River of Blue Fire: Otherland Book 2 - Softcover

Williams, Tad

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1473641136 ISBN 13: 9781473641136

Publisher: Hodder Paperback, 2016

Synopsis

Otherland is civilisation's most stunning achievement: a private, multi-dimensional universe built 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 a few and made up of the world's most powerful and ruthless individuals. The purpose of Other is still a mystery. But it may not remain so for long. For a small band of adventurers has penetrated the secrecy that surrounds it and has broken into the amazing worlds with 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.

About this title

Review:

Tad Williams began his Otherland series with the massive City of Golden Shadow and continues it with the equally hefty River of Blue Fire. Williams says it will require four (big) books to tell his complex, multithreaded tale, and at the rate that the plot of this second novel moves, readers will see what he means. Not that the book is a slow read; in fact, River is as much a suspenseful page-turner as the first book.

As River opens, we join up again with the ragtag bunch of searchers trapped in an astoundingly detailed and frightfully dangerous virtual world known as Otherland. Lurking in disguise among the group is the brutally vicious serial killer Dread, trying to find information that will help him overthrow his Grail Brotherhood masters. The group follows a ubiquitous river through world after world, unable to go offline, and subject to the increasingly terrifying certainty that things in this supposedly virtual place are all too real. Meanwhile, Paul Jonas, an amnesic (but somehow pivotal) character fleeing from two sinister beings, finds more and more of his memory as he does his own Huck Finn river trip. As in the first novel, each new world that the characters enter, from Paleolithic Ice Age to something suspiciously like Oz, is fully realized and completely unpredictable.

Williams is a master at parceling out information to the reader in dribs and drabs, which is frustrating yet tantalizing, like a particularly good computer game. When the group is split up and the adventure divides further, the reader senses the author as a puppet master, following some incredibly complex flows of information. The best course is just to hang on and enjoy Williams's deft characterizations, lush descriptions, and wildly divergent plot. If you've ever been white-water rafting, you'll recognize the feeling. --Therese Littleton

About the Author:

Tad Williams is a California-based fantasy superstar. His genre-creating (and genre-busting) books have sold tens of millions worldwide, in twenty-five languages. His considerable output of epic fantasy and science fiction book-series, stories of all kinds, urban fantasy novels, comics, scripts, etc., have strongly influenced a generation of writers: the Otherland epic now plays as an MMO on steam.com. Tad is currently immersed in the creation of The Last King of Osten Ard, planned as a trilogy with two intermediary novels. He, his family and his animals live in the Santa Cruz mountains in a suitably strange and beautiful house. @tadwilliams @mrstad

About this edition

• Publisher: Hodder Paperback
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1473641136
• ISBN 13: 9781473641136
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 784