Mountain of Black Glass (Otherland, Volume 3)
by Tad Williams
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Book Summary Information
Author: Tad WilliamsEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-09-01
ISBN: 0886779065
Number of pages: 784
Publisher: DAW
Book Reviews of Mountain of Black Glass (Otherland, Volume 3)
Book Review: Ghosts in the machine
Summary: 5 Stars
When we last left off in the massive 3300+ page novel that is "Otherland" none of our travelers where in a good state. Renie, !Xabbu, Martine, Florimel, T4b and the mysterious and childlike perhaps puppet (virtually created person) Emily were left stranded in an incredibly strange sim world when the psycho Dread finally revealed himself and took off with the precious lighter that may have enabled the group to travel to specific destinations instead of just following the river from one world to the next. And the world that this group is stuck in is not a good one-for one thing it seems to be unfinished. There are things that could be sky or hills or trees but none of them are those things. With everyone traumatized by Dread's deception and the eeriness of the world they currently have no way out of the group makes the decision to be open and honest with each other about their life stories and what brought them to this strange quest.
Meanwhile Orlando and Sam Fredericks are smack dab in the middle of a mythological Egypt-(the leader of the grail brotherhoods favorite world) and have unwittingly fallen in with some members of the deeply mysterious circle movement-who's motivation to bring down the Otherland network fits perfectly with our pairs own goals. The groups form a short lived common cause and through a circle member learn a great deal more about how the gates (points of travel between one world and the next) work. But a terrible uprising of god against god has made this Egypt a dangerous place to be-and Orlando and Sam need to get out as soon as possible-while the dying Orlando can still muster the strength to make a difference in this quest.
Paul Jonas-who's foggy memory is getting clearer and is now aware that he's in a simulation- washed up in Trojan War Greece, cast as the role of Odysseus but apparenty playing the part backward-he needs to get to the war from his Island kingdom, not the other way around. And there are many trials to impede his progress.
As the unfinished land that the larger group is stuck in becomes odder and more unstable Martine and !Xabbu figure out a way to open a gateway that Dread used to run from them and find themselves in an endless house that is seemingly the whole of the universe. The environment is complex and strange enough but when one of their own is taken by Dread and a house with no end must be searched the group begins to fray emotionally.
In the real world former actress on an extremely popular children's show Olga Pirofsky is hearing the voices of children-thousands of children crying out to her for help when she is semi-connected to the net. She doesn't know if she's going crazy-or if her connection to the show and the manifestation of a net related illness is showing her things no one else can know about.
Mr. Sellers makes a break for real freedom-and takes a huge risk-when he reaches out to the father of his childhood helper Christabel Sorensen-the man tasked for security on an army base that may have had the sole purpose of guarding the old man- for help with the situation now that he has lost contact with the travelers he led to the network and the group, with Cho-Cho, a street boy who's also been assisting Sellers take off to meet up with another contact of Sellers, the attorney named Catur Ramsey who is representing Sam and Orlando's family's and has been busily tracing the pairs net activity looking for clues to their sudden illness.
Dread continues his murderous ways in the real world as well, working to gain total control of his much hated employer, Felix Jongleur, the oldest and most powerful man in the world who is also the head of TGB. At his side is Dulcie Anwin, super tech, who knows nothing of his real nature but finds herself both scared of and drawn to him.
At the same time two Australian detectives stay on an old murder case that has ties to aboriginal mythology-and a boy who called himself Dread, but they find themselves railroaded at every turn-as though someone erased his existence.
And in the old mountain bunker where Renie and !Xabbu's bodies wait as they roam trapped in the Otherland is coming under attack. Sellers is trying to help but its only three men with no weapons against an army that will eventually get in.
Though our characters are spread across the map (real and virtual) through their contact with Sellers, with people of the circle and Paul's mysterious angle bird woman they have been given a goal-to find an endless black mountain. And to find it soon. But though our intrepid travelers may be learning about the network and accomplishing minor goals they are starting to realize what they're really up against-the richest, most powerful men and women in the world. And as dedicated as those who followed the trail to the golden city are to their cause, in truth they are little more than ghosts flitting about in a massive machine.
It's clear that they'll need al the help they can get-from mysterious bird angels and multi-religious organizations, from old shadowy men, from outdated net gadgets and from outsiders in the real world. But the most help may come from the unlikeliest source of all...
As you can probably tell from my ridiculously long review this book is no less complicated then the ones before it-in fact more and more layers of complexity and cloak and dagger play are added in each book. I'm more than a little stunned that Williams manages to keep all his story lines straight (huge thanks to the publishers for including the mini synopsis of the last book in the beginning of the next book by the way) and keep the massive number of characters unique and totally original.
The writing of this book is just as good as the last. Action and adventure in spades, bravery, tragedy, and that special bit of Tad Williams humor which still gets me just as much. It's so subtle but so incredibly funny.
Essentially this book is just as good as the first two. And while reading it I had a thought-writing a series like this gives Williams total freedom to include every little fantasy and sci-fi world he wanted to write about but couldn't make work. It's the perfect environment for ideas that writers truly liked but couldn't really make go anywhere. I could be totally off base but some of these worlds feel so well developed that they almost deserve their own novels.
Five stars and on to the next book. What am I going to do when I finish this series? I have all of Williams other works but in spite of how much I need to know what happens next I'm going to miss all these people-and the many worlds they travel through-when its all over.
Summary of Mountain of Black Glass (Otherland, Volume 3)
Mountain of Black Glass is the third volume of Tad Williams' highly acclaimed four-book series, Otherland. A truly unique reading experience combining elements of science fiction,fantasy, and techno-thriller, it is a rich epic tale in which virtual reality could prove the key to a whole new universe of possibilities for the entire human race--or become the exclusive domain of the rich and the ruthless as they seek a technological pathway to immortality....
Otherland, the quartet of which Mountain of Black Glass is the powerful third part, combines some terrifying speculation on the future of virtual reality with adventures no less terrifying because they are technologized dreaming. These are dreams the adventurers cannot awaken from and in which, if they die, they are really dead.
An epidemic of comatose children has led Renie and her San friend !Xabbu into the net and to a series of dream worlds created as palaces by the corrupt aspiring immortals, the Grail Brotherhood. Two of those children, Orlando and Fredericks, have become adventurers in their own right, while their parents' lawyer Ramsey follows real-world money and lesbian cop Calliope tracks a serial killer with serious ambitions to become an angry god. In this volume, adventures take place in a mythic ancient Egypt and a rambling Gormenghastlike house before all the virtual adventurers meet where they were always destined to, before the walls of Troy.
"All around, death. It was not a quiet presence during the long day--not a pale-faced maiden bringing surcease from pain, not a skillful reaper with a scalpel-sharp blade.... Death on the Trojan plain was a crazed beast that roared and clawed and smashed, which was everywhere at once, and which in its unending fury showed that even armored men were terribly frail things."
Tad Williams takes the gameworld and turns it on its head, passionately; how do we know that what bleeds does not feel pain? He writes a classic of cyberspace adventure that has a sorrowful heart. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk
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