A review by rhganci
City of Golden Shadow by Tad Williams

4.0

This book, and indeed, this series, is huge. There are a lot of words in Tad Williams’ series, and most of them are pretty interesting. It took a while—a long while—for me to get interested in this novel, and if it were not for the repeated encouragement and assurances about the series’ quality, I wouldn’t have made it past the first part break. I don’t have a favorite character yet, but I do really like !Xabbu and Fredricks, because they’re the only real dynamic characters in the story so far. Renie really is all about saving her brother, Orlando is struggling to overcome his illness via success in a virtual realm where the rules of his illness don’t apply (even though they apparently do in Otherland), and Osiris is a sick frak. Long Joseph is interesting too, but the mystery and excitement of this story so far for me really center around Mr. Sellars. I thought him a dirty old man with creepy tendencies, but the last hundred pages of the book really lend themselves to portraying him as a hero-type. Williams will have to reconcile the destruction of his home at the base when we find more out about Mr. Sellars. The other cool storyline in this book is with Paul Jonas, and his mystic romance with Vaala. I really hope that comes to fruitition in the later stories, his pursuit of her through the different layers of the net. Maybe she has something to do with Osiris and the role Paul (unknowingly) is playing for the Grail Brotherhood. I get the distinct impression that if the second 75% of this story is really REALLY good, that upon a second reading this one will read similarly to A Game of Thrones did after I had finished A Feast for Crows. Onward!