Sea of Silver Light - Tad Williams

SEA OF SILVER LIGHT
(Volume Four of OTHERLAND)

Read about Volume One ----> HERE <----
Read about Volume Three ----> HERE <----

ISBN - 978-1-84149-064-9
FIRST PRINTED - 2001

AUTHOR - Tad Williams

BEST-SELLERS - The Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series

SYNOPSIS - Otherland is out of control.

Fleeing through broken realities, a small band of adventurers struggle to avert the nightmare that Otherland could become. The only hope may lie in an alliance with their enemy. But time is running out - and Otherland's most terrifying secret is yet to be revealed.

EXCERPT - By the time they had gone through their third miserable night's sleep in one of the mountainside's narrow crevices - 'night' signifying only the period during which they stopped walking, because the black peak remained in perpetual twilight - even the violent angers of the first camp had disappeared. Felix Jongluer barely mustered the energy for the few necessary communications, apparently avoiding even contempt as a waste of resources. Renie's fear and dislike of him did not disappear, but in the dull slog of routine and the occasional shock of accident it receded into something at the back of her mind, a small, cold thing that slept. Even Sam, despite her loathing of Jongleur, began to lower her guard a little. She still would not speak to him, but if she stumbled and he was the one in front of her, she would reach out and steady herself on his naked back.

FL Speak - I so didn't want to pick this one up. Though i knew eventually i had to read it. But i waited. Because Mr. Tad Williams killed off the character of Orlando Gardiner in the last book. I mean, come on! Not him! Other than Beezle, Orlando was my favorite. *sigh*

When the last part ended, Orlando was killed by one of the Grail members, though he and T4B managed to kill him too. Jongluer, Renie, !Xabbu ans Sam were separated from the group, while Paul is once more alone without even Martine and her group for company. Dread has control of the Other and has slowly started laying waste on the different worlds across Otherland.

What i loved about the final part is that for the first time even precedence is given to Real Life incidents. It was refreshing to see Ramsey and Sellars and rest of the characters in the story get more importance than Renie and Co. And again, Williams kept Beezle out of the book till the last 300 pages. God, i missed him too. Though we all had a clue about what the OTHER was and we knew that somehow Renie and Co. were almost at the heart of the Operating System, more than half of the book was spent running from one monster to another. Renie gets separated and is helped by a little girl who's made of mud. Paul manages to track down Martine and the rest with the help of Kunohara whose world is shattered by Dread and his recruits. As Martine and her group travel from one disaster to another, !Xabbu again starts his story telling techniques to help him find Renie. Personally speaking, that gets a bit too much for me at times. !Xabbu is at best awesome when he uses his intellect to solve problems.

Meanwhile in Real World, things fall apart as Sellars team gets into trouble with one of the Grail Members. Joseph and Jeremiah's hideout is attacked by killers under orders by Dread. In Otherland, Paul is captured by Wells in Egypt and tortured where his past is slowly revealed before Martine and the Wicked Monkey Tribe manages to free him. Dread can give even serial killers a ccomplex. He is the most twisted character ever! Dulcie manages to sniff through his personel files to find out about his past. Meanwhile the Australian police orders detective Skouros to stop investigating the first Dread murder.

The ending just blows my mind. I felt another book was necessary as it felt like one whole book was crammed in the last 100 pages. Its finally revealed that the Other is a  human child. A child whom Martine taught when she was still a child. His brain is placed in a satellite orbiting over Earth. For a moment, everything was utter fen-fen as Williams started explaining things. How Olga is involved, the truth about Sellars, the new life created that is finally released into space in the form of light until they find a place to survive. Gardiner comes back with a vengeance and boy oh boy, i was jumping up and down. In the end, the bad boys lose. The good guys win, but with major losses. Paul is dead in the simulation, it was proved that the Paul character in the simulation is just another copy while the real Paul is lying somewhere at Jongluer's hideout. After Paul awakes from two years in Otherland, he wakes up with no memory of his friends and Martine or anything related to Otherland. Gardiner is dead in the Real World but is alive in Otherland. Renie and !Xabbu finally make out, even if its in VR. The survivors make a pact to save Otherland as this is the only way they can keep Orlando alive.

The book ends with Sellars team suing Jongleur's multi-corporation, the kids in coma finally waking up slowly and Beezle and Gardiner's parents meeting Orlando in Otherland.

*phew* This has been an epic book. Cross that, an epic saga. One of the best sci-fi series. LIKE EVER!!! I wish i was one of those characters, sharing their pain, celebrating, running and hiding, fighting back..... Tad Williams, i bow to you.

