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A review by yak_attak
Sea of Silver Light by Tad Williams
2.5
Tad opened us off with a shaky but incredibly promising start, with City of Golden Shadow - a strange, slow, but captivating story that flickered between sci-fi, fantasy, and a present day mystery. Multiple PoVs, intermixed and developing into a... somewhat unsatisfying conclusion, but one that promised more to come. Then the second book just hung there. Then the third book just hung there some more... until the end, where it mixes things up. Finally - finally I thought, this time I'm going to kick that football...
As much as I've struggled to get to this book, I've still believed the entire time that Tad could pull it off, bring it all together and keep things satisfactory. But it just doesn't happen. The changes wrought in the finale of book 3 are to very little end, and instead of reckoning with having the narrative be different, our characters are again split up for no reason, and we go through a similar series of adventures through an intricate (and very inventive) world. There's a lot of awesome, bizarre, confusing and magical imagery here, but that's about all there is to sell it - at the end of the road, it's the same as books 2 and 3.
So why does this rate even less than those? Well, it's just a damn stab in the back when the entire last quarter of the book is a single character expositing at length, going on and on all about the questions you had the entire series, which were all magically kept from you, none of it revealed naturally, none of it scattered throughout. There's absolutely enough here for a gradual, slow build - a big reveal at the end of every book. No, Tad saves everything for the very, very, very end of all 4000 pages. And it's just... boring at that point. Tick all the boxes, reveal all the clues. With the rapid fire ending, you don't get time to sit with one before the next one happens, so it becomes "Hey, X happened! Oh, I like that," "Oh, but Y is involved then... that sucks. What's next."
I dunno. Tad has such a marvelous idea and world and characters, and it just doesn't work in practice. Maybe a 2-book cut of Otherland would really work for me. Maybe it just needs to go back to the beginning. I love what he tried here, but it's going to be one of the more disappointing series I've ever read, unfortunately.... yet still maybe worth a try? I wouldn't turn anyone away, at least. Give the first book a shot, and if you're not convinced, then don't continue, because that's what you're getting. Over and over again.
As much as I've struggled to get to this book, I've still believed the entire time that Tad could pull it off, bring it all together and keep things satisfactory. But it just doesn't happen. The changes wrought in the finale of book 3 are to very little end, and instead of reckoning with having the narrative be different, our characters are again split up for no reason, and we go through a similar series of adventures through an intricate (and very inventive) world. There's a lot of awesome, bizarre, confusing and magical imagery here, but that's about all there is to sell it - at the end of the road, it's the same as books 2 and 3.
So why does this rate even less than those? Well, it's just a damn stab in the back when the entire last quarter of the book is a single character expositing at length, going on and on all about the questions you had the entire series, which were all magically kept from you, none of it revealed naturally, none of it scattered throughout. There's absolutely enough here for a gradual, slow build - a big reveal at the end of every book. No, Tad saves everything for the very, very, very end of all 4000 pages. And it's just... boring at that point. Tick all the boxes, reveal all the clues. With the rapid fire ending, you don't get time to sit with one before the next one happens, so it becomes "Hey, X happened! Oh, I like that," "Oh, but Y is involved then... that sucks. What's next."
I dunno. Tad has such a marvelous idea and world and characters, and it just doesn't work in practice. Maybe a 2-book cut of Otherland would really work for me. Maybe it just needs to go back to the beginning. I love what he tried here, but it's going to be one of the more disappointing series I've ever read, unfortunately.... yet still maybe worth a try? I wouldn't turn anyone away, at least. Give the first book a shot, and if you're not convinced, then don't continue, because that's what you're getting. Over and over again.