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City of Golden Shadow (Otherland #1)

3.86 of 5 stars 3.86 · rating details · 12,050 ratings · 409 reviews

The first volume in this story takes readers to the near-future, when a global conspiracy threatens to sacrifice the Earth for the promise of a far more exclusive place--Otherland, a universe where any fantasy can be made real.

When Renie Sulaweyo's younger brother, Stephen, returns from the Net after visiting Mister J's, a virtual reality equivalent of the Hellfire Club,...more

Mass Market Paperback, 780 pages

Published January 1st 1998 by DAW Books (first published 1996)

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Jun 11, 2010 Architeuthis rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-that-speculates

Robert Jordan level wordulency,
plus SF internet idea outdated before its publication date,
minus appealing writing style,
divided by Michael Springer's mid-semester attention span,
times 90-bunjillion pages in four volumes,
equals "FUCK YOU, TAD WILLIAMS, YOU GO TO HELL! YOU GO TO HELL AND YOU DIE! YOU FUCKIN' DIE! WHAT THE FUCK!" *Throws book against the wall, then walks over and urinates on it*

(Okay, so I actually just took it back to Half Price Books. Whatever.)

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Jun 21, 2012 Alexandra rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: belletristik, science-fiction, usa

Alle begeisterten Rezensionen stimmen: Dieses SF-Epos, und so kann man es wirklich nennen mit seinen 1000 Seiten a 4 Bände ist atemberaubend und eine Achterbahnfahrt der Fantasie.

Perfekt ist eine zukünftige eigentlich nicht mehr ferne Welt konzipiert, in der sich die Menschen sowohl im Realen Leben RL als auch in virtuellen Realitäten VR bewegen. Mit einer Schnittstelle am Kopf als User Interface, kann man in den künstlichen Welten auch fühlen, riechen schmecken und manche finden auch nicht mehr...more Alle begeisterten Rezensionen stimmen: Dieses SF-Epos, und so kann man es wirklich nennen mit seinen 1000 Seiten a 4 Bände ist atemberaubend und eine Achterbahnfahrt der Fantasie.

Perfekt ist eine zukünftige eigentlich nicht mehr ferne Welt konzipiert, in der sich die Menschen sowohl im Realen Leben RL als auch in virtuellen Realitäten VR bewegen. Mit einer Schnittstelle am Kopf als User Interface, kann man in den künstlichen Welten auch fühlen, riechen schmecken und manche finden auch nicht mehr heraus. Die Universitätsassistentin Rennie möchte klären, warum ihr Bruder im Anschluss an eine Netzsitzung ins Wachkoma gefallen ist. Quer durch viele wunderbar konzipierten Netzwelten versucht Rennie zu eruieren, was ihrem Bruder passiert ist und deckt dabei ein unglaubliches Komplott auf.

Vom Stil her ist dieser SF-Krimi in mehreren losen Erzählsträngen konzipiert, die erst am Ende der Geschichte zusammengefügt werden. Genauso wie die Hauptprotagonistin schwebt der Leser bis zum Ende total im Ungewissen und vermutet bzw. spekuliert total wild drauflos wie sich die realen und virtuellen Identitäten und Handlungen in das gesamte Verschwörungsgebäude einfügen - sehr spannend.
Am Ende werden zwar die virtuellen Identitäten und ihre Funktionen einigermaßen gelüftet - die Aufdeckung der Verschwörung wird aber auf die anderen Bände verschoben. Dies ist auch der Grund, warum ich einen Stern abgezogen habe, das ist mir ein bisschen zuviel Cliffhanger und die Geschichte in sich zu wenig abgeschlossen. Die Zeiten als ich 4000 Seiten fast in einem Rutsch und mit wenig Schlaf durchlesen konnte, sind bei mir auch schon vorbei ;-)

Neben der überbordenden wunderbaren kreativen Fantasie hat mir in diesem Buch am besten eine Szene gefallen, die beschreibt, in welcher Art ein Schöpfer seine virtuellen Welt kreiert. Das war die beste Beschreibung von Gott, die ich jemals gelesen habe.