My Rating - 4.8 out of 5. It can't get any better.

PRICE - INR 450/- from Orbit Publication House (Paperback - 2009)

Mountain of Black Glass - Tad Williams

                                 

MOUNTAIN OF BLACK GLASS 

(volume Three of OTHERLAND)


Read about Book One ----> HERE <----
Read about Book Two ----> HERE <----

ISBN - 9781-1-85723-990-4
FIRST PUBLISHED - 1999

AUTHOR - Tad Williams


BEST-SELLERS - the 'Memory, Sorrow and Thorn' saga

SYNOPSIS - Otherland is the realm of the imagination where anything can happen, a triumph of technology, a virtual world of enormous complexity and possibility. But Otherland is owned and controlled by a secret cartel, The Brotherhood, whose motives remain shrouded in mystery.


Trapped in this extra-ordinary world, the quest of a small band of companions to unlock the secrets of Otherland is running perilously short of time. For the Brotherhood has finally set a date for the Ceremony when they will make their bid for immortality. The journey will lead them through strangely unfinished land and an endlessly labyrinthine house. They will suffer the ferocity of the siege if Troy and battle against the might of the Egyptian gods on their journey to find the Mountain of the Black Glass. But even there, the danger will not be over. Otherland's darkest secret, an entity known only as the Other, awaits.

EXCERPT - For a moment Jongleur was off-balance. Did Jiun suspect some kind of double-cross? Or - and here was a truly disturbing thought - did the Chinese magnate, with his vast resources, know something that even Jongleur did not know. But to hesitate could only fuel suspicion, if Jiun was feeling such a thing. 'Ofcourse. I had planned that we would all partake of the Ceremony together, but no favour is too great for one who has given me.... and the project, of course.....so much timely support.'

FL Speak -  The chase is finally on. Tad Williams starts the beginning of the end with this volume. The band of unlikely survivors finally meet again with the exception of Gardiner and Fredericks who are still on their adventurous journey as they try to find the others. Renie becomes the unofficial leader of the group and decides to go after the lighter that the killer took with him. The lighter, if you remember, can be used to open gates between worlds. Williams' imagination soars with the worlds he creates and even though some of the different worlds look straight out of a kids' drawing book, its the accurate depiction of the surroundings and characters that makes them so real.

Meanwhile, Dread is still using Li's sim and before long Martine falls into his clutches. As Rennie and !Xabbu try to free their friend, Fredericks and Gardiner drop smack into the middle of a civil war in ancient Egypt. I loved the way Williams was gradually leading the way for a final showdown. Looks like all roads lead to Troy. It was nice to see blind Martine finally able to use the simulation to her advantage as she changed Renie's sim into a man and turned !Xabbu's baboon to a human. As the group head over to Rome, Paul, still battling his loss of memory, makes his way to Troy as Odysseus.

In the real world, the Australian police finally has a whiff of Dread and they try to find clues that would lead to the capture of the serial killer. Meanwhile Fredericks and Gardiner manage to escape Egpyt with the help of the Circle members and stumble into troy where Gardiner is the famous  Achilles. As the people gather in Troy, Gardiner, Fredericks and Paul are stuck in the Greek camp while Renie and the others are behind enemy lines. The final chapter is as exciting as it can get. Dread manages to get back to Otherland and deals with a final shock that sends shock reeling among all the members of the squad and all the members of the Grail Brotherhood as well.

Stunning ending to the third book and the story is now poised for an epic finale. Tad Williams story telling is getting better and better with every single volume and if you still haven't read this epic sci-fi series, you are seriously missing something.

My Rating - 4.2 out of 5.

PRICE - INR 450/- from Orbit publication house (Paperback - 2009) 

River of Blue Fire - Tad Williams

RIVER OF BLUE FIRE

(volume Two of OTHERLAND)

Read about Book one ----> HERE <-----

ISBN - 987 1 85723 764 1

FIRST PUBLISHED - 1998

AUTHOR - Tad Williams

BEST-SELLERS - City of Golden Shadow (Book one of OTHERLAND)

SYNOPSIS - Otherland is civilization's most stunning achievement: a private, multi-dimensional universe built over two generations by the greatest minds of the twenty-first century. But this most exclusive of places is also a jealously guarded secret, created and controlled by the Grail Brotherhood, a private cartel known to few and made up of the world's most powerful and ruthless individuals.

