Reminiscing on: Otherland

Otherland will go down as one of my favorite series of all time. Mainly fantasy, but framed by sci-fi, it involves a lot of misfits and miscreants and devious individuals hell-bent on achieving their respective goals, consequences be damned. Nearly every character has an interesting back story, and mesh well with the huge amount of sub plots and interweaving threads introduced throughout the 4000+ page quadrilogy. The series contains many quotable lines, many of which are delivered by !Xabbu, the rest by Martine. It is ultimately a tale 0f g00d versus evil, with clearly defined enemies and doubtlessly pure motives. It leaves the reader somewhat breathless and ragged, throwing them straight into hopeless situation after hopeless situation, with nary a pause to catch one's breath. I was only disappointed that in the end since things turned out better than I had envisioned and seemed sugar coated. Even if it could have been edited somewhat to save on pure word count, I do not regret diving straight in and immersing myself in myriad virtual environments, each more enchanting, ominous, and unstable than the last. It is a must read.