Fazit Sprache, Geschichte, Fantasie, Figurentwicklung real und virtuell traumhaft, für mich vielleicht ein bisschen zu breit angelegt - aber wer es episch mag, wird bei Otherland kaum einen Kritikpunkt finden. (less)

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Apr 22, 2012 Matt Standley rated it 3 of 5 stars

I think Renie's quote from the middle of the book sums up my feelings entirely:

"...We still don't have any answers or any way to bring my brother back, and the search just seems to get more complicated and more vague. If this were a detective story, you'd have a body and some bloodstains and footprints in the garden - it's definitely a murder, and you've definitely got clues. But all we have here are things that seem a little strange, bits of information that might mean something. The more I thi...more

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Aug 26, 2011 Derrick rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, scifi, re-read, favorites, 2001

Having read this series as it came out back in the 90's, I wanted to go back and re-read to see how this held up, because I remember being blown away the first time through.

I was not blown away this time. However, that isn't a bad thing. This time I was able to consider smaller things than the "coolness" factor of an online world, which was about to be the rage when this was written.

The characters were real. Enough so that I felt like slapping Renie multiple times for putting up with so much cra...more

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Mar 12, 2008 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, top-shelf

Let me just start by saying this: the first time I finished this series, I immediately went back and started reading it again. I can't think of any other series that I've done that with.

This is one of Tad Williams' "economy-sized manuscripts," similar to his fantasy classic Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. Similar in size and scope, anyway - four giant tomes chock full of all things awesome. It's a series of grand scope, amazing scale and great imagination, well worthy of your time. Seriously, top-shel...more Let me just start by saying this: the first time I finished this series, I immediately went back and started reading it again. I can't think of any other series that I've done that with.

This is one of Tad Williams' "economy-sized manuscripts," similar to his fantasy classic Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. Similar in size and scope, anyway - four giant tomes chock full of all things awesome. It's a series of grand scope, amazing scale and great imagination, well worthy of your time. Seriously, top-shelf stuff here, people.

It begins with the children in a near-future world. Renie Sulaweyo, a teacher in South Africa, has a brother in the hospital. He, like many other children around the world, has gone into an inexplicable coma, the causes of which defy medical science. The only clue she has is that the outbreaks of these comas coincide with the availability of access to the Net - a virtual reality internet that is what Second Life dreams of becoming. Here, depending on your equipment, you can live in a virtual world that is more vibrant and exciting than anything the real world can offer. And you can do it in full sense-surround 3D.

Renie's brother, Stephen, engaged in the usual mischief that any kid with access to his own virtual universe might do, and finally got caught. Something shut him down, and Renie was determined to find out. With the assistance of her student, a Bushman named !Xabbu, Renie uncovers an amazing virtual world, something that puts the best virtual reality to shame. It is the Otherland, a playground for the obscenely wealthy. And it may hold the secret to what has afflicted her brother.

That's the short version. There's a ton of other storylines going on in there as well. There's young Orlando Gardiner, who compensates for a crippling illness by being the baddest barbarian on the net. There's little Christabel Sorenson, upon whose earnest desire to help the funny-looking Mister Sellars the entire future of the Otherland rests. There's the aptly-named Dread, an assassin extraordinare whose strange "twist" gives him an edge in all things electronic. And, of course, there is Paul Jonas, a man trapped in an imaginary world, whose escape threatens the greatest dreams of the richest men the world has ever known.

All of this, as the series title suggests, centers on the Otherland project, a virtual reality of monumental proportions. It's a world that is more real than the real world is, a world of digitally-created, but very deadly, dangers. The slightest misstep could spell disaster.

And just FYI, Otherland predates The Matrix by three years and, kung-fu aside, is a much better story.

The really fun part is re-discovering things in this series. There are some things I remember very clearly, but other little details that pop up and make me think, "Oh yeah, I forgot all about that." There's just so much stuff crammed into this series that even after two back-to-back readings, I still let details slip away.

So, make a sandwich and find a comfortable place to sit. This'll take a while, but I guarantee - it'll be worth it.(less)

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Jun 07, 2007 Meg rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: WoW players

I've read lots of Williams before and thought he was excellent, though I remember specifically avoiding this one because it's sci-fi, not fantasy. I was quite disappointed when it came out, actually, that he switched genres like that when I'd eagerly awaited new installments of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn before this came out.

