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belacqua's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
sillyperson's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
lanica's review against another edition
1.0
I read the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series and loved it. I read it twice and have autographed copies to save. I enjoy epics. I enjoy detail. I enjoy science fiction, computers, virtual reality, anthropology, history, sociology, political intrigue and all the other individual elements of this series. Unfortunetly, I really disliked this book.
I liked the little girl who got messages through her computer, and I liked the sick boy who created a virtual reality that was easier to live in. Other than those two I could care less about any of the characters, and there were a lot of characters. I read the whole book thinking that there should be some sort of connection between them, but it didn't come. I waited for the plot to advance, yet it seemed to seep slowly through the pages and pages of detail.
I read the second book and found that some of these ideas came together, but not quickly or interestingly enough to hold my attention. I didn't read book three or four and don't intend to. This was a great dissapointment to me. I have to really dislike a book to set it aside, and that it was a series from one of my favorite authors was really heartbreaking.
I liked the little girl who got messages through her computer, and I liked the sick boy who created a virtual reality that was easier to live in. Other than those two I could care less about any of the characters, and there were a lot of characters. I read the whole book thinking that there should be some sort of connection between them, but it didn't come. I waited for the plot to advance, yet it seemed to seep slowly through the pages and pages of detail.
I read the second book and found that some of these ideas came together, but not quickly or interestingly enough to hold my attention. I didn't read book three or four and don't intend to. This was a great dissapointment to me. I have to really dislike a book to set it aside, and that it was a series from one of my favorite authors was really heartbreaking.
billymac1962's review against another edition
4.0
A long, long time ago, I received The Dragonbone Chair as a gift. I loved it.
Tad Williams painted a landscape so rich I was hopelessly absorbed in his world. Book 2 came along, and I enjoyed that almost as much, and once I was finished, was looking forward to the final installment in the trilogy.
Well, the next book released was part one of the two-part final volume. I felt duped and resentful, and refused to continue.
It was like when I was a little kid, and was learning to swim under water, and the frigging instructor kept backing away from me just when I thought I was caught up to him and sweet air. Man, that pissed me off.
Now, years later, I see the whole Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series is very highly rated, and I do feel a pang of regret that I never finished it. And, no, I'm not going to go back and read it all over again.
Instead, I waited until I was ready for a big commitment, and decided to
give Williams another go with Otherland.
HooWee. 780 pages later and I feel like I've been reading this forever.
But what's really nice is that Tad Williams can sure tell a story. Like
Dragonbone Chair, I was quite immersed in the story for the most part.
There are a lot of characters to keep track of, but with the story switching from one set to another so frequently, it wasn't tough to manage at all.
The story revolves around a virtual world. The central character, Renie,
is on a mission to save her young brother, who has been left comatose after venturing into a restricted area of the Net. This is a mystery that is ever-present throughout the story, and there are hints that this may have something to do with Otherland, a supposed secret and magnificent subworld that is controlled by powerful real-world world-beaters.
Williams draws out the anticipation of seeing Otherland throughout most of this volume. That, and what the heck has debilitated young Stephen and several other children around the world, is what kept me gripped to the story.
But, geez. 780 pages of small print is one massive prologue. I've been reading this for over a month, and I'm now visualizing this massive book with my bookmark only a quarter way through.
I'm not a fast reader here, folks. I said I decided I was ready for a big commitment, but only if this is a story that I can't wait to pick up again. I finished it last night, and promptly picked up another
novel to start, and today I don't miss Otherland that much.
Well, okay, I do, kind of, but am I going to let this series hijack four months of my reading time? I can't. This is just way too much time invested for something that I am giving four stars for the story thus far.
This was very good. Williams is great, but I can only (highly) recommend him to fast readers or those with a short to-read list.
Never say never, though. Who knows, I just may get a pining for this world and pick up volume 2 months from now...I sure did like Orlando.
Tad Williams painted a landscape so rich I was hopelessly absorbed in his world. Book 2 came along, and I enjoyed that almost as much, and once I was finished, was looking forward to the final installment in the trilogy.
Well, the next book released was part one of the two-part final volume. I felt duped and resentful, and refused to continue.
It was like when I was a little kid, and was learning to swim under water, and the frigging instructor kept backing away from me just when I thought I was caught up to him and sweet air. Man, that pissed me off.
Now, years later, I see the whole Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series is very highly rated, and I do feel a pang of regret that I never finished it. And, no, I'm not going to go back and read it all over again.
