![]() What happens when you cannot find the souls to judge? It’s along this path that the story diverges and leaves Bobby with more questions than answers. ![]() As part of a souls judgement we are introduced to the ‘Outside’, a place outside time and this is a nice model for dealing with the number of souls to be balanced. Salvation or damnation at the end of a gavel, where every action in life is chronicled and used to defend and prosecute you, no death bed repentance her. The construct Williams uses is simple in its meme but complex in approach, and quite thought provoking. In a good fantasy book we usually are fighting with magic against Monsters and Dark Lords, but in The Dirty Streets we are tackling the issue of the balancing of the soul, and who gets to go to Heaven and who goes to Hell. The topic of Heaven, Hell and souls is a hefty one in real life, let alone fantasy. Divine hero, wounded, beaten, and tired, out of his depth and trick but ever growing, evolving and becoming something more. Dresden is also in the mix in the elements of Bobby’s motivation and actions towards demons. I also found characteristics of Sandman Slim in the anthropomorphic depiction of demons and miscellaneous things that walk. If you have seen the movie or read the comics, you will find elements of Constantine, in his view of aspects of Heaven, Hell and Demons. The principle character, Bobby Dollar, is a nice balance of several characters types. I found the main characters and view to be engaging. However, I have always enjoyed Tad Williams books and I know he does like to mix up his writing style so thankfully I was pleasantly surprised in The Dirty Streets of Heaven. Next volume: Mountain of Black Glass.' - David Langford, AMAZON.CO.To be honest, before beginning this book I was unsure of the story and concept Williams was portraying. It's slightly frustrating, though, that halfway through the series we've learned little more-especially about the tantalizing suggestion that Otherland is a metaphysical threat to "real" reality-than emerged in book 1. Williams writes fluently and evocatively, conjuring up a vivid succession of virtual realities as he manipulates numerous storylines inside and outside Otherland, climaxing with multiple cliffhangers. 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. 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. ' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 'Tad Williams made his name in fantasy with the immense "Memory, Sorrow and Thorn" trilogy (1988-93). Best of all, however, are Williams's well-drawn sympathetic characters. ![]() 'True speculative grandeur' - TIME OUT 'A big colorful novel full of real-world conspiracy and virtual reality wonders, with characters worth caring about' - LOCUS 'Tad Williams proves himself as adept at writing science fiction as he is at writing fantasy.
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