by Tad Williams

City of Golden Shadows is Book One of the Otherland series.

1. City of Golden Shadow
2. River of Blue Fire
3. Mountain of Black Glass
4. Sea of Silver Light

This first volume in a mesmerizing story takes us to our own near-future when a global conspiracy at the highest levels threatens to sacrifice our Earth for the promise of a far more exclusive place - Otherland, a universe where any fantasy can be made real, but which is ruled by Earth’s wealthiest and most ruthless power brokers, The Grail Brotherhood.

Otherland. Surrounded by secrecy, it is home to the wildest dreams and darkest nightmares. Incredible amounts of money have been lavished on it. The best minds of two generations have labored to build it. And somehow, bit by bit, it is claiming the Earth’s most valuable resource - its children.

Only a few have become aware of the danger. Fewer still are willing or able to take up the challenge of this perilous and seductive realm. But every age has its heroes, and unusual times call for unusual champions:

Renie Sulaweyo, a teacher and the backbone of her family, proud of her African heritage, has fought all her life to get by. She has never wanted to be a hero. But when her young brother is struck down by a bizarre and mysterious illness, Renie swears to save him. When people around her begin to die, she realized she has stumbled onto something she is not meant to know, a terrifying secret from which there is no turning back…

!Xabbu is a Bushman, come to the city to learn skills which may save the spirit of his tribe. With the heart of poet and the soul of a shaman, he will journey with Renie on this quest into the very heart of darkness…

Paul Jonas is lost, seemingly adrift in space and time. As he flees from the bloody battlefields of World War I to a castle in the sky, and onward to lands beyond imaginging, he must not only evade his terrifying pursuers, but solve the terrible riddle of his own identity…

Fourteen-year old Orlando is also the invisible barbarian Thargor, but only in his imagination. However, youth and frailty are not enough to get you excused from saving the world…

And Mister Sellars, a strange old man on a military base, a prisoner of both the government and his own body, may be the greatest mystery of them all. Is he part of The Grail Brotherhood? Does he oppose them? Or, as he sits like a spider at the center of a vast web, does he have ambitions of his own?

The answers will only be found in Otherland…

Personal Rating: 7.5
I was SO confused when I first began reading this book. One thing to remember if you’re lost too - the crazy scenes in the beginning (the battlegrounds, the castle in the sky, the river…) are all pertaining to Paul Jonas who is actually IN Otherland. That’s why they don’t make sense. The book must have caught my attention, however, because it successfully pulled me into the next one - River of Blue Fire. Oh, and Tad Williams leave awfully mind-clutching cliffhangers….

Content Rating: T
Anyone younger than at least 13 is going to have a hard time keeping up with this book. The terminology is advanced, the ideas complex, and the story itself is incredibly interweaving, with scenes cutting back and forth between all of the different characters. There’s no sex, but there is violence and mild language. Tad Williams is such a great author.