Instead, I waited until I was ready for a big commitment, and decided to
give Williams another go with Otherland.
HooWee. 780 pages later and I feel like I've been reading this forever.
But what's really nice is that Tad Williams can sure tell a story. Like
Dragonbone Chair, I was quite immersed in the story for the most part.
There are a lot of characters to keep track of, but with the story switching from one set to another so frequently, it wasn't tough to manage at all.
The story revolves around a virtual world. The central character, Renie,
is on a mission to save her young brother, who has been left comatose after venturing into a restricted area of the Net. This is a mystery that is ever-present throughout the story, and there are hints that this may have something to do with Otherland, a supposed secret and magnificent subworld that is controlled by powerful real-world world-beaters.
Williams draws out the anticipation of seeing Otherland throughout most of this volume. That, and what the heck has debilitated young Stephen and several other children around the world, is what kept me gripped to the story.
But, geez. 780 pages of small print is one massive prologue. I've been reading this for over a month, and I'm now visualizing this massive book with my bookmark only a quarter way through.
I'm not a fast reader here, folks. I said I decided I was ready for a big commitment, but only if this is a story that I can't wait to pick up again. I finished it last night, and promptly picked up another
novel to start, and today I don't miss Otherland that much.
Well, okay, I do, kind of, but am I going to let this series hijack four months of my reading time? I can't. This is just way too much time invested for something that I am giving four stars for the story thus far.
This was very good. Williams is great, but I can only (highly) recommend him to fast readers or those with a short to-read list.
Never say never, though. Who knows, I just may get a pining for this world and pick up volume 2 months from now...I sure did like Orlando.
the_pale_woman's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
This one was interesting. I'm not even sure what to rate it. It's the type of book that offers more questions than answers. More beginnings than endings. To put it simply, this is not a complete story. It felt more like an introduction to this story than the actual beginning. I love big books, but at almost 800 pages even I found myself frustrated with the lack of progress. Plus, right when I felt we were getting somewhere, the book just ended. It's not the worst offense when there are three sequels available to immediately dive into. But still.
The writing style reminds me a lot of Stephen King. More broad details and less chaotic than King but close. It's as if Williams has a similar cadence. I think if you're a fan of The Stand, you might like this.
One big problem I had with this was listening to it on audio. The narrator is fine, but the edit didn't bother to add any pause between perspective shifts. The shifts are so abrupt that you become momentarily confused about what's happening. Or you start thinking that you missed something. I think this would be far less confusing to read physically.
The writing style reminds me a lot of Stephen King. More broad details and less chaotic than King but close. It's as if Williams has a similar cadence. I think if you're a fan of The Stand, you might like this.
One big problem I had with this was listening to it on audio. The narrator is fine, but the edit didn't bother to add any pause between perspective shifts. The shifts are so abrupt that you become momentarily confused about what's happening. Or you start thinking that you missed something. I think this would be far less confusing to read physically.
goliath782011's review against another edition
inspiring
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
5.0
qu33nofbookz's review against another edition
1.0
I am amazed at the high rating this book has. This book has way too many characters and plots that have nothing to do with each other and the fragmented storytelling jumping from one to another with no linear timeline is disorienting. There is too much attention to detail that it takes away from what is happening to the story and the characters. Very choppy, heavy on nonessential details and lacks a cohesive storyline with too many characters (who are boring as f*&k and flat, no depth to them) that never connect to each other or the the stories/events of the other characters. The pace of events is slower than paint drying on a cold day. A complete waste of time. Way too many pages, you could cut this in half for the same story (whatever that story actually is since I haven't figured it out by a quarter of the way through). The idea/plot of the story is outdated and has been told in a better form after this book was published. It also rips off bits from several other better written stories to make a mish-mash of a plot that was published as the mess that is this far inferior book.
