For the bad ones, you want them to get their just desserts, to see them suffer as they have made others suffer. You care about the characters, and you want everything to turn out all right for them. The important thing is that, by the end of the book you really do feel invested in the world that Williams has created. I have a sneaking suspicion that Williams might have been able to stretch this series into a fifth book, but it probably would have suffered from Rowling Syndrome – a lot of unnecessary padding in between the important bits. There is a rather major revelation that comes near the end that just kind of… gets written off. There’s a lot to take in by the end of the series, a lot of loose ends to tie up, but it all wraps up rather nicely. As it moves towards its ending, which does involve a lot more explaining than most other books do, it’s easy to get swept up in the sheer scale of the narrative. Lawyers, children and old women are his army, and together they will uncover the horrible and heartbreaking truth about the nature of the Other and the evil that has been done to it. Offline, Sellars has brought all of his players into position.

There they must face the eventual death of the network and survive it, if they can. The other half… they ended up in the heart of the Other’s secret dreams. Half of them have been thrust back into the twisted realms of Otherland, where the horrors and dangers that had been built into it have mutated into unrecognizable terrors. While they are successful, none of them look this cool.īut those explorers themselves face greater dangers than Dread.

Otherland by tad williams