It's good that I waited. It came out in 1996, in the very early days of the WWW and, I belive, very few MMORPGs beyond MUDDs. (Heh...lots of acronyms there). But about 75% of...more

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Feb 04, 2012 Anne Toronto1 rated it 1 of 5 stars

I got to p76. "Otherland" by Tad Williams starts with assorted quilt squares I didn't have the patience to wait for assembly. WW1 mud-soaked Paul explodes, climbs a cloud high tree-stem to a trapped bird-woman, chased by a Giant to awaken back in the trenches. South African college tutor Renie guides bushman !Xabbu through basic virtual reality scenarios, rescues her 11-year old brother from a dangerous sim club, then loses him to a coma, three weeks after her drunk father kicks the boy out to l...more

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Mar 13, 2009 Amanda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Tad Williams is really known as a fantasy writer, but this sci-fi series was quite interesting. There are four books in this series and they're pretty mammoth in size, but definitely an interesting read. Lots of virtual reality/parallel world kind of stuff, with some Egyptian mythology thrown in the mix.

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Jan 25, 2009 Karen rated it 3 of 5 stars

I don't know what to think of this book. I liked it, but I was confused, so I looked up some reviews on Amazon, and then decided that I didn't like it based on what people said, but then I kept reading, and then I liked it a lot and made my peace with it being just the first part of a four-book series, and then I was totally into it, and then they spent too much time on the villains and their complicated pseudo-Egyptian mythology simulation, and I am sick of completely evil antagonists who are c...more

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Jan 15, 2013 Shimon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sf

This review is for all four Otherland books, starting with 'City of Golden Shadow'. Mild spoilers to follow.

Instead of traditional fantasy, Tad Williams takes on near-future SF with this four book series exploring the limits of virtual reality. He follows an group of people around the globe who are in various ways involved in investigating a spate of video-game playing children falling into seemingly permanent comas. This ends up uncovering a conspiracy of international tycoons trying to achieve...more

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Nov 06, 2012 Holly Droske rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read Tad Williams MS&T fantasy series as a young teen, and me and my cronies all loved it. I was super psyched when this series came out, and bought all three books together (I didn't learn about it until an in-store appearance when the third book was released in hardback, thanks to living in the dark ages in Texarkana, TX with no internet at my ripe, young age). I remember reading this to within probably 50-100 pages of the end, then somehow, life got in the way. That was 14 years ago. I...more

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Oct 14, 2012 Sean O'Reilly rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: bookcrossing

I have read quite a few of Tad Williams books in the past so I eagerly snapped this up when I saw it on the library withdrawn books shelf.

The book is set in a superbly realised near future where the internet has developed around virtual reality. The narrative jumps between several different sets of characters which at first seem to have no connection with one another. Gradually though it emerges that they are all being drawn into the web of a conspiracy by the secretive Grail Brotherhood.

In pla...more

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May 25, 2012 William Parham rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Fans of Tolkien, Tad Williams, and early Greg Bear