The book kicks off with Paul in WWI stuck in a muddy trench before getting blown up but not...he is in a gray world with a huge tree going into the clouds which he climbs, meets a trapped angel before being chased by a mechanical giant and eaten ala Jack and the Beanstalk only to wake up back in the trenches. Skip directly to Renie a college teacher in futuristic Africa who has part of her school blown up. She begins teaching a native bush person how to use virtual reality which almost everyone spends all their time in. Move to new storyline a little girl named Christabel who is having a forbidden and very creepy relationship with an older man named Mister Sellars who is trapped in his house because of bad burns to his body. His house is overrun by plants. Jump to Renie having to rescue her little brother from danger in the network/the net as the land of virtual reality is called. She finds him, something smashes through the wall of the building they are hiding in and... Snap quick back to some news that is pointless and back to more teaching. Jump to Renie explaining to her student how virtual reality is not really reality and how to shop for stuff...Then her good for nothing not working continuously drunk father who she is a doormat for even though she does all the housework and pay bills for kicks her younger brother (he's 11) out of the house and she just accepts this. (Woman I'd kick his sorry ass out of the house at this point or I'm wondering why she hasn't done so sooner or taken her brother and left).
Jump to three weeks later and Renie is talking to her student about her family problems and jump forward in time we don't know how long and her brother has fallen into a coma. Another useless news update. Now a new storyline of a D&D character, a barbarian assassin. He and a friend go on a quest. The barbarian is killed and we find out that it's a net character of Orlando Gardiner a very ill boy. Before his character dies he gets a glimpse of a golden light that turns out to be a new world on the net. Interruption of news article. Back to Renie at the hospital which is under quarantine from disease even though her brother is just in a coma. It's been almost a month in the timeline. Renie soon becomes friends with her student who becomes tied into her family problems. They begin to look into why people (more specifically preteens) are going into unexplained comas. Everyone is one of these comas has spent way too much time on the net.
Back to Paul in the trenches. He has been going back and forth from his life to a dream which is driving him crazy as they blur the lines between the two. This is a nightmare story as he crawls through mud full of corpses before finding himself in a white land of nothing. Then he finds a golden world (virtual reality world) and we have to assume he is a character of someone trapped in the net. Cut to useless news report not related to story. Back to Renie, her student, and her brother. More investigating why kids are in Comas. Another news flash. Skip to some odd as shit religious thing going on in the net. Talk of someone challenging the god and him calling up an assassin, Dread, to kill a person in real life. There is some kind of conspiracy going on for control of the net run by rich people. Dread is a psychotic killer. More news.
Renie's story again. She and her student have made fake net ID's so they can get into a rich people's world to see what happened to her brother who had gotten into it before he fell into a coma. They get access to the club and it's a whacked out version of Dante's Inferno. They work their way through nightmares. Renie gets singled out by someone to be kept in the nightmare but she gets away but loses her student.
Next someone who is on death row about to die and the process of dying as a simulation of the net. It's the friend of Orlando named Fredrick. They are sitting in a bar talking about experiences in the net they can have. Orlando is a rich kid who has everything. He is a total D&D nerd. He clues his friend into the golden world in the net that is somehow more real than reality...and finds out only he can/could see it. Jump back to Christabel who is spying on her dad and his friend talk about football. She is reading a fairytale and catches her dad talking about Mister Sellars when her story vid starts talking to her about keeping a secret and for her to come to him and she knows it's from Mister Sellars. She sneaks out to see him taking soap with her and he eats it and it makes him stronger. He may be modified by the military from some things he hints at. Jump to Orlando who is dreaming of the golden world and it's becoming a nightmare. She hops around looking to confuse who is chasing her. She finds her student but he can't get out of the net. More parallels to fairy tales. She has found out what has trapped the kids in the net and it tries to hurt her but she gets out with her student by giving herself a heart attack and getting help from someone in the net that might be a consciousness trapped in the net.
Back to Paul who has jumped through the golden gate into a new world in his dreams. He's in a forest now and he meets a hunter who guides him around. He can't remember much of the last place he was or who he really is. This is another fairy tale inspired nightmare.
And so it goes jumping around with no linear timeline or connections between the characters or their storylines as they all look for the golden light. I am too tired and annoyed to go on with what is happening. If you have made it this far in the book you must be ready to burn this book by now. Good luck if you want to continue.
End of book edit: So most of the characters come together in the last 2 chapters of the book which are not very long and you are left with a cliffhanger and a ton more questions (when all our questions from this story weren't answered!), so you slogged through all the choppy, annoying, uninteresting, disjointed shit only to be left with noting to show at the end. The author hopes you'll come back for more. Well I sure as fuck won't be. This book was too boring, slow, poorly written and frustrating to get no resolution after having put in way too much time and effort. Mr. Williams can stick this book and it's 2 sequels where the sun don't shine.
This book is a early version of Ready Player One but very poorly written. Ready Player One is a build on the plot of this story.
