River of Blue Fire (Otherland, #2)

River of Blue Fire (Otherland #2)

3.97 of 5 stars 3.97  ·  rating details  ·  7,361 ratings  ·  136 reviews
Otherland. In many ways it is humankind's most stunning achievement: a private, multidimensional universe built over two generations by the greatest minds of the twenty-first century. But this most exclusive of places is also one of the world's best kept secrets, created and controlled by an organization made up of the world's most powerful and ruthless individuals, a priv...more
Paperback, 704 pages
Published September 1st 1999 by Daw Books (first published January 1st 1998)
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Chris
When last we left Our Heroes, they were caught in the Otherland - an immense virtual reality program built by people with more money than God - with no idea where to go and no idea what to do. They were lost, confused and had no way out.

Oh yes - back before Neo got his clock punched by Agent Smith, Renie, !Xabbu, Orlando, Fredericks and all the other Otherland explorers discover that they are in more danger than they realize - if they die on the network, then they'll die in real life. And, almos...more
Ricky Ganci
Well, really REALLY good seems better to describe the potential that Otherland has, but the second volume of the quartet was a bit underwhelming. Every time Marissa asked me how my book was, I replied with something very middle-of-the-road: “it’s all right”; “it’s pretty good”; “it’s okay.” There were, at a few junctures, flashes of brilliance and the kind of fun telling a story in this type of setting typically indicates. Unfortunately, those scenes came toward the beginning and middle of the b...more
D.M. Dutcher
Filler.

The first novel was long, but it was unraveling a mystery. This is just the main characters being herded through sim after sim, with a few character in the real world having enough screen time to be reminded that they exist. It gets old, because it's not necessary to the plot.

1. A character (Paul Jonas) or team of them (Rennie, !Xabbu) land in a sim word reminding us of something, sometimes blatantly.

2. They get captured or chased.

3. They leave to the next.

This is the bulk of the book. Wh...more
Aleah
Otherland, a massive virtual reality network, is composed of an unknown number of worlds. It's funded by a mysterious group of the wealthy and powerful who call themselves Grail Brotherhood; and, though nothing is clear, the primary purpose of the Brotherhood seems to be the maintenance of their own long lives... even at the expense of countless other. Across the globe children are going into medically inexplicable comas, including Renie Sulaweyo's little brother Stephen. Renie suspects that Ste...more
Nick Leshi
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Maria
Jan 07, 2012 Maria rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fantasy-lovers, Tolkien-fans
Never say never, huh?

Upd.: My first book of 2012. Can't believe it took me a week to wade through it. Tad Williams is nothing if not long-winded.

I'm giving River of Blue Fire nondescript three stars. Not very helpful, I know, but I can't seem to make up my mind about the book. It's certainly worse than City of Golden Shadow, the previous and the first part of ... what is it that you call a four book series? Tetralogy? Quadrilogy? Well, whatever it's called, the second installment of Otherland se...more
Ivan
I think I'll try to write a review for every book I read from now on. I know not many read this probably, but it's good to put my thoughts somewhere. I will also keep every review as spoiler free as possible, so don't worry about anything major being said here. With all this said: here is my first daily review, Otherland: River of Blue Fire