Shelves: 2012, cyberpunk, fantasy, sci-fi

As I sat down in the darkened theater to watch M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable I experienced a moment of almost psychedelic dislocation as the film began. Without preamble of any kind, the words "There are 35 pages and 124 illustrations in the average comic book" appear on the screen. The screen is then quickly filled by several lines of similar comic book statistics. I didn't know what was going on. I felt almost light-headed at the shock. I wondered if I was in the wrong theater, seeing a mov...more As I sat down in the darkened theater to watch M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable I experienced a moment of almost psychedelic dislocation as the film began. Without preamble of any kind, the words "There are 35 pages and 124 illustrations in the average comic book" appear on the screen. The screen is then quickly filled by several lines of similar comic book statistics. I didn't know what was going on. I felt almost light-headed at the shock. I wondered if I was in the wrong theater, seeing a movie that I hadn't intended to. The sound of a baby crying came from the screen and we are suddenly in a Philadelphia department store in 1961. None of this was in the trailer. Almost four minutes pass before the opening titles begin and the word "UNBREAKABLE" finally appears on screen. 
As I began to read the first page of Tad Williams' Otherland Volume 1: City Of Golden Shadow I had the same kind of sensations that I had experienced while watching Unbreakable. I read the back cover over and over as I worked my way through the first chapter of the book, all the time wondering if I was reading the right book. I have read very little Tad Williams, and what little of his work I have read has been Fantasy of the typical overwrought post-Tolkien sort. Add to that the way that Sci-Fi and Fantasy are shelved in bookstores and the books bright yellow Michael Whelan cover, I had assumed for years that this was a fantasy series. What else could the "City of Golden Shadow" be, if not some fantastical place that a group of adventurers who met in a tavern on a moonless fog shrouded night would have to slog through monsters and dungeons collecting plot coupons to reach. So imagine my surprise as the opening pages start out in the middle of the hell that was trench warfare during World War I.
The book opens with Paul Jonas in the middle of battle on the Western Front. He is injured and has a dream that he is climbing an immense plant, like in Jack and the Beanstalk, all the way up past the clouds to a giant's castle. There he meets a woman who has the wings of a bird. She gives Paul a feather (our first plot coupon!) and he awakes to find that he is back on the Western Front with his brothers in arms, Finch and Mullet. But they seem strange and Paul begins to mistrust them. As he notices that the feather that the bird woman gave him is actually in his hand, Paul deserts the war effort and flees. Then Otherland drops us into late 21st century Durban where we meet Renie Sulaweyo, a university teacher and VR programmer and her student ,!Xabbu a Kalahari Bushman who has come to the city to learn about Virtual Reality systems for very personal reasons.
At this point in the novel, I realized that I was not reading a tacky Fantasy novel, but rather (considering that this first volume of the Otherland tetralogy was published in 1996) a surprisingly forward thinking bit of Sci-Fi. At first I was pleased with the knowledge that I wasn't going to be stuck in the middle of a plodding swords and sorcery series, that I was going to get to see a bit of the author's views on the future of the Internet and digital media culture from a period that the WWW was becoming a thing used by average people but still undergoing massive changes on a nearly daily level. But this is also the point in the novel that problems start to show up. We are introduced to Orlando Gardiner and his friend Sam Fredericks who play a fully immersive MMORPG called The Middle Kingdom, a young girls named Christabel Sorensen who spends time sneaking out of her house to hang out with a deformed old man named Mr. Sellars whom her military security officer father is charged with keeping under house arrest, some child hackers called the Wicked Tribe, a blind French computer expert named Martine, and a mass-murdering half-Aboriginal Australian assassin name Dread who works for the oldest man in the world, Felix Jongleur who was a boy during WWI.
There are so many characters that have so many side plots going that it becomes difficult to care about what any of them are doing. Tad Williams has several of his characters mention the Lord of the Rings, and you quickly get the feeling that the authors main goal is to out type Tolkien rather than write a better book. The labyrinth of interwoven plots and subplots leave one feeling as if they are being made to flip pages for the mere purpose of making this story seem to be an epic along the lines of Lord of the Rings or the Dark Tower. The reader is also given very little opportunity to decide whether they want to root for a certain character or not. Most of the players are given a label of "good" or "evil" very early on in their introduction. That is not to say that the characters are two-dimensional. But I also couldn't call them fully formed either. Two extend the metaphor, let's say that the vast majority of characters come off as 2.5D isometric projections. But at least they live in a fully realized environment.
The world that Tad Williams has created is magnificent. It feels real, immersive and plausible. He builds a world that is modern and vibrant and extremely multicultural. No monolithic future of sandy-haired Anglos in pleat free polyester jumpsuits are to be had in the Otherworld universe. Here it is Bushmen and Black South Africans and South East Asians and Aboriginals and Latinos. There are hardly any characters on hand with a low melanin count. Tad Williams has done an impressive amount of research into the different cultures that he is writing about. He peppers the book with myth and story from the cultural background of the people that he is writing about. His 21st century Terra is an impressive literary feat. He has written into existence a world that is as diverse and messy as the real world, a world that is as fast paced and over saturated with media as ours. His musings on the future of the Net are a bit less convincing, though.
The Virtual Reality worlds that Tad Williams creates in Otherland mostly seem to come off as cheats. His Neverwinter Nights MMORPG knock-off, The Middle Country is clearly Tolkiens Middle Earth. But as it is supposed to be an online role playing game, I can let that slide. If it wasn't a Middle Earth knock-off, it wouldn't be anything like a real swords and sorcery MMORPG. Where the cheat comes in, is that as a Fantasy writer, the author has found a way to write hundreds of pages of Fantasy between the covers of what is supposed to be a Hard Science Fiction novel. The other lands (see what I did there?) that Williams creates to move the action along are mostly cheats as well. Spins on "Through the Looking Glass" and "War of the Worlds". The most interesting virtual world that is created has to be abandoned almost immediately after it is found. In another place, Paul Jonas finds himself face to face with Neanderthal man in the frozen wastes of an Ice Age earth, only to find out that the novel is finally over.
After nearly a thousand pages of questing for plot coupons and stories, the book just ends. It is not just a cliff-hanger, it is as if the book just stops in mid-sentence. It's a frustrating moment. You realize that you have just consumed over a thousand pages of one of the most believable and well crafted science fiction worlds that you have ever come across, and then it all just fades away. You get no answers to any questions. You get no resolution or satisfactory conclusion to any of the events. Now as this is part one of a four-part epic, I expected this to some extent. But the abruptness of the ending still managed to surprise me. I shut the book with a realization that after a thousand pages of well crafted prose, I still had absolutely no idea what was going on. I knew what certain people where doing, but I definitely didn't always know why they were doing it. Even after chalking some of the looser threads up to deep foreshadowing, I ended the book in much the same fashion as I began it. Very confused. 
Not that this confusion really stopped me from enjoying Otherland. I have to reiterate how impressive Tad Williams' world building is. It is one of the few truly believable fictional worlds of the last twenty years. If William Gibson invented Cyberspace, Tad Williams is the person who saw net culture and made the correct extrapolations and in 1996 built his fictional network as a pretty good simulacrum of what online culture looks like in 2012. The only thing that we're missing in the real world is fully immersive VR, and Tad Williams was smart enough to set his story late in the twenty-second century to allow for this to develop. But as much as he was telling me about the future back in 1996 when Otherland Volume 1 was written, I'd have been just a bit happier if he would've told me more about what was happening in the universe of his book.(less)

