Customer Reviews

City of Golden Shadow (Otherland, Volume 1)

5 star:		(159)
4 star:		(57)
3 star:		(35)
2 star:		(31)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

If you're going to pick up the first book of a mammoth quadrology, you want to know that the time invested will be worth it in the end. Accordingly, this is a capsule review of the Otherland series as a whole, rather than this single work.

The short answer: it depends on if you like Tad Williams' narrative style so much that you can overlook the flaws. Fans of the author are likely to love Otherland. It contains well-drawn, generally sympathetic characters swept up in an epic story that draws on established cyperpunk themes, but with Williams' characteristic focus on the internal thoughts and feelings of the protagonists rather than on the action. The VR settings are interesting, the story is epic in both scope and length, and Williams does manage to bring most (not all) of the strands of the story together fairly convincingly in the last book.

The problems? First and foremost, the books are too long. The series could be chopped down by two-thirds without losing any of the important plot elements. Fans of cyberpunk as a genre, where the pacing is usually frenetic, will be exasperated by seemingly interminable scenes that, while prettily drawn, do little or nothing to advance the overall story.

Second, the characters are too static. By early in book two you've learned all you need to know about how most of the numerous central characters. While their relationships to one another evolve (albeit very slowly) the characters themselves reveal no new facets to surprise or entertain the reader. Renie is always lovably stubborn, Orlando always stoically perservering in spite his medical condition, etc. etc.

Third, the metaplot is unoriginal. While Williams has an interesting take on VR, the 'epic story' driving the books is essentially a rehash of the big themes in Neuromancer, William Gibson's seminal work from 1983. Told in a very different fashion, but the same basic ideas nonetheless.

Fourth, and most damning IMHO, the way the 'secrets' of Otherland are revealed can only be described as [bad]. Williams has serveral *thousand* pages to expose you to his imaginary world, yet when it all comes down to the cruch he resorts to the cheap expedient of having one of the major characters explain to all the other characters 'what is really going on' in a scene more appropriate to the climax of a 1940s murder mystery than an SF novel.

Having the characters discover the deepest secrets of Otherland piece by piece as they travel would have been fun. If Williams had borrowed another convention of mystery fiction and given the reader just enough clues to allow them to, if they were very clever, put it all together, then the tell-all speeches at the end would at least have the redeeming quality of letting you know if you'd guessed right. Sadly, Williams keeps key pieces of the backstory from you until the end, and the trip around Otherland is more of 'An Extended Tour of Virtual Reality as Imagined by Tad Williams' than it is plot exposition. I'm sure the author wanted to save some ideas to maximise their emotional impact, but, for me, the manner in which he finally reveals them made the Big Secrets seemed hackneyed and trite rather than "oh, wow!"

Fourth, the capture of the main villain of the piece was pure Hollywood, and I do not mean that as a complement. That part of the ending was so blatantly predictable (if you have watched any horror movies at all) and so obviously designed to set up a sequel, that I found myself wondering if Williams wrote it specifically to appeal to people who might want to buy the film rights. Blech.

Enough carping. All in all, for me Otherland was an entertaining, though not gripping, story. I enjoyed much of it, liked several of the characters enough to care about them, and although I was disappointed in the way the ending was handled, I have to give the author credit for keeping me interested through four very lengthy books. Is it good enough to read again? Not for me. Do I recommend it to others? As I said at the top, it depends on whether or not they like Tad Williams' books in general. If you do, go for it.

A short synopsis (without giving too much away): A woman cyber-researcher stumbles onto a 'virtual world' within the virtual world of the 'near future' internet. This 'Otherland' is something magnitudes greater than the prosaic virtual worlds on the net. And it is deeply secret. She begins to attempt to determine its possibly nefarious purpose with the help of a cast of other 'stumblers'. Much of the series takes place within both the public virtual worlds of the net and this otherland.

First, allow me to give this caveat: I have read all four books in this series and this is the first time I've read something by Tad Williams.

From my reading of the reviews of this book so far, I believe these two things strongly influence what kind of review someone will give this book.

If you have read Tad Williams' fantasy books before, you might be expecting something similar here. Though there are aspects of fantasy, they are tangential to the plot (though fun reading). If you go into reading the book thinking of another Williams fantasy you will be disappointed.

Also, I must agree with many of the reviews here. This first book is very difficult to get through. The characters and the plot take a long time in developing and sometimes it feels if you are wading through too much without gaining much in understanding of the characters or the plot. I put down the book twice after reading the first chapters, it did not catch my interest. I had finally read the book on a vacation with nothing else to do, it wasn't till the end that my interest was peaked.

