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Searching... Stillwater Public Library | SCI_FI FANTASY WIL | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Return to Otherland in River of Blue Fire, the second novel of Tad Williams? epic series. Otherland, a virtual realityuniverse where any fantasy can come true, is ruled by the unimaginable wealthy and ruthless power brokers known as The Grail Brotherhood. Constructed over two generations, consuming extraordinary amounts of money and lives, Otherland has begun to claim Earth's most valuable resource: its children. Now, in River of Blue Fire, the group of unlikely heroes who have taken up the challenge of this perilous and seductive realm are brought together briefly, only to be thrown into different worlds, split by mistrust, and stalked at every turn by the serial killer Dread and the mysterious Nemesis....' The DAW hardcover edition of Otherland has over 120,000 copies in print? River of Blue Fire: Otherland Vol. 2 is the secondnovel of an exciting new series that will appeal not onlyto a science fiction/fantasy audience, but also to readersof science fiction and mainstream best-sellers? To Green Angel Tower was a New York Times andLondon Times hardcover best-seller? Spectacular cover art by Michael Whelan
Author Notes
Tad Williams Tad Williams grew up in Palo Alto, California. He didn't go off to college after high school, he was more interested in living on his own and supporting himself. Williams therefore began a long string of collectively bad part time jobs. He stacked tiles, made tacos, sold shoes, peddled insurance, collected loans not all at the same time and worked at other things in his free moments, such as writing, as well as, several years in a rock band, hosting a radio talk show, making commercial and uncommercial art, acting, and others
DAW was the first to publish Williams, accepting "Tailchaser's Song," which became an big success. It never occurred to Williams that his books wold not sell and indeed they have not stopped selling since the beginning.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In his first work of SF, Otherland: City of Golden Shadow (1997), bestselling fantasist Williams (To Green Angel Tower) introduced one of the most impressive virtual-reality landscapes ever created. Otherland, a gigantic realm consisting of untold numbers of virtual universes, is the creation of the mysterious and evil Grail Brotherhood, a cabal of billionaire capitalists, ruthless gangsters and corrupt government officials. Bent on discovering the secret of eternal life, they will stop at nothing to achieve their goal, even the deaths of hundreds of children whose minds have been trapped on the Net. City of Golden Shadow told the story of a small band of virtual explorers who dared to enter Otherland without permission, some for adventure, others to save the children ensnared on the Net. In this second volume of a projected four-book series, the quest continues. As often happens with middle entries in a series, there are a few problems. Despite a six-page summary, readers unfamiliar with City of Golden Shadow may have trouble figuring out the complex backstory. Further, with little to tie the various plot threads together at either end, the book lacks an obvious structure. Still, Williams is an exciting and endlessly inventive writer whose character development is particularly strong, and his fans should roundly enjoy this volume while looking forward to the remaining installments. Editors: Betsy Wollheim and Sheila Gilbert. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Williams' Otherland saga straddles the line between sf and fantasy. Otherland, in which imagination can create everything, is implicitly the result of advanced twenty-first-century science. On the other hand, Otherland operates, once Williams sets it going, as much by magical concepts as by natural ones. This second volume in the series presents the adventures of a small band of hardy, even heroic folk who have broken the Grail Brotherhood's barriers to entering Otherland and are hoping to open the place to the common run of humankind. In the course of this part of its journey, the band encounters--to cite only a few of the book's exciting features--giant insects, advertisements coming to life, postholocaust worlds, and treachery from a Grail Brother within their own ranks. Williams depicts the band's adventures vividly, sometimes giving them a satirical edge, sometimes a didactic one, and sometimes both, but he piles the satire and instruction on so that the characters sometimes seem crowded nearly offstage. Also, even in this age of the multivolume yarn and even though this one is the work of a powerful imagination and high-class world builder, this particular book would have profited from trimming. So it is not the ideal place to start learning about either megasagas or Williams. But it is a powerful story and indubitably absorbing reading for fantasy lovers, especially those with long attention spans. --Roland Green
Kirkus Review
Second chunk of Williams's vast four-part doorstopper about Otherland (City of Golden Shadow, 1996), an exclusive and impregnable virtual reality created by the evil Grail Brotherhood. Various good guys--amnesiac WWI soldier Paul Jonas, teacher Renie Sulawayo, blind researcher Martine Desroubins, the strange, crippled, mysterious old Mr. Sellars, etc.have banded together to try to prevent the Brotherhood from doing, well, whatever it is that they're planning to do, with the control of everything (both real-world reality and the anything-goes cyberspace of Otherland) at stake. Patience, patience. The author apologizes for not providing proper endings for each individual entry, but he's actually writing one single book, thousands of pages long, that's broken up into chunks for practicality's sake. Now you know. For the rest, even with Williams's helpful synopsis, it's a dreadful struggle to remember who, what, where, when, and especially why.
Library Journal Review
Trapped in the top-secret virtual world known as Otherland, a small group of online explorers travel along a river of possibilities in search of a way back to the real world. This sequel to OtherWorld: City of Golden Shadow (LJ 11/15/96) delivers a kaleidoscopic array of dreamscapes and nightmare worlds that form a setting for a complex tale of conspiracy and betrayal. Williams displays a prodigious talent for spinning multiple variations on a theme as he alternates between real and virtual worlds. This fast-paced, ambitious blend of fantasy and sf belongs (along with its predecessor) in most fantasy collections. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Synopsis | p. xi |
| Foreword | p. 1 |
| 1st The Secret River | |
| 1 Deep Waters | p. 19 |
| 2 Greasepaint | p. 33 |
| 3 The Hive | p. 41 |
| 4 In the Puppet Factory | p. 57 |
| 5 The Marching Millions | p. 71 |
| 6 Man From the Dead Lands | p. 87 |
| 7 Grandfather's Visit | p. 103 |
| 8 Fighting Monsters | p. 121 |
| 9 The Hollow Man | p. 143 |
| 10 Small Ghosts | p. 165 |
| 11 Utensils | p. 183 |
| 12 The Center of the Maze | p. 205 |
| 2nd Voices in the Dark | |
| 13 The Dreams of Numbers | p. 229 |
| 14 Games in the Shadows | p. 233 |
| 15 A Late Crismustreat | p. 253 |
| 16 Shoppers and Sleepers | p. 275 |
| 17 In the Works | p. 295 |
| 18 The Veils of Illusion | p. 313 |
| 19 A Day's Work | p. 335 |
| 20 The Invisible River | p. 355 |
| 21 In the Freezer | p. 379 |
| 3rd Gods and Geniuses | |
| 22 Inside Out | p. 401 |
| 23 Beside Bob's Ocean | p. 423 |
| 24 The Most Beautiful Street in the World | p. 443 |
| 25 Red Land, Black Land | p. 465 |
| 26 Waiting for the Dreamtime | p. 489 |
| 27 The Beloved Porcupine | p. 503 |
| 28 Darkness in the Wires | p. 525 |
| 4th Bedlam's Song | |
| 29 Imaginary Gardens | p. 539 |
| 30 Death and Venice | p. 549 |
| 31 The Voice of the Lost | p. 567 |
| 32 Feather of Truth | p. 585 |
| 33 An Unfinished Land | p. 607 |
| Afterword | p. 631 |