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May 19, 2012 Ranger rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

I'll use this to review the entire series rather than by single books. I haven't read any other of Tad William's other Fantasy series. He has written a lot and they're all really massive scale epics. Otherland boarders on 3,000+ pages over it's 4 book span and it took me a great deal of time to read, spanning over three continents but I eventually got to the end and thoroughly enjoyed it all. The book tethers Sci-Fi and Fantasy nicely, the Sci-Fi aspect is firmly embedded within the 'Cyber World...more

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Mar 29, 2012 Gaye rated it 5 of 5 stars

Paul Jonas is lying in the middle of a muddy battlefield at night. It's 1918. All night long a man persistently wails and moans in pain and it's driving Paul crazy. When daylight breaks and the gunfire ceases, Paul climbs out of the trench and staggers toward the man, intent on killing him and putting them both out of misery. But just as he reaches the man, a shell flies through the air and sends Paul into an entirely different world where a monstrous tree reaches into the clouds. He begins to...more

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Jan 12, 2012 Tanner rated it 4 of 5 stars

Before there was the Matrix, there was Tad Williams' "Otherland: City of Golden Shadow." Written in 1996, Otherland is a mixture of cyberpunk, fantasy, cultural discovery, and mythic lore. While the Wachowski brothers fell into more of a religious/spiritual individualistic awakening type plot line, Williams picked a straightforward group adventure and rescue the world/coma kids. The story is filled with many characters in a variety of settings and its amazing how Williams is able to manage so ma...more

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Jan 05, 2012 Ricky Ganci rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book, and indeed, this series, is huge. There are a lot of words in Tad Williams’ series, and most of them are pretty interesting. It took a while—a long while—for me to get interested in this novel, and if it were not for the repeated encouragement and assurances about the series’ quality, I wouldn’t have made it past the first part break. I don’t have a favorite character yet, but I do really like !Xabbu and Fredricks, because they’re the only real dynamic characters in the story so far....more

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Apr 03, 2011 Jeffery Moulton rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: epic-fantasy, science-fiction

I picked this book up on a whim, not realizing that it was just the beginning of four very long books with a myriad of characters and challenges. Fortunately, the book and the series are both amazing.

The Otherland series takes place in the near future where the Internet has become fully interactive with rich people literally able to plug themselves into the net and others using less effective virtual reality equipment. In this world, a varied group of people stumble upon a secret plot put in mot...more

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Feb 27, 2011 Aleah rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

In the first installment of Tad Williams "Otherworld" series the reader is introduced to a future where the net and virtual reality are readily available to anyone with enough credits. A virtual reality professor at a South African University, Renie Sulaweyo, becomes good friends with her student, !Xabbu, one of the last remaining African Bushmen. Renie and !Xabbu become entangled in a conspiracy involving the most powerful and dangerous men in the world. The scope of what needs to be done is mo...more

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Sep 06, 2010 Paul rated it 5 of 5 stars

(Whole story - All four volumes)This is, without a doubt, the best series novel I have ever read. Multiple plot lines in a fantastic world that slowly twist and turn until they eventually merge. A simple beginning, children falling into comas for no apparent reason, leads to an epic quest typical of fantasy but applied to science fiction, the historical novel, Victorian children's literature, detective fiction, myth and much, much more. A large cast of unforgettable characters, written beautiful...more

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Jul 15, 2010 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

I just finished the second book in this series and thusfar it seems well put-together in many aspects, carefully written, and creative in ways that adult books don't usually strive to be.

