, he must not only evade his terrifying pursuers, but solve the terrible riddle of his own identity.įourteen-year-old Orlando is also the invincible barbarian Thargorm, but only in his imagination. Paul Jonas is lost, seemingly adrift in space and time. With the heart of a poet and the soul of a shaman, he will journey with Renie on this quest into the very heart of darkness. !Xabbu is a Bushman, come to the city to learn skills which may save the spirit of his tribe. When people around her begin to die, she realizes she has stumbled onto something she is not meant to know, a terrifying secret from which there is no turning back. But when her young brother is struck down by a bizarre and mysterious illness, Renie swears to save him. Renie Sulaweyo, a teacher and the backbone of her family, proud of her African heritage, has fought all her life simply to get by. But every age has its heroes, and unusual times call for unusual champions: ![]() Fewer still are willing or able to take up the challenge of this perilous and seductive realm. Only a few have become aware of the danger. And somehow, bit by bit, it is claiming the Earth's most valuable resource -its children. ![]() The best minds of two generations have labored to build it. Incredible amounts of money have been lavished on it. Surrounded by secrecy, it is home to the wildest dreams and darkest nightmares. “Tad Williams is the brightest and best of the fantasists.” ―Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods ![]() #Tad williams otherland city of golden shadow seriesI'm not sure why that is, but it may have something to do with the fact that Williams normally writes fantasy (as far as I understand – I haven't read anything else by him), and his usual fans are fairly new to the ideas that he presents, while "normal" SF fans will have seen a lot of it before.Now in trade paperback, the first book in the classic cyberpunk fantasy series Since finishing the review I've read other reviews of Otherland and people tend to be a lot more enthusiastic about it than I am (to put it mildly). Irene's little brother goes into a coma after some weird experiences on the net and Irene starts to investigate – suddenly she is followed and people are trying to kill her, maybe things are just a bit more complicated than a young boy overdosing on net-usage. Otherland takes place half in South Africa and half in some kind of virtual space (and the word cyber isn't used once which is a big plus). I better stop with this metaphor before I get in to deep.Īnyway Otherland is interesting enough and well written enough that I'll look around for Volume II (River of Blue Fire) when it comes out in paperback next year. It's like long foreplay, which can be good, but when you have to wait several months before getting to the really steamy parts, the foreplay has to be a bit more than just good to keep the memory alive or the steamy parts (that's volume II) have to be really, really hot. The really hard question is whether the book is worth reading or not, I'm really not sure because the book has one more problem the plot never really takes off until the very end. I guess that you are getting the picture here. The background milieu is fairly detailed and interesting, but not interesting in and of itself. The plot is interesting, but not gripping. The characters are nice and deep enough that I care about them, but I couldn't really identify with them. While I can't put my finger on any real faults in the book, I can't point to anything really fantastic or amazing in it either. It's so easy when a series is so clearly good (like Nights Dawn by Hamilton) or when it's clearly bad (and I luckily can't think of any real stinkers off the top of my head). This somewhat ups the stakes when one has to decide whether to recommend a book or not. City of Golden Shadow is the first volume in Tad Williams Otherland series.Įight hundred pages in a rather small font and only the first in a series. ![]()
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