Otherland, Vol. 2
River of Blue Fire
Tad Williams
Daw, 634 pages
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Tad Williams' Otherland is not a series in the conventional sense, but a single novel divided
into four volumes. In order to make sense of the plot of River of Blue Fire, therefore, it's necessary to
begin with a summary of the first volume, City of Golden Shadow.
In City of Golden Shadow, a group of characters undertake separate investigations of strange happenings
on the net, the virtual world of commerce and entertainment that is as complex and significant as the troubled
real-life world of the mid-twenty-first century. Stumbling into intrigue and danger, drawn by compelling personal
reasons and also by a mysterious, half-understood summons, these characters discover the existence of the Otherland
network, an enormous interlinked series of virtual domains so flawlessly engineered that, though they resemble
nothing in real life, they seem as concrete as the material world. Otherland has been built by the Grail Brotherhood,
a shadowy organization led by the fabulously wealthy Felix Jongleur, a man rumored to be well over two hundred
years old.
Eventually the characters (in virtual form) find their way into Otherland, and gather in the golden city to which
the summons has called them. There they're met by the virtual manifestation of a man named Mr. Sellars, who explains
that Otherland is connected with the coma-like illness striking children all over the world--an illness that has
affected someone close to nearly everyone present. But at just this moment, Jongleur's enforcer, a serial murderer
named Dread, launches a real-life attack on the owners of the golden city, who have defected from the Brotherhood.
The characters are forced to flee into the network, taking with them only Sellars's plea to search for Paul Jonas,
once a prisoner of the Brotherhood, now free and wandering somewhere within the huge reaches of Otherland.
River of Blue Fire opens in a giant jungle realm, in which humans are reduced to Lilliputian size. The characters
realize that not only are they lost, they're trapped inside the network, unable to go offline. Circumstance intervenes
almost at once to separate them. Renie Sulaweyo, the university net instructor drawn to Otherland by her quest
for answers about her brother's illness, and her student and friend !Xabbu, a Bushman, are swept from the jungle
into a twisted version of the Wizard of Oz. Orlando Gardiner, who in real life is dying of a premature-aging illness,
and his friend Fredericks find themselves in a huge cartoon kitchen, from which they escape only to pass into a
hellish version of Egypt, in which the Nile flows on forever and the desert never ends. Martine Desroubins, a woman
whose real-life blindness has enabled her develop unique ways of working on the net, travels with the remaining
characters into a world where it's possible to fly just by flapping one's arms. Unbeknownst to this group, a spy
was placed in their midst during the attack on the golden city, and now Jongleur's psychotic enforcer Dread (working
for himself now) is watching their every move.
Meanwhile, Paul Jonas continues his haphazard progress through the domains of Otherland, following the trail of
the beautiful dark-haired woman he has seen several times over the course of his journeying. His memory of himself,
once lost, is slowly returning. His frightning pursuers are still with him, but he also meets a friend, who explains
to him the nature of the universe in which he's trapped, and provides cryptic directions as to where he must try
to go.
As with City of Golden Shadow, River of Blue Fire ends on a series of cliffhangers. There is no closure:
the mystery of Otherland and its creators is still almost entirely opaque, and many of the recurring images, though
clearly significant, are still completely enigmatic. And yet the book is not without resolution. Most of the characters'
outer travels are paralleled by inward journeys, through which they achieve closure of some of the personal questions
and issues with which they started out. And certain overarching themes have begun to emerge. It's clear that the
consciousnesses of the comatose children are in some way imprisoned within Otherland; it's also evident that the
goal of Otherland's owners is to find a way to recreate themselves inside the network, thereby making themselves
immortal. And it's apparent that the network itself, still rising to full functionality, is developing serious
problems. Something evil is loose inside it, a force darker and more fearful than death.
Whew. It took me quite some time to compress all that narrative, which represents more than 1,300 pages of text,
into the above paragraphs--and this summary doesn't even address the many subplots, involving Dread, Jongleur,
Sellars, and a host of other minor but important characters. Otherland is an incredibly complex work,
bristling with themes, symbols, and storylines. Williams juggles it all with remarkable skill. His choice to limit
the main narrative to just four principal points of view is a good one, lending continuity to what might easily
have become a chaos of images and events. As it is, the narrative is admirably clear--I was never forced to go
back over the text to remind myself who a character was, or what happened in the last section--quite an accomplishment,
given the amount of information Williams provides, and the rapid changes from scene to scene.
River of Blue Fire is skillfully written and flawlessly paced. The characters are very well-drawn; more
important, they don't remain static, as so many characters in big colorful plot-driven works like this do, but
grow and change as a result of their adventures. The domains of Otherland are mind-boggling in their variety; the
cartoon kitchen stands out as a marvel of clever invention, but every one of these worlds--and over the course
of the book there are eleven of them, not counting the little snippets of "real-world" news Williams
includes at the start of every chapter--is fully realized and extremely vivid. The action is non-stop: River
of Blue Fire is a much swifter book than its predecessor, which needed to convey a good deal of background
information at the outset to establish Williams' context. Consistent with his vision of Otherland
as a single, massively long novel, Williams makes no concessions to rehash or backstory--there's a brief synopsis
of City of Golden Shadow at the beginning, but beyond that, the reader is on his or her own.
One has the powerful sense, reading this novel, of a writer at the peak of his craft, in absolute control of his
material. The technical difficulties of creating such a vast book, and of sustaining interest and tension over
the course of such a lengthy narrative, must be immense; but Williams' technique never shows. There are no unlikely
coincidences, implausible reversals, awkward juxtapositions, or obvious plot devices. There is only the story--
smooth, organic, and completely enthralling.
The success of a work hinges on its conclusion. It remains to be seen whether the coming volumes of Otherland
fulfill the promise of the first two. I suspect they will. I also suspect that in Otherland we're
witnessing the birth of a classic, one of the "must reads" of future generations of sf/fantasy fans.
Copyright © 1998 Victoria Strauss
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