After reading the first volume, I was a bit put off. 800 pages, and not a single story arc is anywhere near completion? Really? The author actually apologized for this in an introduction to the second volume, saying that the story was just too long to avoid leaving cliffhangers between books. I don't really see...more

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Jul 11, 2010 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, science-fiction, top-shelf

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Feb 01, 2010 Stacey rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review is for book 1 of the Otherland series.

If possible I would have given this book 4.5 stars. My only reason for not giving it 5 stars was because of its length. I do not want this to be a deterrent, because I highly recommend this book. However, when you know you have 3 other books to read in order to complete the series, it gets to be a bit overwhelming.

Tad Williams is incredibly talented at description among other skills he utilized to create this story. For some I can see how this co...more This review is for book 1 of the Otherland series.

If possible I would have given this book 4.5 stars. My only reason for not giving it 5 stars was because of its length. I do not want this to be a deterrent, because I highly recommend this book. However, when you know you have 3 other books to read in order to complete the series, it gets to be a bit overwhelming.

Tad Williams is incredibly talented at description among other skills he utilized to create this story. For some I can see how this could be a negative. I have heard many different complaints that Mr. Williams was being paid by the word. Although, you have to understand that this book is science fiction and most of the scenes are imaginary. How is the reader going to truly visualize a completely foreign world if the author does not paint a picture in our heads?

I am a firm believer that in Sci-Fi/ Fantasy novels, the places that the story unfolds is as important as the characters.

Anyway, I really thought this book was amazing. There is a lot happening and there are several different characters. I did not have any trouble keeping everything/everyone straight. I really liked the way each chapter switched amongst the different characters. I think it takes some of the tedium out of such a large book, when you get a break from the main plot to explore the characters in a subplot.

Overall I would say that I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys epic sci-fi or fantasy series. Only because I feel that a lot of time will have to be dedicated to this series. Anyone who loves original storylines with a wide range of different characters I think would find this book entertaining as long as they have been warned that it is only book one of a four book series!!

I thought I should add a synopsis since the one in the description is so vague…

This book is the first in a series that is often thought of as four parts of one story. In this first installment you meet Renie Sulaweyo, a university professor at a college that specializes in technology. When her much younger brother falls into a mysterious coma, she and her student turned friend !Xabbu begin to investigate. They soon find that several other children are suffering from the same inexplicable illness and the one thing they all have in common is their use of the net. As Renie and !Xabbu dig deeper into this conspiracy, they soon realize that the people responsible will stop at nothing to keep their secret.
(less)

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Jul 06, 2009 Nick Leshi rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. "We tell lies when we are afraid... afraid of what we don't know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger." -- Tad Williams

One of my favorite modern speculative fiction writers is Tad Williams. Best known for his groundbreaking fantasy series Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, I first discovered his writing by reading his equally impressive science fiction series Otherland.

I'm a big fan of myths and...more "We tell lies when we are afraid... afraid of what we don't know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger." -- Tad Williams

One of my favorite modern speculative fiction writers is Tad Williams. Best known for his groundbreaking fantasy series Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, I first discovered his writing by reading his equally impressive science fiction series Otherland.

I'm a big fan of myths and fairytales, and through his Otherland saga, Williams was able to play with mythic elements from a broad range of worlds. The premise, in which children become comatose after exploring a dangerous virtual reality and the protagonist Rene Sulaweyo starts a quest to find the cause, allows Williams to throw his characters in any environment, any scene, any situation that his imagination can conjure up.

Many of those environments are inspired by classic literary works by H.G. Wells, L. Frank Baum, Lewis Carroll, and others. Williams then takes those familiar motifs from Wonderland, Oz, Homer's Odyssey in Ancient Greece, and more, and twists them into something fresh and unpredictable.

