Welcome to Shimmering Gate, my Otherland fansite. For those who do not know what Otherland is, let me explain:
Otherland is a book, or actually a series of four, written by Tad Williams. In my humble opinion, it is one of the best books ever written, in some respects even surpassing ancient classics like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
Though it would be classed as Science Fiction by most, I consider as one of its greatest virtues the fact that there was no point in the book where I didn't believe that 100 years from now, the world might not actually look like that, something very few, if any, SF authors can claim.
Visitors should be warned however, that this site contains a lot of spoilers, and should not be read by people who plan to read the book afterwards, as this would destroy much of the reading pleasure.
It is primarily designed as a reference for people who've read it, and want to look something up, without having to go through all 4000 pages.
It's a book of great complexity, combining numurous plot lines, and following over a dozen main characters, many of which don't even meet each other before the end of book 4.
A drawback of this is that when you miss something, going back to read it again is nearly impossible, for finding a single paragraph in the midst of everything will often proof an impossible task, and keeping track of all characters, names (many characters go by multiple names) and places in your own head is pretty hard (though it isn't as bad as the first three chapters of Tolkien's Silmarillion).
This is also the reason for me to create this site, as a sort of giant summary of everything contained in Otherland. It is separated in three sections:
Please note that the site is still heavily under construction. Under 'Changelogs' you can keep track of the progress of the site.