tad williams otherland city of golden shadow

#Tad williams otherland city of golden shadow series

#Tad williams otherland city of golden shadow series

Otherland is one of the best works of science fiction I’ve ever read.” ―Katharine Kerr, author of the Dragon Mage series In this intricate geography of the mind Williams tells a cracking good story, but even as the suspense builds, you come to realize that you’re seeing a strangely familiar world―ours as it might come to be. “This brilliantly crafted book delivers even more than its title promises: not one other land but many come to life here, each engrossing, glittering, and dangerous. A dazzling book.” ―Melanie Rawn, author of Dragon Prince “Irresistible characters, challenging ideas, an intricate, and startlingly possible plot― everything any reader of SF or fantasy could ask for in a novel, with gorgeous writing besides. Tolkien’.” ―Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods “ 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 (Nov.Now in trade paperback, the first book in the classic cyberpunk fantasy series Best of all, however, are Williams's well-drawn, sympathetic characters, including Renie and her family, her student !Xabbu, the mysterious invalid Mister Sellars and a host of other folk, all of whom hope to solve the mystery of the terrifying VR environment called Otherland. His version of the Net, although obviously indebted to Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and other novels, is detailed and fascinating. His 21st-century South Africa, where blacks run the government and pursue careers but where whites control most economic power, rings true. In the first book in what is projected to be, in effect, a single, enormous four-volume novel, Williams (Memory, Sorrow and Thorn) proves himself as adept at writing science fiction as he is at writing fantasy. It's clear that Renie has angered someone with almost unlimited power, but she remains determined to save her brother. Then her apartment is fire-bombed, she loses her job and another professor whom she has recruited to help her decipher the mystery is murdered. After her adventure, she discovers that someone has downloaded into her computer the impossibly complex image of a fantastic golden city. A professor of computer science and an adept user of the Net, Renie retraces Stephen's trail and enters Mister J's but barely escapes with her own mind intact. Soon she discovers evidence that other children have lapsed into comas under similar circumstances. When his next Net trip leaves him in a coma, Renie is terrified and angry. When Renie Sulaweyo's younger brother, Stephen, returns from the Net after visiting Mister J's, a virtual reality equivalent of the Hellfire Club, she's worried about him.