The story begins in City of Golden Shadow as we're introduced to the diverse characters, (my favorites include Renie, her dad Long Joseph, and !Xabbu) who begin their journey to unravel the mystery. It continues in River of Blue Fire as the characters look for answers and are thrust from one outlandish reality to the next, each with its own unique dangers...and clues. In the third book, Mountain of Black Glass, the conspiracy starts to get fleshed out more as we learn more about Felix Jongleur and the Grail Brotherhood who created this cyber realm in an attempt to achieve eternal life. The series concludes with Sea of Silver Light as all the characters and subplots merge in an epic and satisfying climax.

The characters are memorable, from Orlando Gardiner, the young, physically challenged boy who becomes a warrior in the Otherland, to the psychopathic assassin who calls himself Dread. Even when Tad Williams' plot seems to be growing out of control, as many serial fantasies seem to do, he manages to rein it back in.

I'm excited to hear that Otherland will be made into a game (a "Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game" to be precise). Tad Williams is keeping busy with another Shadowmarch novel coming out and a new book co-written with Deborah Beale titled The Dragons of Ordinary Farm. You can also check out some of his earlier tales, like Tailchaser's Song and Caliban's Hour. I think you won't be disappointed.(less)

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Sep 12, 2012 Cyan rated it 5 of 5 stars

I would give this book five stars simply based on the cover art! Michael Whelan's artwork is absolutely breathtaking. Whelan uses such a tight color pallet and yet manages to create SO much breadth and depth. His artistic vision and masterful ability drew me in before I even opened the book.

That said, yes, I know that you should not "judge a book by it's cover." In THIS case, you can! The cover is awesome and so is the book! Author Tad Williams, having completed his epic fantasy series "Memory,...more

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Dec 30, 2009 Sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars

This series was really good, but like all Tad Williams books it took a little too long to get to the meat of the story. He is a master of detail, and especially in a series where every other chapter is a whole new world that can take a while.

Still, it is a fantastic series, great plot, great detail, I would say "visually stunning" but of course it's a book. But it felt that way, so clear were his descriptions. I gave it 3 stars because for me it was a bit too long, and although I have read it 3...more

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Aug 20, 2010 Made DNA rated it 5 of 5 stars

Otherland, is the story of several key players based in different parts of the world, who race to understand the virtual reality system--and the people who rule it--that has incorporated itself into the world at large, including the third-world: a woman consumed in finding a cure for her brother within the VR, a man trapped within a separate version of the realm seeking a way out, an aboriginal man on a quest, a wheel-chair confined man under house arrest, and others. The VR world is a vast, unl...more

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Feb 22, 2012 Jason rated it 2 of 5 stars

I was really excited to be sucked away into a hefty series. I was vastly disappointed. This just moves toooooooo slooooow. Maybe it's the fact a virtual world doesn't seem so imaginative as it would have when this book came out, but I've read other comparable books in the last 5-10 years that remain gripping even though their future has started to become reality. Maybe I will try this again in the future, but I doubt it. I loved the aboriginal character and I wanted the real action to get going...more

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Jan 07, 2010 Andres rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Reading this on the recommendation of my brother, I dove into this knowing it was epic in scope and heavy in weight. This first of four volumes is interesting and exciting if sometimes a little protracted. It takes its time introducing characters and slowly peels back layers of the plot. I was in the mood for a long haul adventure so I didn't mind it one bit, but it does hit bumps here and there that are mostly due to this being written just before games like EverQuest and Second Life came into...more

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Apr 10, 2011 Ala rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This story, or the part contained within this first book, is long.

Really, really long.

Nuclear Winter long.

It's not as though it's the longest book I've ever read, either. I've read far weightier tomes in my time, but this is the first one in this size range that I've come across in a long while where I've actually felt the length of each sentence, paragraph, page and chapter.

And it's not because it's actually all that long, really. It comes in at less than a thousand pages. A runt, when compared...more

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About Tad Williams

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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Books by 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)

To Green Angel Tower, Part 2 (Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, #3; Part 2)

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Quotes from City of Golden Shadow

“He had once thought it was strange to have a friend you'd never met. Now it was even stranger, losing a friend you'd never really had” — 16 people liked it

“...Coca-Cola and fries, the wafer and wine of the Western religion of commerce.” — 10 people liked it

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City of Golden Shadow (Otherland #1)

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