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City of Golden Shadow

Otherland, Book 1

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City of Golden Shadow

By: Tad Williams
Narrated by: George Newbern
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The first book in best-selling master storyteller Tad Williams' Otherland series. 

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. Shrouded in secrecy, it is home to the wildest dreams and darkest nightmares. 

Vast amounts of money have been lavished on it. 

The best minds of two generations have laboured to build it. 

And somehow, bit by bit, it is claiming Earth's most valuable resources - its children. 

A novel of dazzling ideas, nonstop adventure and irresistible characters, City of Golden Shadow is the first part of an epic series and a masterpiece of imaginative fiction. 

©1998 Tad Williams (P)2014 Penguin Audio Fantasy Fiction
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I really wanted to like this book. I did up to a point. Good ideas, interesting characters and mystery. But it just does not get on with the plot. You are always left wanting more and it just does not happen. Very, very nearly excellent. Will I read or listen too the next part - yes but not for a while. I need something with a much lower page count to freshen me up.

It's just too long.

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I'm a fan of Tad Williams and particularly of this series. It is superbly narrated which helps. It is very wordy and does require concentration because of the episodic nature of the story but as the characters develop and the situations progress it maintains a high level of mystery to keep you interested. The breadth is awesome and the characters are people you can get invested in.

Not since LOTR have i actually cared about what happens to a character or characters. I found GoT far less enthralling.

Four volumes of brilliant imagination.

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I have been trying to read this book for over 2 years. The difficulty was not necessarily because I didn’t like it. I was interested, especially to find out how the various threads connected, but the hardcover I had been given as a gift was just too huge to carry around and read when I had a moment like I would normally. Therefore other books kept gaining ascendancy. How happy I was when the audio book was announced. And indeed, it helped me finish it.

It took way too long for the threads to start to come together and of course the end is not an end, but a beginning. I will read the next one, because now I’m hooked.

The narrator is excellent, doing a good job with accents to make the various characters more clear. An audible sound or more silence when the scene changed would’ve gone a long way toward making it clear this is what had happened. Instead, it was as though nothing were different and I often had to go back to get it straight in my head.

Audiobook a big help

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I've read the series a few times and for me Otherland is one of the best reads ever. This was the first time as an audiobook and George Newbern did a great job narrating such a long story with an endless number of characters. I'm sure I will listen to it again in the future.

Great story

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From the first chapter the setting was so well built and the intrigue set into this book hooked me immediately, the narrator really did well with the assortment of accents which really helped when listening to this

Wonderfully interesting

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