A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. If, for whatever reason, you intend to absorb the entire tetralogy, you'll need your reading spectacles, a cool hundred bucks, a prodigious memory, and unlimited patience.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. Sellars, now a prisoner on a military base? Well, after 782 pages of flabby confusion, readers, like most of the characters, will have only the vaguest idea of what it's all about. Teacher Renie Sulaweyo-her brother is a victim-and her Bushman friend, !Xabbu, along with various others stumble across the conspiracy and force their way into Otherland. But the Brotherhood's split into factions, one of which is stealing children's minds from ordinary cyberspace. Even though he can't remember anything and has no idea what's going on, Jonas plunges through various weird computer realities, somehow just evading capture.

This Grail Brotherhood seek a McGuffin, the key to whose location is bewildered Paul Jonas, a man plucked-apparently-from the battlefields of WW I.

In the near future, a conspiracy of the super-rich and super-powerful has created an exclusive and impregnable virtual reality called Otherland, where the participants adopted the appearance and attributes of Egyptian gods. Another doorstopper fantasy from Williams (The Dragonbone Chair, 1988, etc.), book one of a projected tetralogy large enough to satisfy the most gargantuan appetite.

Otherworld tad williams