The final volume in the Otherland saga, Sea Of Silver Light manages to live up to the extremely high bar set by its predecessors. At the conclusion of the third volume, the Grail Brotherhood was broken as their-long anticipated 'Ceremony' to become immortal inside the Otherland virtual reality network, went spectacularly awry. Grail mastermind Felix Jongleur and Ricardo Clement appear to be the only two of the Brotherhood to survive the events on top of the Black Mountain, although Clement's mind seems to have been reduced to a blank slate. They find themselves marooned in a strange new world which Jongleur insists is not part of the Otherland network he and his cohorts built. With them are Renie Sulaweyo, !Xabbu, Sam Fredericks and, in a tragic turn of events, the corpse of Orlando Gardiner's sim avatar Thargor.
In this volume, after a brief prelude that sheds some light on the history involving Paul Jonas and Jongleur's daughter Ava, we join this bewildered and seemingly helpless quintet as they struggle to come to grips with the cataclysm on the mountaintop and their new situation in this new, utterly alien, seemingly only partially formed world. They also try to come to grips with the fact that the two camps are going to have to work together to stay alive.
Paul has ended up in a very different place: the world of giant insects and plants that dwarf human beings, where a stream is a torrential river. He encounters the architect of this weird world, Kunohara, and shortly it's revealed that after the Black Mountain, Martine, Florimel and T4b have ended up in the 'bug world' themselves. Elsewhere in the network, the various simworlds seem likely to become living hells. Jongleur's assassin/serial killer John Dread, one of the most depraved characters in all of fiction, has usurped control of Otherland from the mysterious Other who apparently makes it possible for the Otherland worlds to exist.
How much more should I say about this? Maybe not too much, since the twists and reveals come all throughout this volume, not just at the end. One thing Otherland has done is build up a wide range of characters to feel for. Renie, !Xabbu, Orlando and some of the others were clearly central characters before you're halfway through the first book, but by this volume characters who initially seemed to be side characters have seen their roles expand greatly. I'd like to talk about a few of these. Olga Pirofsky, the woman who's been hearing the nightmare voices of lost children has by now been led by the voices to a second Mountain Of Black Glass, this time the real world gleaming skyscraper where Jongleur's J Corporation is headquartered. Here she becomes a much more central player. Previously her role, and how she connects to the other storylines, has been largely a mystery to both herself and the reader. We get the full origin of the mysterious Mr. Sellars, the character who originally brought together many 'volunteers' to oppose the Grail Brotherhood, and discover some surprising things. On the run from the law and from real world agents of the Brotherhood, he and an unlikely conglomeration of characters--the Sorensons and their young daughter Christabel, the homeless child Cho-Cho befriended by Sellars, and Catur Ramsey (the lawyer for the Gardiner and Fredericks families)--are with their backs to the wall and time possibly running out for the 'real' world as well as the virtual ones: Dread's control of the Otherland network potentially enables him to take over the entire world's computers and wreak whatever havoc he pleases. Speaking of Dread, the author has done a great job with this character too: he's appalling but, like many real-life psychopaths, can appear quite magnetic and charismatic when he wishes. His latest assistant, Dulcie Anwin, is in so far over her head she doesn't even know it, as she becomes attracted to Dread even as her fear of him begins to grow. Sam Fredericks, initially a sidekick character to Orlando, has grown into a central point-of-view character for this book. Renie's father, Long Joseph Sulaweyo, has made one of the most transformative journeys in the saga, going from unsympathetic background character in the first book to highly effective comedic relief in Volumes 2 and 3, and now actually seems to be emerging as one of the story's heroic characters. Christabel and Cho-Cho give us a different perspective as we see the happenings through children's eyes. Speaking of children, there are a host of brand new characters, many of them children, as we encounter a world that seems to be made-up of bizarre versions of fairy tale and nursery rhyme characters. The stubby little Stone Girl is probably my favorite character to make her debut here. And of course among the most interesting characters whose true nature we finally begin to see is the Other itself, in ways I won't hint at here.
I thought I had most of it figured out as this book gets going, and in some areas I was fairly close but other developments took me completely by surprise, blew me away. Sea Of Silver Glass is a great ender to this quadrilogy of books, and one of the sad parts is that as you finish it, it feels like saying farewell to some very good friends. There's good news on that front too, though. All these years after the books were first released, there is now a follow-up on the way, a novella called The Deathless Prince And The Peach Maiden, is listed now on Amazon, and is coming in October 2023. Just don't read the description until after you finish Sea Of Silver Light, because it does give a couple of things away.
Overall grade for the story so far (the four Otherland volumes, including this one): A+
Sea of Silver Light: Otherland, Book 4
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Top reviews from other countries
Kindle Customer
I loved the ending
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 30, 2005Amazon Customer
One of my favourite fantasy fiction series of all time
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 8, 2015Dizzic
Perseverance is needed with this series but it is worth it.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 17, 2017