PROS: Similar to the first book, Otherland has managed to make me use my imagination is ways that I never have before. The idea of the Net has allowed William...more
Mike
The second book in the Otherland series again makes clear that Tad Williams is in no hurry. He will spin his tale out in his good time, so if you are heading for the beach for a week, I recommend this series. Williams does many surprising things in this novel, which keeps it interesting. For one thing, he adds to his already immense cast of characters and story lines, pulling in peripheral characters and developing them in a workman-like way, adding perspectives and really having fun with the wo...more
Strangeland
I rather enjoyed the first book in this series - City Of Golden Shadow but good god this ride down the river is getting tedious. Little to no character development (I guess that was all taken care of in the first book) and what movement there is is doled out like tiny drips in the river of boring fire. And the author's need to hit sci-fi/fantasy tropes time after time after time. I can understand it since so many of these virtual worlds are built on the childhood memories of their creator but li...more
Tanya
Sep 02, 2007 Tanya rated it 4 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition Recommends it for: The Hi-tech Fantasy buff
2nd Otherland book. Great read, better than the first. The meat of the story, and what a story. This man has one of the most vivid, reaching imaginations I have ever encountered. Let's hope he sees into the future again....
Michael
I could say that this is the sequel to City of Golden Shadows but as Tad states he considers Otherland and all its parts to be one huge novel. It's a testament to his writing skill that despite the number of characters and plot strands, I elected to skip over the synopsis and jump right back into the story, despite the eight months or so that passed for me between the two books. All the characters were still fresh to me and I had no trouble picking up were it had left off. I identify most with O...more
Elizabeth
Don't get me wrong, this is a very good book. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is interested but to me it was just alot of the same. Nothing too terribly different happens. The characters travel through various VR worlds and must fight their way out. The basic plot doesn't change really through the entire book. The worlds may change, the challenges they encounter may vary but basically it is all the same with the more intricate details changing. I know it is the details that make a...more
Hugh Foster
Have you ever had the experience where you're reading a book--probably even quite a loooong one, though I suppose it wouldn't have to be--and you're reading along, and you're reading along, and you maybe have even read upwards of 100 pages or more, and it begins to creep up on you that, well, you're bored. You even acknowledge it to yourself; you're brain says "I'm bored.". And then something really weird happens. Just when you have said this to yourself, and maybe you're also wondering if maybe...more
Misakyra
I feel the need to justify this. I love this series for a lot of reasons, but one of its few failings is a tendancy to get bogged down in showing the characters (and the readers by proxy) amazing things that don't do much to advance the plot. That tendancy is most pronounced in this book. Things do happen and the plot moves forward, but it does so at such a slow pace that I found myself needing to take a long break from reading because I was so bored.

Two stars because I tyink that the crucial p...more
tash
God I hate cliffhangers...hopefully the library has the third one in the series too.

This book was once again, like the 1st in the series, absolutely fantastic. It incorporated everything I like; history, imagination, deception, government conspiracy, you name it this series has it. I especially liked the H.G Wells and the Kitchen worlds, 1 because I just read War of the Worlds, and 2 because the kitchen was hilarious. Can't wait to read the 3rd of the series, though hopefully it ends there. Don...more
Dan
To sum it up, this series is amazing. The first book was great and I was intrigued but River of Fire really convinced me that this is an epic series worth the effort. No doubt these books are very long but Wiliams is a master of detailing the universe he's created for us and what a setting it is. He has really made a solid effort with the creative liberties the story allows for him to construct. What is really great is that since this series is really just one long novel, at no part does this st...more
Phil
These books take me forever to read in between the hustle and bustle of life. I often read lots of online material and currently working my way through the Sandman graphic novel so I have plenty of distractions to keep from completing a book if it isn't grabbing me. Although I can't say that I didn't enjoy following through with characters' journey through all the virtual worlds, it just didn't seem to grab me. There was never a moment where I simply couldn't put it down which means I was never...more
Rebecca Hill
River is starting to feel like a very enjoyable journey through the four part series. The first book was really slow going, bordering line too much character development. This book, the second in the series feels like is building the ground work for the next book in the series. The look forward instead of building the past has been much easier to read. Can't claim to miss some of the characters which have been sixed at this point, and I am not crazy about a few of the new characters still surviv...more
George Berkeley
Tad Williams - Otherland River of Blue Fire

Autor Tad Williams
Titel Otherland 2 - River of Blue Fire
Jahr 1999
Genre Science Fiction
Epoche Postmodern
Synopsis The main character Renie enters the "Otherland" network to find the reason for her brother falling into a coma. She is accompanied by african native !Xabbu. In this book they mainly wander through the network entering strange simulation after strange simulation.
Pro Even though the book is a little bit boring in the first half the suspense s...more
Max Lybbert
I will admit that my main fascination with this book stemmed from the various worlds the characters travel through. The Paul Jonas mystery gets deeper. His adventures in a Neanderthal world were enough to get me to start reading Clan of the Cave Bear (unfortunately I never managed to force my way through more than a handful of chapters in that book). Likewise, Jonas' adventures on Mars led me to read A Princess of Mars (I was much more pleased with that book).

