Williams, Tad - Otherland
Mon, Sep. 29th, 2003 12:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterI finally finished Otherland... thoughts below, with tons of spoilers:
I have that strange, achy feeling in my chest that comes about when I leave a world I've been living in for a while, and I've been in Otherland for a few weeks now and quite intensely as well, thanks to the sheer length of the books. And mostly I'm happy because the balance of the world was preserved -- the heroes who died died well, the villains suffered, etc. It sounds almost childish, but I like that in my books. Not that not having it is bad, but there's this pervasiveness of satisfaction. I had a few quibbles with the second half of the fourth book because some of the key revelations seemed a little too forced or too gimmicky. Ex. the children in comas because of a mistake of the Other instead of the maliciousness of the Grail Brotherhood, the bird woman as Jongleur's female clone. I was particularly not satisfied with the explanation of the bird woman and of Finney and Mudd, who were so utterly terrifying before they were explained. And the bird woman was so angelic and so other worldly that when we finally met her in Paul's memories as someone too much like Emily, whining and clingy and silly, it diminishes all of Paul's experiences with her.
But mostly I'm just in awe. Otherland was giant -- four books of a thousand so pages each, and disparate characters and events brought into play in book one wove in and out of the second and third books until the second half of the fourth book kicked in, and everything began to tie together, so that nothing was random, no point of view was unnecessary, and the cast of characters had formed a community who all knew each other in the end. I liked that.
And oh, I'm so glad Orlando is ok. I don't know how it happened, because when he was introduced in book one, he seemed a bit callous, overly interested in a sim world, not so nice to his sidekick Fredericks. But then, somewhere down the line, learning he was fourteen and dying, watching him and Fredericks each reveal their own secrets, I completely fell in love with him (not in a skeevy way). His story was the one that hit me the most in a book filled with many stories, and it touched me in a way Renie's or Paul's or etc.'s did not. Plus, I loved his friendship/relationship with Sam Fredericks. I started liking Fredericks in the beginning because he was the poor sidekick no one listened to, but when Orlando found out Fredericks was actually Sam, a girl, I knew I really liked her. And I loved how she reacted to Orlando's discovery, questioning every change in behavior: "This isn't because I'm a girl, right?" and I loved the way the interacted. Plus, there was just that bittersweet thought that each was the other's best friend, and they had never even met in RL. So when we finally got Sam's POV in the third book, when Orlando is sick and tired and worn out and in the role of Achilles, and she's Patroclus, it was heart-rending. And the thing of it was, I knew Orlando was going to die... I was bad and read the dustcover of the fourth book, and when they had a sentence about "Renie, !Xabbu, and Sam Fredericks," without mentioning Orlando, I knew he was done for. So when Sam is thinking about reading Lord of the Rings because he loved it and not telling him, thinking of the heroism in the face of defeat in LotR, and thinking that she has to be Sam Gamgee now and rides off to fight Hector, I was basically gone emotionally. Of course Orlando goes after her, but amazingly, doesn't die. I was pretty scared Tad Williams was going to kill of Sam somehow too.. And Orlando dies in the end of book three, and I'm sitting there at three in the morning, utterly devastated and unable to sleep because the author killed off a fictional character that I knew was going to die.
So when he comes back, kind of reincarnated virtually on Otherland, I'm pretty emotional too... especially at Sam's reaction, because I love Sam. The little moment where she's completely freaking out and saying he's come back, like Gandalf, and he replies rather tiredly, "Gandalf? Damn, you did read it. You read it but you never told me. You are such a scanmaster, Fredericks." Doesn't sound like much, but felt just like the end of Golden Fool, when Fitz calls the Fool Beloved. Obviously I had a lot invested in the two characters, not even as a couple necessarily, but just as these two kids who only had each other as a friend, and the dreadful loneliness of Orlando's existence. Somehow Martine and Paul and Renie and !Xabbu didn't quite catch my imagination... the other person who came close was Olga Pirofsky, but she was also introduced rather late on in the game. But guh, her secret was a killer. I felt so sorry for the Other...
