.jpg "tad williams otherland mmo")
Imagination is all the Other has, and so far it is what has kept it from abject despair.
TAD WILLIAMS OTHERLAND MMO SERIES
This all ties in with one of the main themes of the series as a whole, which is the power of fantasy. Because of the horrid treatment at the hands of Jongleur’s engineers, the Other still views itself as a child, and therefore looks at the world as a kind of giant story. The Other’s safe space is populated by oddball versions of various children’s stories. However, the Other still has a self-built refuge within the network, which until now has been the untouched refuge of an abused child. Anyway, Dread has figured out a way to hurt the operation system, because all Dread understands is pain. There are a good many staggering coincidences throughout the explanations of this story which may or may not make sense within the confines of the narrative, but just go with it. It seems that Jongleur, in his mad quest for immortality, abducted this poor kid at birth because it had latent psychic powers that Jongleur could harness to power his network. It turns out that the Other is in fact a human child. Actually, the entire back half of the novel is an exercise in strangeness. After a while we discover that Renie and company are actually within the operating system itself, and it only gets more weird from there. It is up to our scrappy heroes to figure out a way to dethrone him. He’s a near-future version of Sauron, after all. For this kind of book, however, that’s totally fine. Sadly, Dread is more a caricature of evil than ever, and has pretty much zero depth to him. Dread, now in control, has fulfilled the previous promise of entropy within the system so that the entire network is corrupted. As the story progresses, the situation becomes more desperate and finally the pages begin to turn more swiftly. Ramsay the lawyer, Olga the net performer, Calliope Skouros the Aussie cop, and even Beezle (Orlando’s digital assistant) move into position to fulfill their roles in the action. Sellars, who to this point has been saying “I’m super busy” a lot, finally starts giving answers, including his backstory. Meanwhile, the ancillary characters are all lining up for the finale. Still, slow burns are par for the course with this, and to be fair, once an actual world appears around these characters it is very cool. If I have one knock against this final volume, it is the meandering, vague, and frustrating beginning. Then they spend too much time on a grueling hike down the mountain, only to find themselves in an endless mist where their party is fractured even further. They are in a nowhere place atop a vast mountain. The final novel begins with Renie, !Xabbu, Fredericks, Jongleur, and an idiot version of one of the other Grail dudes. The ending of the third book left our heroes separated again and the network itself in chaos. The biggest shift of the fourth novel from the rest of the series is in its move away from the virtual worlds of the Otherland network. I should probably talk about it now, so spoilers ahoy. Characters end up where they probably should. Questions are answered and they largely make sense. Somehow, someway, Williams has tied up nearly every loose end in a satisfactory manner. More importantly, you should know that there is a good conclusion. You know going in that there will be a conclusion. Also, despite the length, it has a definitive ending. It’s long, it’s detailed, it meanders, nobody says ‘fuck.’ If you’re looking to spend a long time with engaging characters in a well realized world, you can do much worse. This is a certain kind of fantasy/sci-fi epic.
The disclaimer of the first three novels bears repeating, though.
I don’t want to sell the series short, though, as I truly did enjoy the series as a whole. Therefore, just getting through them feels like an accomplishment.
But man, these were some seriously long novels, and as we’ve seen they’re not exactly briskly paced. I did it! Yes, I know, well done for reading a whole book. They’re not bad! Maybe check them out if you have ‘unemployed teenager’ kind of time on your hands. Yo, this is about part four of a four-part series: Part One. Novel * Tad Williams * Virtual Apocalypse * 2001
0 kommentar(er)
