River of Blue Fire (Otherland, Volume 2)

Return to Otherland in River of Blue Fire, the second novel of Tad Williams' epic series. Otherland, a virtual realityuniverse where any fantasy can come true, is ruled by the unimaginable wealthy and ruthless power brokers known as The Grail Brotherhood. Constructed over two generations, consuming extraordinary amounts of money and lives, Otherland has begun to claim Earth's most valuable resource: its children. Now, in River of Blue Fire, the group of unlikely heroes who have taken up the challenge of this perilous and seductive realm are brought together briefly, only to be thrown into different worlds, split by mistrust, and stalked at every turn by the serial killer Dread and the mysterious Nemesis....

* The DAW hardcover edition of Otherland has over 120,000 copies in print * River of Blue Fire: Otherland Vol. 2 is the secondnovel of an exciting new series that will appeal not onlyto a science fiction/fantasy audience, but also to readersof science fiction and mainstream best-sellers * To Green Angel Tower was a New York Times andLondon Times hardcover best-seller * Spectacular cover art by Michael Whelan

Tad Williams began his Otherland series with the massive City of Golden Shadow and continues it with the equally hefty River of Blue Fire. Williams says it will require four (big) books to tell his complex, multithreaded tale, and at the rate that the plot of this second novel moves, readers will see what he means. Not that the book is a slow read; in fact, River is as much a suspenseful page-turner as the first book.

As River opens, we join up again with the ragtag bunch of searchers trapped in an astoundingly detailed and frightfully dangerous virtual world known as Otherland. Lurking in disguise among the group is the brutally vicious serial killer Dread, trying to find information that will help him overthrow his Grail Brotherhood masters. The group follows a ubiquitous river through world after world, unable to go offline, and subject to the increasingly terrifying certainty that things in this supposedly virtual place are all too real. Meanwhile, Paul Jonas, an amnesic (but somehow pivotal) character fleeing from two sinister beings, finds more and more of his memory as he does his own Huck Finn river trip. As in the first novel, each new world that the characters enter, from Paleolithic Ice Age to something suspiciously like Oz, is fully realized and completely unpredictable.

Williams is a master at parceling out information to the reader in dribs and drabs, which is frustrating yet tantalizing, like a particularly good computer game. When the group is split up and the adventure divides further, the reader senses the author as a puppet master, following some incredibly complex flows of information. The best course is just to hang on and enjoy Williams's deft characterizations, lush descriptions, and wildly divergent plot. If you've ever been white-water rafting, you'll recognize the feeling. --Therese Littleton