The book kicks off with Paul in WWI stuck in a muddy trench before getting blown up but not...he is in a gray world with a huge tree going into the clouds which he climbs, meets a trapped angel before being chased by a mechanical giant and eaten ala Jack and the Beanstalk only to wake up back in the trenches. Skip directly to Renie a college teacher in futuristic Africa who has part of her school blown up. She begins teaching a native bush person how to use virtual reality which almost everyone spends all their time in. Move to new storyline a little girl named Christabel who is having a forbidden and very creepy relationship with an older man named Mister Sellars who is trapped in his house because of bad burns to his body. His house is overrun by plants. Jump to Renie having to rescue her little brother from danger in the network/the net as the land of virtual reality is called. She finds him, something smashes through the wall of the building they are hiding in and... Snap quick back to some news that is pointless and back to more teaching. Jump to Renie explaining to her student how virtual reality is not really reality and how to shop for stuff...Then her good for nothing not working continuously drunk father who she is a doormat for even though she does all the housework and pay bills for kicks her younger brother (he's 11) out of the house and she just accepts this. (Woman I'd kick his sorry ass out of the house at this point or I'm wondering why she hasn't done so sooner or taken her brother and left).
Jump to three weeks later and Renie is talking to her student about her family problems and jump forward in time we don't know how long and her brother has fallen into a coma. Another useless news update. Now a new storyline of a D&D character, a barbarian assassin. He and a friend go on a quest. The barbarian is killed and we find out that it's a net character of Orlando Gardiner a very ill boy. Before his character dies he gets a glimpse of a golden light that turns out to be a new world on the net. Interruption of news article. Back to Renie at the hospital which is under quarantine from disease even though her brother is just in a coma. It's been almost a month in the timeline. Renie soon becomes friends with her student who becomes tied into her family problems. They begin to look into why people (more specifically preteens) are going into unexplained comas. Everyone is one of these comas has spent way too much time on the net.
Back to Paul in the trenches. He has been going back and forth from his life to a dream which is driving him crazy as they blur the lines between the two. This is a nightmare story as he crawls through mud full of corpses before finding himself in a white land of nothing. Then he finds a golden world (virtual reality world) and we have to assume he is a character of someone trapped in the net. Cut to useless news report not related to story. Back to Renie, her student, and her brother. More investigating why kids are in Comas. Another news flash. Skip to some odd as shit religious thing going on in the net. Talk of someone challenging the god and him calling up an assassin, Dread, to kill a person in real life. There is some kind of conspiracy going on for control of the net run by rich people. Dread is a psychotic killer. More news.
Renie's story again. She and her student have made fake net ID's so they can get into a rich people's world to see what happened to her brother who had gotten into it before he fell into a coma. They get access to the club and it's a whacked out version of Dante's Inferno. They work their way through nightmares. Renie gets singled out by someone to be kept in the nightmare but she gets away but loses her student.
Next someone who is on death row about to die and the process of dying as a simulation of the net. It's the friend of Orlando named Fredrick. They are sitting in a bar talking about experiences in the net they can have. Orlando is a rich kid who has everything. He is a total D&D nerd. He clues his friend into the golden world in the net that is somehow more real than reality...and finds out only he can/could see it. Jump back to Christabel who is spying on her dad and his friend talk about football. She is reading a fairytale and catches her dad talking about Mister Sellars when her story vid starts talking to her about keeping a secret and for her to come to him and she knows it's from Mister Sellars. She sneaks out to see him taking soap with her and he eats it and it makes him stronger. He may be modified by the military from some things he hints at. Jump to Orlando who is dreaming of the golden world and it's becoming a nightmare. She hops around looking to confuse who is chasing her. She finds her student but he can't get out of the net. More parallels to fairy tales. She has found out what has trapped the kids in the net and it tries to hurt her but she gets out with her student by giving herself a heart attack and getting help from someone in the net that might be a consciousness trapped in the net.
Back to Paul who has jumped through the golden gate into a new world in his dreams. He's in a forest now and he meets a hunter who guides him around. He can't remember much of the last place he was or who he really is. This is another fairy tale inspired nightmare.
And so it goes jumping around with no linear timeline or connections between the characters or their storylines as they all look for the golden light. I am too tired and annoyed to go on with what is happening. If you have made it this far in the book you must be ready to burn this book by now. Good luck if you want to continue.