When Williams gets to the second and third books, he starts to shine in this series. The plot starts making sense and most of the characters start to gain some substance. I absolutely loved going through some of the virtual worlds (cartoon kitchen, I loved it) and some of the characters were great (I need the beetle!). Once I got into the second book in the series, I was hooked and read the the next 2 immediately after. They were very enjoyable and well worth the time.

Perhaps this series would have been better as a trilogy with large portions taken out of the first book, but..if you decide to buy this book, you should do so realizing you are making a commitment to get through 4 books and the first one will be difficult to get through. If you do so, it will be worth the time. I still smile with the memory of some of the characters and events in the book.

I would give the first book a 3 and the next 2 a 5 and the last a 4, since they are a series and should be read and reviewed as one book (these 4 books are not stand alone, but I don't see much 'demarcation' between them, more like one very large book that could have been cut in various combinations with equal results), I give the whole series a 4.

After reading the series "Memory, Sorrow and Thorn" several years ago, I mentally noted Tad Williams as fantasy-writing force to remember. Even though that series fit the stock formula fairly well, it did it with panache. The heroes were not morally squeaky-clean and were a little rough around the edges. That is to say, they were living, breathing people who would have fit in with the masses of humanity in any era. They were Everyman thrust into extraordinary circumstances.

So, when I saw that Mr. Williams' next series strayed from the realm of fantasy, I feared that he might be over-reaching himself. I was a fool to have worried. Although I have only read the first book of "Otherworld" so far, I have to place Mr. Williams in that small group of writers (Jules Verne, Stephen Donaldson, Robert Silverberg, Gene Wolfe, and a few others) that have been able to produce masterworks in both the fantasy and SF genres.

And what SF it is! For a half-baked synopsis, we are thrust into the middle of the 21st century, where the entire planet Earth has become an electronic global village for those of enough means to afford it. What we think of as today's world-wide web has grown beyond all bounds and has practically taken on a visceral presence. To those with good enough equipment, the net has supplanted the physical world as their place to shop, to sight see, and to seek pleasures undreamed of in real life (or, RL as it is known to the citizenry of the day). Of course, as is always the case, much of the world's population still lives at a third-world level while the super wealthy have managed to transcend even the bounds of the known net to devise their own fantastic playland, known to the few who are aware of it as Otherland. The creators of Otherland are performing some evil deeds that somehow involves trapping pre-teen and teenage hackers in a state of stasis for some yet unknown sinister purpose. The story centers around a group of friends and relatives of some of the kids imprisoned in the net, others with axes to grind against the founders of Otherland, and a few rouge constructs loose in the net that are out to bring down the powers that be. I don't think I've given anyway any secrets that will decrease your enjoyment of the book.

Does this sound suspiciously cyberpunk, or what? But, it is cyberpunk with panache. Mr. Williams shamelessly mixes in a little "Jack in the Beanstalk", a little "Alice in Wonderland", a taste of Philip Jose Farmer's "Riverworld", and just enough "Martian Chronicles" to know it's there. It is cyberpunk with a sense of humor, but also with a sense of dread. As is the case with George R. R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire", this is not a series for everyone. It is intense and some characters come to rather gruesome ends. It is not quite as graphic as Mr. Martin's series, but there are some unsettling moments. Having said that, I will also say that it's no more frightening than anything else in the genre, so take that as you may. Also, like Martin's series, each book is a segment of the larger whole, hence the book ends with a cliff-hanger. I don't know about you, but I prefer this to a contrived resolution at the end of each book just for neatness sake that could blow the whole flow of the story.

The main characters are sometimes a little rough, but are sympathetic. They have their times when nothing will go down better than a cigarette and a beer, but they also have their moments of nobility. The advances in computer networks and virtual reality are a reach from today's technology, but are plausible (a main requirement for high quality SF). And, I say this as a career systems engineering professional. There is only one instance of *deus ex machina* concerning the character Dread, but it does help advance the plot so nicely that it can be overlooked. There was one section of the book that almost stuck me as being cartoonish, but I felt a tad (groan. . .) of vindication when Mr. Williams used the same adjective in the synopsis of this book that appears in the second book of the series. The high points so far outweigh the low that I feel almost criminal mentioning them. . .

I have had this book in my possession for several years now but waited until all four books of the series were in print to begin reading. So far, the wait has been worthwhile because I'm not planning on slowing down my enjoyment of this series for anything!!

In many ways, this is an unconventional work.

