Reviewed by: Kim Rating: 8/10 Genre: Science Fiction 675 pages/1998

This book is the second book in a four-book series. As the author states in his author's note at the beginning of this book, "it's not really a series--it's one very, very long novel." As such, this book picks up right in the middle of the action where the first book left off and then ends almost 700 pages later still in the thick of things. The author provides a brief synopsis at the beginning of this book about what happened in the first book, but throughout this book he often refers to things that happened in the first book without any explanation about them. For this reason I would not recommend this book to anyone who hasn't already read the first book in the series (Otherland: City of Golden Shadow).

Tad Williams' writing style is very interesting and very engaging and when I first started this book I was immediately caught up in the story. At first I liked this book better than the first one because I didn't have to wait for the story to get warmed up. Like the first book, this book also had about eight stories going on simultaneously. The author continued the same format of following one story for a chapter and then setting down that story and focusing solely on another story. Sometimes this made it difficult for me to remember what was going on in each story from the time the story was set down to the time the story was picked up again. However, in this book, unlike the first book, the reader knows from the very beginning how the stories are interlinked.

My biggest complaint about this book is that nothing happened. Yes, the whole thing was action-packed and all the characters were constantly busy with something, but as far as the overall plot for the whole series goes, this book didn't seem to advance the story much at all. At the end of this book the characters are all in almost exactly the same plight they were in at the beginning of the book. Notable exceptions were the introduction of a few characters and the demise of a few others. I got a bit bogged down in the middle of this book because I got frustrated waiting for something of importance to happen. But overall I really enjoyed reading this book and I definitely plan on reading the next book in the series in the not too distant future (Otherland: Mountain of Black Glass).