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.