It is not a series of four books. It is one big honking book published in four chunks.

In pacing and plotting, it reminds me of a 100-issue run of a comic book. There's a continuously unfolding series of events, building out from the center, but not necessarily toward ever increasingly dramatic climaxes.

What Williams has done here is ingenious. He really hasn't created any new plot devices or directions; you'll see few things here that you've never ever seen before. What he has done is to combine them all.

Sure, we saw (for just one example) human minds wired into vast virtual reality in the Matrix, but we have no idea how they got there. Plenty of government conspiracies, plenty of power-mad scary guys. But ordinarily these works get fuzzy around the edges, and the writer asks us to accept that some things just ARE so he can get on with the main story.

What Williams does is shuffle these several different novels together and set them up to lean on each other. And where other authors follow a narrative thread only so far and then say, "Well, yeah, there's another story over there, but we don't have time for it, so come on back here," Williams shows us all of everything, and shows us some combinations of plot elements that we might never have imagined.

If you like reading these multivolume works for the enormous drama and a payoff whose operatic grandeur is proportional to the page count, you may nod off around book three here. And the characters are moving and effective, few stick in your head weeks after you've finished the work. But what Williams gives us instead is a vast, far-ranging, multi-character, multi-multi-themed tapestry that is enormous in scope and which has to be walked over a section at a time.

The vision this book projected nearly blinded me. The book opens spectacularly and keeps hitting you with a brilliantly protrayed world and facenating characters. This is the best sci-fi fatasy blend that I have ever read. Williams weaves in and out of sub-plots, building up suspence with remakable effectiveness(I bought the sequal the day I finshed it).

Children are collasing into unexplianable comas after trips on the net. People are finding mysterious keys, and visions of a golden city. A dreaded serial killer is attacking a secret society, to protect his employers. All these events lead to the golden city where some answers are held. This story is a fun ride through a world that is a remarakable feat of imagination. Anyone can think up of a story like this, but it takes real talent to make it work.

This book is really the first part of four, of what is one book. Williams comments on this, saying he wrote the outline as just one story, but he obviously cannot publish one 3,000 + page book.

This has to be the finest work of science fiction I have ever read. I can't understand why it's getting so many mediocre reviews. The whole Otherland series made Tad Williams jump from a completely obscure author to one of my favorite authors. This first novel is a beautiful book -- well-written enough to make series such as Dragonlance seem on a third-grade level -- with characters that might be cliched, but still are wonderful. I was terrified by Dread, was inspired by Renie, and completely identified with Orlando.

This isn't the average science fiction novel. Space is basically forgotten -- one of the characters feels embarassed by having a room decorated with space stuff. Instead, the technology of the era centers around virtual reality technology. Most of the virtual reality network can be compared to today's Internet -- there's advertising, a hacker's hangout (Treehouse), "adult" areas, personal hangouts (cots), etc. The plot, which shall not be mentioned now, is absolutely incredible. And the story takes place both in the private VR network of Otherland, the public 'net, and all over the world. The "heroine" lives in South Africa, and all of the other characters are from as diverse backgrounds.

A wonderful read. This has to be the best of the four books, but all of them are great. Bonuses: at the beginning each unit (and there are four), there is a brief bit of literature, starting with an e. e. cummings poem. And at the begnning of each chapter, there is Netfeed/News -- actual news from the 21st century setting of the series, some of it using references to concepts used in the plot. I loved this book. I gave it to a friend, and he loved it. It's just that good.

I have to say I'm delighted that I found this book in a bargain bin for £3 instead of the £16 cover price. If truth be told, I was attracted by the impressive cover. I know, I know.
So, what's wrong with this book? Here goes...

at almost 1000 pages I was expecting a great swirling epic with sub-plots aplenty. Sub-plots? Hmm, I guess so. the problem is that the book is way too long, and suffers from a complete lack of editing. As an aspiring writer myself I'm continually being told to edit down my work, remove anything that isn't essential to the plot. How come Mr. Williams is allowed free reign then? Seriously, if the book was 300 pages long it would've been quite gripping, but instead we're forced to trawl through a lot if very unconvincing character background stuff which tries (and fails) to bring the characters a little depth. (In fact the characterisation is utterly appalling: unrealistic, two-dimensional and decidedly amateurish. It smacks of Asimov and Arthur C. Clark. If it weren't for differences in character dialogue/dialect you'd swear they were all the same person).

