Otherland: River of Blue Fire (Tad Williams)

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Otherland: River of Blue Fire
by Tad Williams

***
It must have taken three or four months for me to finish this book. Between school work and composition, I haven’t had much time for reading. So what’s the verdict on the sequel to Tad Williams’ superb Otherland? As sequels go, this one’s pretty good, but not great. It does make me want to read the third volume because of the overall story is compelling, but more than anything else, the novel feels like a transition, sort of like a plain between two mountains (although I have no idea how good the third book’s going to be, the setting¾within a virtual Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey¾holds promise. And besides, it’s called The Mountain of Black Glass. Oooh….)

In this volume, a band of adventurers have broken into the virtual Otherland network, but they are unable to escape from it. In a Tolkienesque move, the group breaks up into an array of smaller bands, each struggling to survive in their own respective worlds. Paul Jonas is still adrift, but he’s starting to get a grip on his situation, realizing that he is a prisoner of a massive simulation rather than the product of his own deranged imagination. Renie and !Xabbu are still kicking along, as are Orlando and Fredericks (their relationship practically cries out "Frodo and Sam!"), plus a host of other characters, within and without the network. There’s also a twist: someone in this group is Dread, the sadistic serial killer from the first novel, but none of us know who. And Tad Williams painstakingly manipulates us till the very last chapter to keep us guessing.

River of Blue Fire is more a showcase to Tad Williams’ imagination (an incredible one, I must say) than to his writing skill. His VR worlds are surreal and yet so richly portrayed that you can practically taste them. The standout worlds include a giant bug world (all the humans are smaller than ants) and a cartoon kitchen bloated to global proportions. Some of the virtual worlds are deliberate spinoffs from other sources (there’s a twist on the Wizard of Oz as well as The War of the Worlds); others are based on actual places, like 17th century Venice. Since the previous Otherland was really nothing more an excellent prologue, this book seems to have given Williams a chance to do what he wanted to do: expand his virtual reality palette (the fun stuff) without really expanding on story (the difficult stuff). The result is a book that has more action but less intrigue, feeling more relaxed and leisurely in the long run. Therefore, even though the characters find themselves in an increasing number of dangerous situations, the novel crawls at a slower pace than the first. There are only one or two big revelations, and many of the questions that readers encounter in the first book are still largely unanswered in this volume.

My main complaint for this novel is that I feel it could have been compressed. Most of the episodes which take place in real life¾and that includes subplots dealing with Orlando and Fredericks’ families, their lawyer, the detectives, Uncle Jingles, Jeremiah and Long Joseph, and Cristabel¾feel like they were written to take up space. I enjoyed the minor story line with Dulcie Anwin, Dread’s partner in crime, but the other subplots, no matter how relevant, just don’t have the punch to make them worthy of so much elaboration and storytelling.

Some of the seamless qualities from the first novel are also lacking here. !Xabbu, though still likable, is reduced to playing the eternally wise man, spinning off his native tales so that Renie can gain insight into her destiny. Their revelations near the end border on cheesy; in fact, Williams is often aware of when his characters dip into cliché, and tries to apologize for them with a sarcasm that usually fails. And then there’s the whole identity problem dealing with Dread (which I mentioned above), that forces Williams to tell part of his VR adventures through the ‘eyes’ of the blind woman, Martine Desroubins, the only character whose innocence we are certain. Unfortunately, she has to describe her experiences through diaries, which disrupt the flow of the story’s momentum. These flaws aside, I must say that the series overall is very good, full of dark concepts balanced with light humour, and I am looking forward to whatever Williams has in store for us in the third novel.