So, why did I read all four of these if I hated the first one so much? Well, I got to the end of the first one and was infuriated by how little I knew about what was really going on. I already owned the second book when I started reading the first, and it seemed insane not to read it if I already owned it. I was hoping they would improve, and I wanted to know how the whole series ended. Truly, I wish I had not bothered. A shocking waste of time.

10/10With Sea of Silver Light the magic journey in the Otherland series comes to an end and with Tad Williams having made a wonderful finale in, perhaps, one of his best book to date but also one of my most favorite.In this book Williams manages to close the series very beautiful as through his complex world-building and his, truly, countless characters has made a really strong story with lots of twist and revelations that will change radically the course of the protagonists, and also many, wond...

I wish VR would be already that advanced nowadays. Finally, everything comes together and the many plotlines that were established over the series culminate in a science fantasy overkill. Now, much makes more sense, and many open questions are answered and I am overemphasizing this aspect because everything is so freaking big in this series.It would really interest me how many ideas were originals and how many interpretations and adaptions of known fantasy and sci-fi novels and series, because t...

This is one of the worst books I have ever read.Its particularly bad because the series started with such amazing promise; the first book is literally brilliant. The next two were pretty mediocre; well-written, but ultimately travelogue-fantasy without any plot. Characters just stumbled from interesting locale to interesting locale and ended up right back where they started from. But this last book is terrible. I was literally shouting out loud in the street when I read the climax, it was that b...

Otherland is the first fantasy series that I've finished this year (I've read a few other book #1s with no intention of continuing, including Tad William's own slogfest MS&T). I started a topic that got pretty long many years back about fantasy series that ended somewhere between well and spectacular. It didn't turn out to be a very long list. Otherland isn't going on it. It wasn't terrible, it just wore out its welcome. The least interesting character ended up being the hinge point of the entir...

I had forgotten so much! The first time I read this book I just remember zooming through it to get to the end so I guess not a whole lot stuck besides some big points. This is definitely an interesting series to read with a great cast of strong characters that are very human with all of the good, bad, and in between. The worlds created are amazing, the technology is fascinating. I'm glad I finally got around to revisiting.

Whew, what a ride. Almost 4000 pages in this series, but it was never boring. The ending was good, a proper closing for so much material. Tad Williams is just an amazing writer, I usually don't really enjoy SciFi but this was a great series for me!

Sea of Silver Light is the next book in the series and has our characters finally getting to grips with their opposition and overcoming them! :D This was hinted at and heavily set up in the previous book with the gang encountering the 'Other' directly for the first as well being scattered to a mountain top! :D Understandably this gives and sets a number of big challenges for this book and sets you wondering as to what the characters are going to be put through as the book progresses as the size

Well, this was a journey. Didn't expect, that it would take me that long to finish these 4 books.But it was worth it in every aspect, Tad Williams created a truly immersive universe, like i've seen few before and the loose strings and all of the little mysteries were explained and came to an organic and satisfying end, creating an holistic experience one can read over and over again.simply amazing.

The only VR that fascinated me this much was the one Greg Egan depicted in his Permutation City. Take that one and multiply it thousandfold and you'll get the Grail network here.Yes, it could have been shorter, three volumes I think would have been enough. But then again, you'll never get a worldbuilding like this ever again, so why not enjoy the adventures?The author imagination blew me away; so many simulations, each so different than the other - from childhood stories, cartoon characters, myt...

This book, the fourth in a four-book fantasy series, is an amazing example of how a good idea can be stretched and diluted until it is no longer pleasurable to read. There is nothing particularly wrong with the Otherland series. The ideas are interesting, the execution is fairly creative, some of the characters are competently developed, etc. But it is clear that the objective of the author (and the editor/publisher) was to create a large series (measured by the heft of the books and the number

Executive Summary: This series is a monster, and thankfully after all those hours, it comes to an enjoyable conclusion.Audio book: Yup, George Newbern is still excellent. I might have liked this series less in text due to the slow parts, but Mr. Newbern really brings the world and it's characters to life in a way that put him up there in the top tier of audiobook narrators for me. Full Review This review will be a bit lighter than it probably would have been had I written it a month ago. Time

Fun fact! Did you know that the original title of this book was "Tad Williams Kicks You in the Teeth"? Okay, not really. But it felt like it when I read this book. I have so many issues with this book, but ultimately it all boils down to this:Almost NOTHING in the previous books really matters. The amazing computer network is... okay, you did see the spoiler tag, right?...A FREAKING PSYCHIC BABY BRAIN IN A SATELLITE.Almost everything else -- the character they've been chasing, the weird powers t...

No matter how many times I read this (or this, fifth time, listen to it on audiobook) I still fall so hard for this book, and this series, that it's an emotional pain when I get to the end. Not lying - I teared up when I knew I was on the last few paragraphs.Endless adventure, every permutation of it, all in one story, and with four huge installments, there's a proper amount of time to get in some really deep, satisfying character development, which is exactly what happens. I feel like I'm one o...

Audiobook from Penguin AudioNarrated by George NewbernLength: 37.75 hoursThe finale to the Otherland series, Sea of Silver Light wraps up the multitude of story lines that began in City of Golden Shadow. While the book dragged in places, and some may find that the book (and the series, especially in the middle books) wanders a bit too much, it is hard not to appreciate Tad Williams' amazingly prescient series, especially if you're a fan of a) the internet and b) classic literature. It's probably...

An exciting conclusion, I loved it.Everything falls apart at the close of Mountain of Black Glass (Otherland #3), and now the unlikely heroes of the Otherland system are scattered far and wide in the heart of the dying operating system and beyond. Renie, !Xabbu, and Fredericks are stuck with unlikely allies in the evil Felix Jongleur and the brain damaged Ricardo Klement. But even this tenuous partnership is shattered when the virtual world shatters, and Renie finds herself stranded in an amorph...

In "Sea of Silver Light," book four in the "Otherland" tetrology, Tad Williams wraps up his massive sci-fi saga. Four big books in eight medium-sized sentences:In a not so distant future children across the globe are being lost to unexplainable comas. For South African college professor Renie Sulaweyo, whose baby brother Stephen is among those affected, the horror of this epidemic is all too real. Researching Stephen's condition leads Renie to the Otherland, a massively complex virtual reality n...

The four books of this series took me most of the last 6 months as I honestly found them somewhat of a slog at the beginning. I'm not really sure I would have stuck with it had the series not come highly recommended, but I'm extremely glad I fought my initial instinct. I became increasingly attached to the characters as they encountered the frustration, hope and challenges of an impossible quest in an environment beyond their control. Initially I thought the quest within the virtual world would

This book was a royal mindfuck and I wouldn't have hated it except that the ending was horrible and sucked a barrel of dicks.That stupid religious lady babbling about the computer star children at the end was one of the fucking stupidest things I have ever read in my life, and I have read a few pages of the Left Behind series.That having been said there are a couple of really cool explosions, so two stars you get, Mr. Williams. Bravo on at least giving us that much. I guess...

Compelling characters and a plotline that could be the envy of any writer. Best books I've read in a good while. The teenage netslang was a bit off sometimes, but that's not why I gave the last book of the Otherland series 4 stars - it's the ending. Everybody gets their reward, all the baddies are duly punished :yawn: a bit like Sunday school. It sort of killed the whole story for me. SPOILERDid the author absolutely have to resurrect Orlando? He was one of my favorite characters and when Sam dr...