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214th out of 784 books
—
613 voters
Mountain of Black Glass (Otherland #3)
by
Tad Williams
Mountain of Black Glass is the third volume of Tad Williams' highly acclaimed four-book series, Otherland. A truly unique reading experience combining elements of science fiction, fantasy, and techno-thriller, it is a rich epic tale in which virtual reality could prove the key to a whole new universe of possibilities for the entire human race--or become the exclusive domai...more
Mass Market Paperback, 749 pages
Published
September 12th 2000
by Daw Books
(first published January 1st 1999)
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Even though it took me a lot longer to read this one, I think I liked it better than the second volume, chiefly because stuff happened. Through the middle of the book, the narrative remained plodding, the development of each random simworld being front and center of this story, but the end was exciting and the different pieces of the story began to fit together. Paul Jonas finally hooked up with Renie and !Xabbu, et al., who were reunited with Orlando and Fredericks, and we know a little bit mor...more
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In "Mountain of Black Glass," book three in Tad Williams' "Otherland" tetrology, the sci-fi saga continues.
An overly simplified summation of a very complicated plot:
Children around the world are being lost to unexplained comas, including Renie Sulaweyo's baby brother, Stephen. Researching Stephen's condition leads Renie to the Otherland, a massively complex virtual reality network. Its architects? A secretive group who refer to themselves as the Grail Brotherhood. In an attempt to save Stephen,...more
An overly simplified summation of a very complicated plot:
Children around the world are being lost to unexplained comas, including Renie Sulaweyo's baby brother, Stephen. Researching Stephen's condition leads Renie to the Otherland, a massively complex virtual reality network. Its architects? A secretive group who refer to themselves as the Grail Brotherhood. In an attempt to save Stephen,...more
Adventure, fantasy, sci-fi and total immersability! Buy it!!: Having read the authors other great works, I picked up the first volume in this series, with great expectations. It was ok, not up to the standards of some of his other stuff, but worth getting the next installment. Now I was hooked, the storyline is gripping, the characters are fantastic, particularly Orlando and Fredericks, you really begin to empathise with them. I'm also remotely interested in what happens to Rennie and !xabbu, (d...more
Volume #3 of the Otherland series, which is not so much four separate books, but one 2800 page book split into four volumes.
I read the first two books a few years back, but luckily there is a great synopsis of the two preceding books at the beginning. Overall, I enjoyed reading this as the whole virtual reality storyline is very detailed, varied and well thought out. (It's a typical Tad Williams book.) If you have read through the first two books then you are probably sucked into the story and...more
I read the first two books a few years back, but luckily there is a great synopsis of the two preceding books at the beginning. Overall, I enjoyed reading this as the whole virtual reality storyline is very detailed, varied and well thought out. (It's a typical Tad Williams book.) If you have read through the first two books then you are probably sucked into the story and...more
Now that I'm done with this volume, I can look back in awe at how many pages I've turned to get to this point... and yet I can't honestly say it should have taken this long. I can still remember the sequence of the plot so far but the sheer amount of words seems too many for the amount of forward movement in the story. Everything is epic, for sure, but it cooled my enthusiasm that diving into new worlds would again cause a slowdown in the narrative momentum, with new information or revelations s...more
Sep 22, 2009
Jeremy Hot Pants
is currently reading it
Tad Williams has a gift for the written word. Or, more accurately, a gift for about five qudrazillion of them because he writes in The. Most. Dense. Fucking. Prose. Ever. (And uses far too few clever literary devices such as the preceding one.) Which is a shame, really, because the story is pretty captivating and has proven to be somewhat prescient. But god to the damn, yo, my cat Nelly has a better chance of penning the next great Broadway musical than the average reader has of slogging through...more
Otherland is a vast network of interconnected simworlds, or virtual reality settings. The settings are grandiose enough for me to rank it really high on my all time favorites. One simworld has an endless city of enormous mansions with spires shooting to the sky. Others are based on ancient history & mythology- like Egypt and the Homeric Epics. The one the really rattled my brain was the Black Mountain where the climax takes place, when the “reality” of the entire network starts to really buc...more
Jul 18, 2010
Chris
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
science-fiction,
top-shelf
This is easily my favorite book in the series, short though the series may be.
Otherland is a strange story, really - it's like a hybrid science fiction/fantasy tale in that you can easily forget which genre you're in. It's clearly science fiction, in that the whole thing is taking place in a massive computer simulation, but on the other hand, it owes a lot to fantasy - especially the world-crossing aspects of it.
Our Otherland heroes have been trapped there for some time now, running through the...more
Otherland is a strange story, really - it's like a hybrid science fiction/fantasy tale in that you can easily forget which genre you're in. It's clearly science fiction, in that the whole thing is taking place in a massive computer simulation, but on the other hand, it owes a lot to fantasy - especially the world-crossing aspects of it.
Our Otherland heroes have been trapped there for some time now, running through the...more
This is my favorite of the Otherland volumes so far. There's less hesitance in the story telling, and now that all the characters have been (finally) introduced and set in motion, this volume moves forward at a much better pace than the last two. Also, there was an added sense of connection to this piece of the story for me because of so many references I recognize from Homer's classics.
This is the 3rd book of a 4 book series. I finished book 2 about 1 1/2 years ago. That book wandered around aimlessly for several hundred pages without any clear advance of the plot. I decided I didn't want to waste my time on the rest of the series. I found myself thinking of the charactors and the story line several times over the last year and a half. I finally decided to read the second book despite my misgivings. I'm glad I did. "Mountain of Black Glass" is a much better book than the secon...more
So far this is the best book in the series. Now I will see what is in store for the characters in the fourth and final book.