The purpose of Otherland is still a mystery. But it may not remain for so long. For a small band of adventurers has penetrated the secrecy that surrounds it and has broken into the amazing world within worlds it contains. However, with one among their number determined to ensure that no one lives long enough to reveal the truth about Otherland, an extraordinary quest soon becomes a desperate race against time.

EXCERPT - A short distance from them lay a small tree which had fallen some time in the past and been partly subsumed by the forest floor, so that the gray-brown of its bark showed in only a few places through the moss and the grasses that had grown over it. From Renie's and !Xabbu's perspective, it was as tall and long as line of hills.

The Eticon army had reached the top of the log...

FL Speak - Tad Williams continues his saga with another huge continuation. The unlikely band of people finally find the golden city only to realise that their troubles have just started. They realised that they cannot log out and are stuck in a virtual reality world where pain is real and if you die, you just dont get out of the server, you die in your own body as well. And chasing them are the Brotherhood.

The group gets split up and they are all told to search for a man called Jonas who might be in any of the vivid worlds out there. As Gardiner and Fredericks get thrown into a world where the world is a huge kitchen, Renie and Xabbu stumble into a world where insects are ten times larger than them. The trouble begins when none of them realises that one among the group of nine is a killer who has his/her own motives.

Tad Williams delivers another gem of a novel with twists and turns and wild imagination. None of the stories loops tend to get boring. Except maybe for the character of !Xabbu who is reduced to repeat his tribe's mythical stories. I would have liked it a bit more if they made Gardiner more stronger but nevertheless i love his character the most. By the end of first book, it has become clear that the Grail Brotherhood is the reason kids are dying or going into comas in the real world.

Its a stunning continuation and it ends in a cliffhanger. What the readers must realise is that its not 4 books. Its one huge story, divided into four parts. As the characters jump from one scenario to another, you cannot but feel their pain and share their laughter as they struggle to find a way to stop the madness.

This is writing at its best. This is a must-buy series. A must buy!

My Rating - 4 out of 5. i guess i rated the first book too less. This is going to be one of the best series ever.

PRICE - INR 450/- by Orbit Publications (Paperback - 2008)

City of Golden Shadow - Tad Williams

City of Golden Shadow

(volume one of 'OTHERLAND')


AUTHOR - Tad Williams

BEST-SELLERS - the 'Memory,Sorrow and Thorn' series

SYNOPSIS - OTHERLAND

Shrouded in secrecy, it is home to the wildest dreams and darkest nighmares.

Vast amounts of money have been lavished on it.

The best minds of two generations have laboured to build it.

And somehow, bit by bit, it is claiming the Earth's most valuable resource ~ its children.

EXCERPT - 'If you have found this, then you have escaped.' it said. Paul looked around, afraid his rescuers would be terrified, but they were still looking at him with the same slightly worried reserve. After a moment, he realised they could not hear the voice, that it spoke to him alone.

'know this', it said. 'You were a prisoner. You are not in the world in which you were born. Nothing around you is true and yet the things you see can hurt or kill you. You are free, but you will be pursued, and i can help you only in your dreams. You must remain uncaptured until you find the others I am sending. They will look for you on the river. They will know you, if you tell them the golden harp has spoken to you.'

FL Speak - This is a mammoth book. Over 900 pages in the paperback edition and as i started reading, it all felt like hogwash. So i took a deep breath and started from the beginnning again. 

Science Fiction is not my cup of tea, but the synopsis looked exciting so i brought it on a whim. Even though this book fades considerably to his epic 'memory,sorrow and thorn' saga, once you start reading, this book gets hooked. The characters are alive and you feel like you care for each and every one of them. Well no, not all. Some you feel should be killed and some you feel should be killed by your hands. Nevertheless, on an epic scale, this is an ultimate virtual reality saga.

All the computer and virtual reality mumbo jumbo went straight over my head first time, so if you aren't a sci-fi fan, do NOT pick this book up. If you want to try sci-fi for the first time. do NOT pick this book up again. Try reading it after you are done reading a couple of other sci-fi books first.

The best thing about this novel is the plot. Almost 600 pages are gone in the first book trying to get the characters together. And then the fun and misery of the characters begin. I repeat, if you have the patience to go through the careful and slow detailing of the characters, you will love the book. The pace is expected to pick up from book two. So, gear yourself up for some of the wildest imaginations, dazzling ideas and non-stop adventures.

My rating - 3.3 outta 5. That's only because this is the first book.

PRICE - INR 450/- from Orbit publication house. (paperback - 2009)