My memory isn't what it used to be,...more
Peter
Nearly there....: The concluding part of the Otherland story is great. My only reservation is that as a series I feel like it moved a bit slowly and could really have covered the same ground in a bit less space. Perhaps 3 books. Apart from that, the depth of imagination that goes into this story is incredible, I definitly reccommend anyone to this book (after reading the other 3 first of course) as long as you have a little patience to get you through the slow bits.
Kevin
Williams gets caught up in the wanderloop in this book. Obviously, it's a middle book in a series, but I still found the "and then they trudged here and this happened to them" (repeat 20x) structure a little tiring. Thankfully, a few more subplots and characters are introduced, which made things a little more unwieldy but also a little more interesting than they might have been otherwise.

This all sounds negative, but I still enjoyed reading the book (though I wasn't quite as engaged by it as I...more
Ben Trigg
The triumph of this quartet is that it at once combines a clever projection of the future with vivid descriptions of dozens of historical, fictional and imaginary worlds - probably managing to do so because of the extraordinary page count! Williams manages to get up close and personal though too with his characters. River of Blue Fire takes us deeper into Otherland, and into the stories of the believable characters.
Antti Karanta
The story and the characters are interesting but the storytelling is oh so very slow. When the characters are crossing a desert, it really feels like it as it seems to take ages... But this is a metter of taste - I would prefer a little more compact story, but others may find this way of telling a story to enable them to know the characters better.
Tulara
Well, the journey continues for the several groups who are loose in the system. Fantasy worlds collide with realism and trap the travelers in bizarre and fantastic worlds. The story goes further and deeper into the characters - good and sinister.
I enjoyed the journey, but I did take heed of the author saying that the series is really one BIG book - but publishers wouldn't let him publish the story as such a big book - and we wouldn't be able to carry it around he said also.
We did find out more i...more
Carolyn Ferguson
when I read the first of these books by Tad Williams I was just looking for anything to read but once I read the first novel in the series I knew I had to read the rest of them, they are great and I feel as though I know all of the characters personally and would know them if I meet them on the street
Tulara
picks up where the first one left off in a cliffhanger. but soon the characters are off in another construct - the kitchen was a bit over the top - a cartoon kitchen with a cartoon indian trying to get back his "match" papoose from the pirates in the gravy boat who wanted the match to fire their cannon.
More information was given about the anomaly in the system - I like that storyline the best.
Have been thinking during this book - what if people were given carte blanc in their sim worlds? I'd lik...more
Rodney Pittman
silly at times and exciting at others. the underlying story about whats really going on with the creators of Otherland and the truth about the Grail Brotherhood and The Circle keep me turning the pages with great interest.
finished today may 27 2009
good book! the team's willingness to work together as that will make the continuing story even better.
John Murphy
The sequel doesn't let up at all...I read in the notes before this one started and found out that the author wrote all four of the books in this series as one book! Williams said that the only reason the book wasn't published as one was the fact that it would have been sooo fucking long.
Andres
I really liked the first volume, which takes its time setting up the world, the characters, and the plot. This second volume is also engaging but... but the wheel-spinning feels more noticeable. The world building is interesting but it seems a bit much at times when all you want is the plot to move along. And stuff does happen, but at times the stuff outweighs the Stuff you want to get back to. I'm intrigued as to where the story will go next, and can feel the epic size of the story, but I'm jus...more
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River of Blue Fire (Otherland, #2)
River of Blue Fire (Otherland, #2)
Fluß aus blauem Feuer (Paperback)
Fluß aus blauem Feuer (Otherland, #2)
River of Blue Fire (Otherland, #2)

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Tad Williams has held more jobs than any sane person should admit to—singing in a band, selling shoes, managing a financial institution, throwing newspapers, and designing military manuals, to name just a few. He also hosted a syndicated radio show for ten years, worked in theater and television production, taught both grade-school and college classes, and worked in multimedia for a major computer...more
More about Tad Williams...
The Dragonbone Chair (Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, #1) Stone of Farewell (Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, #2) To Green Angel Tower (Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, #3) City of Golden Shadow (Otherland, #1) To Green Angel Tower, Part 2 (Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, #3; Part 2)

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“She had to find her own story, and she could make it whatever shape she thought best.” 16 people liked it
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