Things are finally happening. The pace of the story is picking up. Things feel like they are drawing to a conclusion. The characters are developed more than in either of the previous two books. If I had more time to read I would not have put this book down. The story is finaly heading in a direction and you want to follow it and see where it leads. Overall a pretty good bo...more
Things are finally happening. The pace of the story is picking up. Things feel like they are drawing to a conclusion. The characters are developed more than in either of the previous two books. If I had more time to read I would not have put this book down. The story is finaly heading in a direction and you want to follow it and see where it leads. Overall a pretty good bo...more
Another Otherland novel, another set of fascinating worlds to explore. That pretty much sums up much of this book - while certainly interesting, even ingenious in places in the world building (I loved all the references in the ancient greek story), this novel barely moves the main plot along. As in the previous books, all questions remain unanswered and few new ones are actually asked in this novel. The characters remain well drawn and show much depth despite little development. We shall see whe...more
The third installment in the Otherland series adds a mountain of information to the already complicated story. The main characters all continue to develop further into themselves, with some becoming a little too mushy towards each other. Dread continues to live up to his name, delighting in the pain and suffering he inflicts on others. While Rennie and Martine flip from heros to mindless victims several times throughout the book. Really enjoyed the visits in the recent similations. I think I enj...more
Der Teil ist dezent besser als der letzte, trotzdem schwächelt Williams weiter. Zu viele Welten, welche die Geschichte nicht wirklich voranbringen.
Der Cliffhanger am Ende animiert dennoch zum weiterlesen... mist, muss ich den letzten Teil also auch noch lesen :/
Der Cliffhanger am Ende animiert dennoch zum weiterlesen... mist, muss ich den letzten Teil also auch noch lesen :/
1,800 pages into William's 4,000 page sci-fi virtual reality epic, I had to make a choice - Did nearly two-thousand pages of invested time mean I should finish the series, or did the fact that I was growing bored and I could devote 2,200 pages of my life to more worthwhile literature mean I should just cut my losses. I chose the latter. Even though the "main" plot was getting more and more interesting, it was being spread out further and further apart, as more and more of the books were being de...more
I have no problem with multivolume doorstop epics; however Williams doesn't know where he's going and it shows. Characters stumble aimlessly through worlds, Williams kills off the metaphysical side of the story, and substitutes imagery for substance.
1 like · like · see review
Tad Williams creates some bizzare words, both beatuful and horrifying, and I took particular joy in exploring each new setting that the characters came upon. This series is a testiment to the limitless possibilities that lie within the human imagination!
For me this is where the quartet reached its climax. The Black Mountain (depicted evocatively in the artwork) looms throughout as a mysterious goal, the intrigue of what may lie there keeping you turning pages through brilliant story-telling.
Ahhhhhh....the deep sigh that comes from plugging away at a series because you hope it will pay off. The pages start to weigh several pounds each and the effort required to keep turning them becomes a force of will.
I'd love this book more if I chose a better time of day to read it.... when I'm not liable to fall asleep. :-/ Excellent book nonetheless. Can't wait to finish this series and move onto Tad Williams' Shadowmarch Series.
There's nothing worse about this than any of the other books in this series, but after a while they get so same-y that I've never managed to actually finish book 3. Book 4 remains wholly untapped for me.
The series really slowed down for me here and thus I didn't finish the fourth book. It always makes me sad to not finish a series but when it doesn't inspire me to finish it, then it may not deserve attention.
This is one of the 3 books that make up the Otherland series. Absolutly great reading. I loved this book and the whole series. I really got caught up in it.
Ein erschreckend schlechtes Buch. An vielen Stellen konnte ich mich nur durch 'Querlesen' motivieren, da ich den vierten Teil schon gekauft habe.
Whew! Williams had worn me down with so many words. # 3 moves faster and gives more character info, which is much needed if you've gotten this far.
I am really enjoying these novel. This is the 3rd of 4. This is a fantasy/sf novel that grabed me and would not let go. The books are very long, so be prepared for some time consuming reading with these books.
My favorite of the series so far. Ratchets up the tension, answers some longstanding questions, presents new ones. One more to go, but I'm going to take a break and read a few other books first so I can come back to the series with a fresh mind.
I really enjoyed these books, I got lost in the otherworld and found the descriptive narrative and details amazing.
Tad Williams is really wearing me down. I'm not a very slow reader, but it took me most of the summer to read this 700+ page virtual reality monster. It wouldn't be so bad but this is Volume 3. The last volume #4 is over 1000 pages long. The writing is OK, the concept is amazing, but the scope is just way too big (in my opinion.) Why tell a good story in 4000 pages when you could probably do it in 3000 or even in 2000?
And this is coming from a person who has read LOTR many, many times and enjoy...more
And this is coming from a person who has read LOTR many, many times and enjoy...more
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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
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“Every man is the hero of his own song.”
—
6 people liked it
“Our lives aren't even about doing real things most of the time. We think and talk about people we've never met, pretend to visit places we've never actually been, to discuss things that are just names as though they were as real as rocks or animals or something. Information Age. Hell it's the Imagination Age. We're living in our own minds.
No, she decided as the plane began its steep descent, really we're living in other people's minds.”
—
3 people liked it
More quotes…
No, she decided as the plane began its steep descent, really we're living in other people's minds.”
Jul 20, 2012 10:49am