!Xabbu is a Bushman, come to the city to learn skills which may save the spirit of his tribe. When people around her begin to die, she realizes she has stumbled onto something she is not meant to know, a terrifying secret from which there is no turning back. But when her young brother is struck down by a bizarre and mysterious illness, Renie swears to save him. Renie Sulaweyo, a teacher and the backbone of her family, proud of her African heritage, has fought all her life simply to get by. But every age has its heroes, and unusual times call for unusual champions: Fewer still are willing or able to take up the challenge of this perilous and seductive realm. Only a few have become aware of the danger. And somehow, bit by bit, it is claiming the Earth's most valuable resource -its children. The best minds of two generations have labored to build it. Incredible amounts of money have been lavished on it.
Surrounded by secrecy, it is home to the wildest dreams and darkest nightmares. There's a spy in this group, though Otherland's operating system is becoming unstable the Nemesis program that hunts down software anomalies seems murderously out of control.First book in New York Times-bestselling author Tad Williams's cyberpunk fantasy series - "Tad Williams is the brightest and best of the fantasists." ―Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods
Opposing them is the enigmatic "Circle", plus a handful of ordinary folk who've penetrated Otherland and are trapped there, floating from world to world on the digital river of the title. Otherland is the playground of the monstrously rich and unscrupulous Grail Brotherhood, who hope for on-line immortality and are abducting children's souls into their VR system.
This episode features a deadly nature reserve of giant insects, a poisoned Oz, a madcap cartoon reality, London as in The War of the Worlds, 16th-century Venice, Xanadu, ancient Egypt, the Odyssey's Ithaca and the Drones Club. His "Otherland" quartet, opening with City of Golden Shadow (1996), is mid-21st-century SF set in an ultra-sophisticated software universe containing countless worlds. Tad Williams made his name in fantasy with the immense "Memory, Sorrow and Thorn" trilogy (1988-93).
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