A review by qu33nofbookz
City of Golden Shadow by Tad Williams

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 The idea/plot of the story is outdated and has been told in a better form after this book was published.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.