River of Blue Fire (Otherland, Volume 2)
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: 1999-09-01
ISBN: 0886778441
Number of pages: 704
Publisher: DAW
Book Reviews of River of Blue Fire (Otherland, Volume 2)
Book Review: Follow the River
Summary: 5 Stars
With the massive introduction and explanation of the world the Otherland novels taken care of in "City of Golden Shadow" it's time to get down to some serious business (and the actual action part of the plot) with the second volume in the series, "River of Blue Fire."
Where we last left them Renie (the virtual reality professor)!Xabbu (her one time student who happens to be one of the last surviving bushmen), Orlando (a dying fourteen year old boy), Fredericks (Orlando's best friend, just revealed as a girl), Martine (a French virtual expert who is blind and processes data in a whole new way) T4b (an apparent adolescent in gaming body armor), Sweet William (a gothic clown with a chip on his shoulder) Florimel (a mysterious supposed woman who doesn't want to share information) and Quan Li (the grandmother of a child affected by the same mysterious unknown illness striking down child net users all around the world-including Renie's brother Stephen) had just managed to follow the bread crumbs that the seemingly benevolent Mr. Sellers left to the Otherland network-only to be abandoned as an attack in the real world left them stranded in the virtual land-where things may not be real but can kill them just the same.
Our group of adventures doesn't stay together for long though. First Renie and !Xabbu and then Orlando and Fredericks are separated from the larger group and left to fend for themselves in increasingly bizarre simulations ranging for a twisted OZ to a cartoon kitchen. And there's a larger problem. None of the group or others who are the normal inhabitants of the Otherland can get offline. Making the dangers that would normally just bounce you offline now probable fatalities.
Before they lost connection with Sellers the whole group was told to follow the river that makes its way in some way or another through all of the simulations-and to find a man named Paul Jonas- who it seems Sellers himself helped escape from the Grail Brotherhood and represents something of great importance to those in power-especially the leader of the TGB.
Jonas himself is still being bounced around, though he has regained much of his early memory he still has no idea what's happening to him or why the era he's in keep changing. Pursued through multiple simulations by programs designed to catch him and detain him he finally starts to catch on to the fact that some of the places he's been visiting are fictional.
And at the same time, unknown to the rest of the virtual party, the insane serial killer who calls himself Dread and normally works for the head of the brotherhood has discovered the network by accident and taken over one of the traveling parties Sims for his own sick purposes-an impediment that can only make the all important task the travelers must accomplish that much harder.
To top it all off the Otherland network is experiencing odd failures-and the oh-so mysterious operating system that runs it (which only one man seems to know anything about) is degrading and warping the virtual environment in weird and dangerous ways.
And a strange winged woman in multiple forms is appearing to our travelers to give cryptic advice in almost every simulation.
Meanwhile in the real world one of the actors who plays the all popular Uncle Jingle on the Net is suffering debilitating headaches-which only occur when she's doing her job. Things take a more drastic turn when an attorney hired to represent Fredericks' and Orlando's parents seeks her out for information on what could have possibly happened to the teens.
And a pair of detectives in Australia are tracking down an old cold case-a case that leads them to a boy who supposedly died years ago-a boy who called himself Dread...
Like its predecessor this book has a ton going on. There is far more immediate action in this novel because most of the background has been covered already. But the way Williams writes is so beautiful-so very true to what people would feel like in such a situation. Instead of taking our brave group of explorers and making them constantly optimistic and fairly powerful, the author does an excellent job illustrating how hopeless these few little people feel coming up against the most sophisticated piece of technology in the world that happens to be owned by the richest and most powerful people in the world.
Every bit as excellent as the first I recommend that if you even slightly liked reading "City of Golden Shadow" that you go on to this book. And if like me, you are non-tech savvy enough to routinely forget which of the four buttons on your Ipod turns it off, then have no fear. The tech in this is simplified enough for a luddite and the frequent funny moments make up for anything hard to understand.
Five stars. I'm on to the next book.
Summary of River of Blue Fire (Otherland, Volume 2)
And now a small band of adventurers has penetrated the veil of secrecy that prevents the uninitiated from entering Otherland. But having broken into the amazing worlds within worlds that make up this universe, they are trapped, unable to escape back to their own flesh-and-blood bodies in the real world. And as dangers and circumstances split their party into small, widely scattered groups, their only hope of reuniting lies in returning again and again to the River that flows?in one form or another?through all the worlds.
But the odds seem to be completely against them as they?and the one outsider with whom they might join forces?become hopelessly lost in realms where an Ice Age tribe's fears can only be quenched in blood...where insects are as large and deadly as dinosaurs...where they are caught in the war between a man made of straw and one made of tin...where cartoon ads take on a life of their own...where humans strive to survive in the aftermath of an alien invasion...and where one among their party is actually The Grail Brotherhood's most terrifying weapon?a sociopathic killer who has never failed and whose current mission is to make certain that not even one member of this little invasion force lives long enough to reveal the truth about Otherland to the people of Earth...
Tad Williams began his Otherland series with the massive City of Golden Shadow and continues it with the equally hefty River of Blue Fire. Williams says it will require four (big) books to tell his complex, multithreaded tale, and at the rate that the plot of this second novel moves, readers will see what he means. Not that the book is a slow read; in fact, River is as much a suspenseful page-turner as the first book.
As River opens, we join up again with the ragtag bunch of searchers trapped in an astoundingly detailed and frightfully dangerous virtual world known as Otherland. Lurking in disguise among the group is the brutally vicious serial killer Dread, trying to find information that will help him overthrow his Grail Brotherhood masters. The group follows a ubiquitous river through world after world, unable to go offline, and subject to the increasingly terrifying certainty that things in this supposedly virtual place are all too real. Meanwhile, Paul Jonas, an amnesic (but somehow pivotal) character fleeing from two sinister beings, finds more and more of his memory as he does his own Huck Finn river trip. As in the first novel, each new world that the characters enter, from Paleolithic Ice Age to something suspiciously like Oz, is fully realized and completely unpredictable.
Williams is a master at parceling out information to the reader in dribs and drabs, which is frustrating yet tantalizing, like a particularly good computer game. When the group is split up and the adventure divides further, the reader senses the author as a puppet master, following some incredibly complex flows of information. The best course is just to hang on and enjoy Williams's deft characterizations, lush descriptions, and wildly divergent plot. If you've ever been white-water rafting, you'll recognize the feeling. --Therese Littleton
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