It took me a while, but I finally managed to wade through the four volumes of Tad Williams' Otherland series. Tracking down the second and third volumes took most of the effort, as they weren't in my local library and not on the shelves of first-hand bookstores, so it meant checking back with secondhand stores on a regular basis in the hopes that a copy would show up. But now that I've read the quartet, City Of Golden Shadow, River Of Blue Fire, Mountain Of Black Glass and Sea Of Silver Light, I'm left with a couple of unanswered whys.
The first why is sort of two parts; why was thing written in the first place, and why did it have to be so long? The second why has more to do with me than the quality of the books: why did I keep reading the things? I even spent money on them that could have been put to far better use.
Sometimes after reading a book, I'm left feeling what was the point in writing the damn thing? Okay, sure, there is a story and characters and they do stuff, but for what purpose? Is there a reason for it all? True, works of fiction don't have to have a point, they can just be riveting stories, intense character studies, or thrilling plot lines, but those in turn become the point of writing the book.
The author sets out to create a character study, or an exploration of style if he or she are exceptionally post modern. But there's usually a point to the whole exercise. In Otherland, I missed the point entirely.
The plot is quite simple really. Children around the world are falling prey to a mysterious coma-inducing disease, somehow contracted while surfing the net. A sinister cabal of corporate leaders throughout the world are creating for themselves the means to live forever in artificial reality by recreating themselves as living parts of an organic operating system that controls a massive artificial reality. They are somehow utilizing the brains of the children to make the operating system function.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
Thanks for sticking with it, so we don't have to!
2 - DrPat
He, She and It is Amazon 0449220605, in case anyone wants it -- the New York Public Library Library Journal gave it a recommendation, too!
3 - gypsyman
Umm, I included He She and It as an Amazon Link with the other books
4 - Cass
I liked the first book; I thought it was a great setup. But the other three dragged and dragged, and it seemed the characters were going from one harrowing escape to another, and the actual ending of what was controlling the world was kind of lame.
5 - Psychedelic Pariah
Good review and good work slogging through the series. It is an Herculian effort; I know, I forced myself to do the same.
You're spot on when you ask, "What's the point?" This entire four volume series could have, and more importantly should have, been written in a single book. But Tad Williams only rarely completes a story in the space of a few hundred pages.
Memory, Sorrow and Thorn was actually pretty good. Otherland, forget it. I'm sorry that I paid good money for the entire series in hardcover.
Double-u double-u double-u dot ebay dot com.
6 - Ashok K. Banker
I managed most of the first book before I gave up. I still look at the rest of the series when I'm in the SFF section of a bookstore (they're all easily available here in Bombay, probably old copies that never sold out!) and shudder at the thought of wading through another couple of thousand pages of the same. I loved his Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy-in-four-books immensely. He's a brilliant author, as even the Otherland saga proves, as well as his other dismal failure (to me at least), his War of The Flowers. So much hard work, research, detail, and for what? I'm very hopeful about his Shadowmarch series, just started. I believe he's just too good a writer to be kept down for long, and will produce another M,S & T, in my opinion, one of the best epic fantasies ever.
7 - Made in DNA
Crap. Don't say that. I loved the first book and have been eagerly awaiting the chance to purchase and read the others. ><
Well, to each his/her own. Perhaps I will enjoy them. Thanks for the review though. I will keep it in mind.
8 - Tom
Accurate review. Four volumes, yet despite what should be some pivotal events and personal epiphanies the characters do not change, grow, or develop significantly.
Still, for the most part I found it engaging and read it with enjoyment.
9 - Zach12345
Wow, Im kind of shocked by this. I thought Tad Williams Green Angel Tower books were the ones that were hard to read.
Otherland was very good for me. Id give it an A-. Very inventive, easy to read. And I think the POINT that you are say is not there is extremely obvious
10 - Ryan
Thanks, just finished the first book, it was tedious at best and although part of a series it didn't even end with any satisfaction that would give the desire to wade through another 3000 pages just to get to an end where the characters haven't developed and no twist to the foreseeable ending. Thanks for the review, glad I'm not alone in my disgust for wasting all that time!
11 - CGriffitt
I feel completely differently about the book, myself. I would say that it was one of the best series I have ever read. Some would say that then I obviously have never read any good books, but I have read classics of both Sci-Fi and traditional fantasy, and I would say that the Otherland series measures up.Now you did have some valid points, the characters themselves were not always the most interesting. But the plot really intrigued me, with the details of the system and why it did what it did. Perhaps the overall story is weak if you consider it on it's own, but the details make it.I do agree with an above commentator, the one who goes by Cass, in the regard that the ending was a bit poorly done.
12 - Ben Wilder
The review, and most of the comments, are snobby English majors who fail to see the REAL reason for stories- it isn't clever character development, plot devices, or whatever snobbery you have in mind. It's ENTERTAINMENT. I read them, and I was entertained. Reading this review and the comments, I feel like I'm choking on the smell of moth balls from the coat closets of shallow, empty, rich snobs. Get over your choice-wine-and-aged-cheese selves. You people are like musicians who lambaste popular music because it doesn't conform to their narrow definition of skillful composition.
Enjoy the music for the emotion it invokes in you, not because the musician copied some famous dead man's complicated techniques. Read stories because they're fun, not because you want to analyze their meta-structure and feel good about your own failures as a writer.