9, 2001) and other titles in his Otherland series. Barrie character: " 'If you believe in fairies, clap your hands'? If you believe in fairies, kiss my rosy pink arse is more like it." (June 3) The incorrigible Applecore continually delights, as in her comment on a famous J.M. Williams's imagination is boundless, and if this big book could have been shorter, it could just as easily have been longer. Theo discovers love as well as unsuspected secrets of his own birth and family. The powerful classes, each named for a flower, wage war against each other, using colossal dragons as the equivalents of nuclear bombs. Ironically, Faerie is a distorted image of our own world, ruled by cruel fairy tyrants. At Applecore's command, Theo swoops her up and pops through "the Gate" into a magical realm that proves initially beguiling, later strange and finally deadly. Applecore, a short-tempered, red-haired sprite, abruptly appears before Theo just as a horrifying monster starts banging on the door. Unsurprisingly, Faerie turns out to be a real place. After losing his girlfriend, Theo Vilmos, a singer in a humdrum northern California rock band, finds in his late mother's remote cabin an amazing if incomplete manuscript left by his eccentric great-uncle, Eamonn Dowd, about a fairy world purportedly visited by its author. Great series.Travel into another dimension is a popular fantasy ploy, but rarely accomplished with such humor, terror and even logic as in this stand-alone by bestseller Williams ( Tailchaser's Song, etc.). It is probably the first epic fantasy I ever read to involve, amongst other things, a protagonist with clear PTSD. The characters really struggle, and suffer, and make difficult decisions, and grow. As well as being a terrific traditional epic (nobody -> special destiny -> fight the big bad), it is also sort of. It is slow and intricate (I mean, the first book is faster than, say, Fellowship of the Ring or Pawn of Prophecy, but not by much), but just brilliant. Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is one of the best epic fantasy trilogies ever written. A revolution in fairyland + industrialisation + lots of scheming. In the near future, a conspiracy of the super-rich and super-powerful has created an exclusive and impregnable virtual reality called Otherland, where the participants adopted the appearance and attributes of Egyptian gods. Thematically similar to, say Ian MacLeod's The Light Ages or Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter (or even Clive Barker's Imajica), but written in a much more straightforward, entertaining way. Another doorstopper fantasy from Williams (The Dragonbone Chair, 1988, etc.), book one of a projected tetralogy large enough to satisfy the most gargantuan appetite. Kind of an interesting portal fantasy feel. Really good, with a blend of corporate and political intrigue as well.īasically echoing /u/Mournelithe, but the two I highly recommend are: War of the Flowers is a portal fantasy standalone about a modern fantasy world alongside ours ruled by Elves, with changelings, corporations, industrial slavery and weapons of mass destruction. Tailchaser's Song is a decent standalone in the vein of Watership Down but with cats. #TAD WILLIAMS OTHERLAND REVIEW SERIAL#Much more standalone than the others, each book is a serial adventure that builds the world. I wasn't in the mood reading the first one so haven't read the rest.īobby Dollar is an urban fantasy based around angels and demons. Shadowmarch is a four part fantasy of a land on the borders of faerie, and the resulting wars. Otherland is his SF epic, a deep exploration of a near future VR simulation where the lines between what is real and what is virtual get increasingly blurred. The Sithi are still a very original version of Elves. Slow building, in the vein of the original sagas that inspired it, it was a breath of fresh air at the time with complex multilayered characters. Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is his original fantasy masterpiece. #TAD WILLIAMS OTHERLAND REVIEW SERIES#He has four main series and a couple of standalones.
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