Be advised, dear reader, that in this book you'll examine - in great detail - every thought that runs through each character's head, every facial expression, every little nuance and feature. If this had been a book solely about the interaction and development of characters then that might have been OK, but it's not, it's a fantasy/science fiction book with an ambitious plot. Such excessive 'characterisation', then, only slows down the pace of the story.

In fact, one gets the impression that Mr. Williams was going out of his way to keep things slow. Case in point: the main character encounters a man who has key information about the main plot, and asks for an explanation. Instead of telling us over the course of a few paragraphs, the dialogue is stretched across page after page, while the character repeatedly says "hang on, I'll answer your quesion in a minute", "slow down", "I'm just getting to that", etc etc.
Just awful. In fact, the very first time the word 'Otherland' is mentioned is over two-thirds of the way through the book. Everything up to that point has been background - that's over 600 pages worth!

Ok, aside from the length, other critiscisms are as follows:
Much of this book is concerned with Virtual Reality, where there are no bounds or limits to the imagination. Yet despite that, the author's ideas are sadly lacking. With no restraining factors the VR simulations should have been utterly wild - pure escapism. But no, the online environments are litlle more than enhanced visions of real life. Boring. Shouldn't a fantasy writer have a bit more imagination than this?

I'd also criticise Mr. Williams ability to describe the technology itself. This book deals continually with Virtual Reality and internet-like technologies, yet whenever a technical explanation is required all we get is technobabble, some noddy half-baked explanation or complete cop-out. We're not children, Mr. Williams. The fact that we're reading this book at all is indicative of our desire for vividly-described scientific concepts and realistic explanations.

Finally, without spoiling the ending for other prospective readers, I for one was incredulous at the way the novel ended. So many questions posed. Where were the answers? After trawling through so many pages I was expecting at least some sort of conclusion...

Otherland has spawned three successors (so far), each around 1000 pages. If you want to spend the rest of your life reading about Otherland then this book is for you. Otherwise, don't bother.

Perhaps the next volume of this saga should be titled: "Otherland Volume 5: Quest for the Delete Key"

This book is amazing. I realize that a few people didn't enjoy it very much, but that is there perception,(plus they have probably read more books then I have) however, this book satisfied the hunger I have had for a deeper reading experiance. This book really brings you into Tad William's world. You may look at the book and think it is to big for you to read, but once you start you can't put it down. Everything in William's world, characters, ideas, technology, and culture, is slowly taught to you just as it would be in the real world. It is easier for the mind to remember something if it is taught slowly and regularly. Not just having a huge sum of information shoved into it suddenly and then expected you to remember it at the end of the book. That is one reason why the book is so long, most of it is familiarising you with the surrondings in William's world. There is just so much information in this one book its amazing. You will learn about African history, Bushman history, some very very very probable ideas of the future, some computer knowlege, (this book it for you if you love computers and the internet) and so much more that the list would go on forever.

You should probably learn the rest out for yourself and buy the book. It is a book for people who love computers and computer technology. I have a real apreciation for technology and I beleive that helped me enjoy this book even more. Also if you love books that ask a lot of indirect question on life, this is a book for you. I myself give it five stars and can't wait to read the next book, but you should read it and rate it yourself.

Otherland Vol. I is an excellent and highly imaginative blending of SF and Fantasy which can proved a great deal of enjoyment for readers who don't have the wrong expectations. This is not actually a complete book but merely the first fourth of a gigantic story being published in 4 parts. Unlike some other massive sf adventures on this scale (David Wingrove's Chung Kuo for instance), Otherland does not cover the lives of dozens of characters over the course of several years, but only a handful of characters over a span of time measured in days. Needless to say the story is extremely detailed and progresses slowly toward its goal. Reader's expecting a speedy resolution to the story's plot will be disappointed. Rather, enjoy each moment for what it itself contains. Even as the main story thread procedes slowly forward, interesting events occur on the charcters lives. This story is a long road, but the real joy in it is the journey.

I had no expectations about "Otherland". A friend lent me the book, saying there was no hurry to return it. So it sat on my shelf for days and days.

I finally got around to opening it and was less than impressed at first. The story took too long to develop and once it did, went no where. The writing is as bloated as a corpse that has washed up on the shores of the river of blue fire. Because the writing is episodic, taking the point of view of different characters, I was sometimes compelled, sometimes not, depending upon my opinion of the hero of that chapter.

It was an odd experience, then, reading this book. I would race through one chapter, anxious to learn more about the lead character, then turn the page and be so bored I could hardly pick the book up again.

I finally made it through and was compelled enough to pick up the next one. But I think the story could easily have been told in one book.