Sea of Silver Light (Otherland #4)

With Sea of Silver Light , Tad Williams completes his massive Otherland quartet, one of SF's more intriguing explorations of the eroding boundaries of the human and the nonhuman, the living and the dead. Otherland is a sequence that contains many secrets, and Williams plays fair by unpacking all of them in the final book. A group of adventurers searching for a cure for comatose children find themselves trapped in a sequence of virtual worlds, the only opponents of a conspiracy of the rich to live forever in a dream. Now, they are forced to make an uneasy alliance with their only surviving former enemy against his treacherous sidekick Johnny Wulgaru, a serial killer with a chance to play God forever. Williams manages a vast cast of emotionally involving characters with considerable panache, but the real strength of the book is its endlessly questing intelligence; it is, among other things, an enquiry into the nature of storytelling as a way for human beings to give structure to their perceptions of the universe around them. It is as story that Sea of Silver Light ultimately works so well--involving us in the grueling descent of a vast mountain, the siege of an underground fortress, gun battles in a nightmare Wild West. Williams never neglects to tell us how things feel. He efficiently ties up every plot strand and convincingly reveals every secret in this large, complex plot. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk From Publishers Weekly This stunning finale to the gigantic Otherland tetralogy (City of Golden Shadow, etc.), a brilliant fusion of quest fantasy and technological SF, is sure to please Williams's many fans. Otherland, a complete universe co-existent with the real world, incorporates elements of the Arabian Nights, the Alice and Oz books, the Neanderthal Age, the Trojan War, rewritten Roman history (Hannibal returns three centuries after his death to crush Rome, without elephants), as well as numerous nursery rhymes and fables. An enormous cast of courageous humans confronts monstrous insects, unimaginable dangers and all the appurtenances of fantastic adventure. At nearly 700 pages this is a mighty mouthful to swallow, but a well-crafted if convoluted plot sustains interest through the lengthy climax, which explains the inexplicable. Those scenes grounded in a recognizable world are the most compelling. Individuals may live in both worlds, despite Otherland being only made of "light and numbers." Characters dead in real life can still be alive in the virtual world, as in the poignant plight of a young woman, whose dress and manners are 18th century, who's in love with a young man snatched, apparently, from the trenches of WWI. Are they real or "sims" (simulations)? Generously, the author supplies two master villains: one for whom we may begrudge some respect; for the other, no mercy. The Otherland books are a major accomplishment. Agent, Matt Bialer. (Apr. 10)Forecast: Williams should enjoy another run up the genre bestseller lists with this strong concluding volume. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From Booklist The vast conclusion to Williams' vast saga, Otherland, concerns a three-way struggle for the real and the simulated world. Felix Jongleur appears friendlier to Paul Jonas and his various companions and allies but in fact is as ruthlessly ambitious as ever. John Dread operates largely on a physical plane, leaving a trail of dead bodies as he seeks to take over the Grail network from Jongleur. As for the telepathic cripple known as the Other, who is confined in an orbiting satellite, fighting to defend his electronic children from real and virtual enemies, his true nature at last comes to light. In the final confrontation, Jongleur and the Other are destroyed, and Dread overreaches himself. In a less-than-credible happy ending, however, most of the sympathetic characters, with whom readers have slogged along for more than 3,000 pages, survive and even prosper. Williams notably extrapolates the technology of virtual reality, to the point where it is indistinguishable from physical reality for the characters and sometimes the reader, and he exhibits a fine satirical touch when writing about games, folklore, and the influence on society of ultra-high-tech. He is less handy with narrative technique, for the subplots multiply seemingly without end, and with the stage management of an equally multitudinous number of characters. Roland Green Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Dramatic...powerful. -- Locus One of the books I'll be most looking forward to in the year 2001. -- Victoria Strauss for SF Site The ultimate virtual-reality saga, borrowing motifs from cyberpunk, mythology, and world history. -- San Francisco Chronicle Tad Williams has held more jobs than any sane person should admit to—singing in a band, selling shoes, managing a financial institution, throwing newspapers, and designing military manuals, to name just a few. He also hosted a syndicated radio show for ten years, worked in theater and television production, taught both grade-school and college classes, and worked in multimedia for a major computer firm. He is cofounder of an interactive television company, and is currently writing comic books and film and television scripts as well. Tad and his family live in London and the San Francisco Bay Area. You can find Tad Williams at tadwilliams.com. Read more