Book 9: City of Golden Shadow

Tad Williams has made me a squeeing fangirl in this first volume of the Otherlands series. So much so that I’m considering searching through fanfic sites looking to see if there are any, say, Orlando/Frederics shippers out there or if it’s just me. He’s woven a wonderfully complex and epic struggle that is really hard to just summarize suscinctly, especially just the first book.

Basically, you’ve got a group called the Grail Brotherhood, who’ve designed and built a place called Otherland, which has been spiriting away Earth’s children through the Internet. Among the kids taken is Stephen, brother of Renie, the main character. With the help of Xabbu, an African bushman she’s tutoring in virtual ingeneering, Renie sets out to discover what was done to Stephen.\

Meanwhile, Orlando Gardener, a terminally ill young man, lives live vicariously through his character, Thargor, scourge of the Middle Country, a barbarian who reminds me of so many munchkin gamers’ characters I’ve known in RL. Thargor is killed during an adventure when Orlando catches a glimpse of a mysterious golden city, and then, with the reluctant help of his best friend, Frederics (who also intrigues me quite a bit) he sets out looking for the city.

Then there’s the frighteningly psychotic Dread whose amusements involve killing random women, and Christabel, a little girl on a military base, and Mr. Sellers, and so many others. All of them are depicted realistically through the author’s wonderful narrative voice.

I should also give a shout-out to the NLS narrator, Eric Sandvold, who reads the series. The man’s a brilliant voice actor, and he brings Williams’s prose to life wonderfully.

My quibbles with the book were few. First of all, I kind of think he could have cut out a little bit and made the ending flow together a little more without sacrificing a whole lot. And the books are all loooong, and definitely not light reads which are slow to get moving.

Other than that, though, I’m looking forward to continuing to be absorbed in these books.

Rating: 97/100