End of book edit: So most of the characters come together in the last 2 chapters of the book which are not very long and you are left with a cliffhanger and a ton more questions (when all our questions from this story weren't answered!), so you slogged through all the choppy, annoying, uninteresting, disjointed shit only to be left with noting to show at the end. The author hopes you'll come back for more. Well I sure as fuck won't be. This book was too boring, slow, poorly written and frustrating to get no resolution after having put in way too much time and effort. Mr. Williams can stick this book and it's 2 sequels where the sun don't shine.
This book is a early version of Ready Player One but very poorly written. Ready Player One is a build on the plot of this story.
treylathe's review against another edition
5.0
A short synopsis (without giving too much away): A woman cyber-researcher stumbles onto a 'virtual world' within the virtual world of the 'near future' internet. This 'Otherland' is something magnitudes greater than the prosaic virtual worlds on the net. And it is deeply secret. She begins to attempt to determine its possibly nefarious purpose with the help of a cast of other 'stumblers'. Much of the series takes place within both the public virtual worlds of the net and this otherland.
First, allow me to give this caveat: I have read all four books in this series and this is the first time I've read something by Tad Williams.
From my reading of the reviews of this book so far, I believe these two things strongly influence what kind of review someone will give this book.
If you have read Tad Williams' fantasy books before, you might be expecting something similar here. Though there are aspects of fantasy, they are tangential to the plot (though fun reading). If you go into reading the book thinking of another Williams fantasy you will be disappointed.
Also, I must agree with many of the reviews here. This first book is very difficult to get through. The characters and the plot take a long time in developing and sometimes it feels if you are wading through too much without gaining much in understanding of the characters or the plot. I put down the book twice after reading the first chapters, it did not catch my interest. I had finally read the book on a vacation with nothing else to do, it wasn't till the end that my interest was peaked.
When Williams gets to the second and third books, he starts to shine in this series. The plot starts making sense and most of the characters start to gain some substance. I absolutely loved going through some of the virtual worlds (cartoon kitchen, I loved it) and some of the characters were great (I need the beetle!). Once I got into the second book in the series, I was hooked and read the the next 2 immediately after. They were very enjoyable and well worth the time.
Perhaps this series would have been better as a trilogy with large portions taken out of the first book, but..if you decide to buy this book, you should do so realizing you are making a commitment to get through 4 books and the first one will be difficult to get through. If you do so, it will be worth the time. I still smile with the memory of some of the characters and events in the book.
I would give the first book a 3 and the next 2 a 5 and the last a 4, since they are a series and should be read and reviewed as one book (these 4 books are not stand alone, but I don't see much 'demarcation' between them, more like one very large book that could have been cut in various combinations with equal results), I give the whole series a 4.
First, allow me to give this caveat: I have read all four books in this series and this is the first time I've read something by Tad Williams.
From my reading of the reviews of this book so far, I believe these two things strongly influence what kind of review someone will give this book.
If you have read Tad Williams' fantasy books before, you might be expecting something similar here. Though there are aspects of fantasy, they are tangential to the plot (though fun reading). If you go into reading the book thinking of another Williams fantasy you will be disappointed.
Also, I must agree with many of the reviews here. This first book is very difficult to get through. The characters and the plot take a long time in developing and sometimes it feels if you are wading through too much without gaining much in understanding of the characters or the plot. I put down the book twice after reading the first chapters, it did not catch my interest. I had finally read the book on a vacation with nothing else to do, it wasn't till the end that my interest was peaked.
When Williams gets to the second and third books, he starts to shine in this series. The plot starts making sense and most of the characters start to gain some substance. I absolutely loved going through some of the virtual worlds (cartoon kitchen, I loved it) and some of the characters were great (I need the beetle!). Once I got into the second book in the series, I was hooked and read the the next 2 immediately after. They were very enjoyable and well worth the time.
Perhaps this series would have been better as a trilogy with large portions taken out of the first book, but..if you decide to buy this book, you should do so realizing you are making a commitment to get through 4 books and the first one will be difficult to get through. If you do so, it will be worth the time. I still smile with the memory of some of the characters and events in the book.
I would give the first book a 3 and the next 2 a 5 and the last a 4, since they are a series and should be read and reviewed as one book (these 4 books are not stand alone, but I don't see much 'demarcation' between them, more like one very large book that could have been cut in various combinations with equal results), I give the whole series a 4.
hastati1989's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0