Anyhow, just basking in the completedness of the giant book right now, not really analyzing. But now I can finally read Heather's thesis!
I have that strange, achy feeling in my chest that comes about when I leave a world I've been living in for a while, and I've been in Otherland for a few weeks now and quite intensely as well, thanks to the sheer length of the books. And mostly I'm happy because the balance of the world was preserved -- the heroes who died died well, the villains suffered, etc. It sounds almost childish, but I like that in my books. Not that not having it is bad, but there's this pervasiveness of satisfaction. I had a few quibbles with the second half of the fourth book because some of the key revelations seemed a little too forced or too gimmicky. Ex. the children in comas because of a mistake of the Other instead of the maliciousness of the Grail Brotherhood, the bird woman as Jongleur's female clone. I was particularly not satisfied with the explanation of the bird woman and of Finney and Mudd, who were so utterly terrifying before they were explained. And the bird woman was so angelic and so other worldly that when we finally met her in Paul's memories as someone too much like Emily, whining and clingy and silly, it diminishes all of Paul's experiences with her.
But mostly I'm just in awe. Otherland was giant -- four books of a thousand so pages each, and disparate characters and events brought into play in book one wove in and out of the second and third books until the second half of the fourth book kicked in, and everything began to tie together, so that nothing was random, no point of view was unnecessary, and the cast of characters had formed a community who all knew each other in the end. I liked that.
And oh, I'm so glad Orlando is ok. I don't know how it happened, because when he was introduced in book one, he seemed a bit callous, overly interested in a sim world, not so nice to his sidekick Fredericks. But then, somewhere down the line, learning he was fourteen and dying, watching him and Fredericks each reveal their own secrets, I completely fell in love with him (not in a skeevy way). His story was the one that hit me the most in a book filled with many stories, and it touched me in a way Renie's or Paul's or etc.'s did not. Plus, I loved his friendship/relationship with Sam Fredericks. I started liking Fredericks in the beginning because he was the poor sidekick no one listened to, but when Orlando found out Fredericks was actually Sam, a girl, I knew I really liked her. And I loved how she reacted to Orlando's discovery, questioning every change in behavior: "This isn't because I'm a girl, right?" and I loved the way the interacted. Plus, there was just that bittersweet thought that each was the other's best friend, and they had never even met in RL. So when we finally got Sam's POV in the third book, when Orlando is sick and tired and worn out and in the role of Achilles, and she's Patroclus, it was heart-rending. And the thing of it was, I knew Orlando was going to die... I was bad and read the dustcover of the fourth book, and when they had a sentence about "Renie, !Xabbu, and Sam Fredericks," without mentioning Orlando, I knew he was done for. So when Sam is thinking about reading Lord of the Rings because he loved it and not telling him, thinking of the heroism in the face of defeat in LotR, and thinking that she has to be Sam Gamgee now and rides off to fight Hector, I was basically gone emotionally. Of course Orlando goes after her, but amazingly, doesn't die. I was pretty scared Tad Williams was going to kill of Sam somehow too.. And Orlando dies in the end of book three, and I'm sitting there at three in the morning, utterly devastated and unable to sleep because the author killed off a fictional character that I knew was going to die.
So when he comes back, kind of reincarnated virtually on Otherland, I'm pretty emotional too... especially at Sam's reaction, because I love Sam. The little moment where she's completely freaking out and saying he's come back, like Gandalf, and he replies rather tiredly, "Gandalf? Damn, you did read it. You read it but you never told me. You are such a scanmaster, Fredericks." Doesn't sound like much, but felt just like the end of Golden Fool, when Fitz calls the Fool Beloved. Obviously I had a lot invested in the two characters, not even as a couple necessarily, but just as these two kids who only had each other as a friend, and the dreadful loneliness of Orlando's existence. Somehow Martine and Paul and Renie and !Xabbu didn't quite catch my imagination... the other person who came close was Olga Pirofsky, but she was also introduced rather late on in the game. But guh, her secret was a killer. I felt so sorry for the Other...
Anyhow, just basking in the completedness of the giant book right now, not really analyzing. But now I can finally read Heather's thesis!
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