!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 perious 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. Shrouded by secrecy, it is home to the wildest dreams and darkest nightmares. This first volume in a memorizing story takes us to our own near-future when a global conspiracy at the highest levels threatens to sacrifice our Earth for the promise of a far more exclusive place – Otherland, a universe where any fantasy can be made real, but which is ruled by Earth's wealthiest and most ruthless power brokers, The Grail Brotherhood. Now he opens a whole new dimension of the imagination with OTHERLAND: City of Golden (Nov.The highly successful Tailchaser's Song and his magnificent, best-selling trilogy, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, brought Tad Williams worldwide acclaim as a master of fantasy. Best of all, however, are Williams's well-drawn, sympathetic characters, including Renie and her family, her student !Xabbu, the mysterious invalid Mister Sellars and a host of other folk, all of whom hope to solve the mystery of the terrifying VR environment called Otherland. His version of the Net, although obviously indebted to Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and other novels, is detailed and fascinating. His 21st-century South Africa, where blacks run the government and pursue careers but where whites control most economic power, rings true. In the first book in what is projected to be, in effect, a single, enormous four-volume novel, Williams (Memory, Sorrow and Thorn) proves himself as adept at writing science fiction as he is at writing fantasy. It's clear that Renie has angered someone with almost unlimited power, but she remains determined to save her brother. Then her apartment is fire-bombed, she loses her job and another professor whom she has recruited to help her decipher the mystery is murdered. After her adventure, she discovers that someone has downloaded into her computer the impossibly complex image of a fantastic golden city. A professor of computer science and an adept user of the Net, Renie retraces Stephen's trail and enters Mister J's but barely escapes with her own mind intact. Soon she discovers evidence that other children have lapsed into comas under similar circumstances. When his next Net trip leaves him in a coma, Renie is terrified and angry. When Renie Sulaweyo's younger brother, Stephen, returns from the Net after visiting Mister J's, a virtual reality equivalent of the Hellfire Club, she's worried about him.
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