However, this book wasn't supposed to be an epic-adventure-science fiction tale. I just read DISCLOSURE from Michael Chrichton and I enjoyed it. I read and enjoy other genres that involve email, computers and the like.
#Otherland tad williams movie#
It all seemed too normal.too cliché.too POSSIBLE, I suppose.Įven Dread seemed to me to be no more dangerous than a villain from Clint Eastwood's DIRTY HARRY movie series. If the basic mechanisms driving the book on are something that I can do at home, I'm not interested. I don't know if you understand that, but basically I like to feel like I'm reading a FANTASY or SCIENCE-FICTION. I suppose it is because when I read fantasy or science-fiction, I like this formula: That the core of the story is fantasy or science-fiction like, and the outer edges are based on reality.
#Otherland tad williams series#
Still, I would give this series an 8 out of 10, in spite of my minor quibbles, and I would highly recommend it to any sci-fi fan.Ĭlick to expand.You know, I myself have a hard time understanding why this turns me off. But that's a debate for another website, lol! Human beings have souls, and once you're dead and gone, you're dead and gone, even if there is a computer program that "acts" like you would have if you were still alive. The description and imaginitive settings were impressive, but a little less of that and a little bit faster-paced action would have helped, in my opinion.Īnd speaking personally, I don't believe in the philosophical possibility of "living forever" as an artificial construct in a virtual reality, which is what Tad bases his motivation for many of the characters on. Even though I like the universe he created, by the end of the 3rd book I was a bit tired of it. He should have limited this to only a handful of characters, or put chapter endings in different places, and cut out some of the non-essential subplots. I do agree with you, though, that he had too many points of view shifting throughout the book, so that the cliffhanger of action you were waiting to see resolved came 100 pages or more later. Attacking a giant mantis with a sharp stick like some brawny hero would get you killed pretty quickly. In the same way I thought the way he portrayed the people fleeing from the giant insects was effective because, if presented with that situation in reality, this is how I would imagine people dealing with it. It was creepy in the way of the old, classic horror movies, and you may have been looking for something more graphically evil (though there were tiny parts of that in the book). If you don't like books that involve either email or virtual reality, does that mean you likewise don't care for William Gibson or Neil Stephenson (if you've read them, that is)? Just curious, since books like Neuromancer and Snow Crash both rely on virtual realities pretty heavily, if not quite as much as Otherland.Īlthough I disagree with you on that point, and also disagree that there was nothing evil or scary in Otherland (I think the character of Dread was pretty scary in fact, dread itself (the mood, not the character) permeated the book in my opinion, so that may be the difference. Truth be told, that is the reason why I never read them - because when I read the blurbs I thought, "this is fantasy, and it looks like it borrowed too heavily from Tolkien, at that." I guess we all have our prejudices. I'll be interested to see if I register the same disappointment when I read the Memory and etc. I still hold the same opinion (much the same as Hemingway) that this series is phenomenal, and you yourself confirmed his suspicions that it was Tad's shift of focus from fantasy to sci-fi that put some readers off (at least in your case). Twelve, thanks for writing back and letting me know exactly what you didn't like about the Otherland series. I even enjoyed his very first novel involving cats(the name slips me now) much more than this series. But Otherworld was a lapse of writing for him. I can go on and on, actually, but I don't want to slam the guy too hard lest there are major fans around here. And nobody fights! They just run away over and over again. I didn't admire any of the heroes, and it is important for me to like my heroes.Ħ. I grew rather tired of his shifting points of view, of his going off to a new chapter right in the beginning of action, and then coming back 100 boring pages later to see action he doesn't describe really well.ĥ. In Otherworld, everything just seemed to be a joke. In MS&T, there was always that feeling of pure, mythological evil around the corner. I kept expecting it to get good at a certain point, but it never did.ģ. I loved Tad so much that I bought every book of this series, though I hated it. I've always thought that adventures that revolved around email or virtual reality were stupid, though I gave Tad Williams' book a chance since he was my favorite writer.
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