Some of the richest people of the 21st century own a huge virtual reality environment: The Otherland Network. It took several generations and an enormous budget to build it. Nevertheless there are things happening in this simulation that were not planned and can not be controlled. On the other hand, children all over the world fall into a deep coma after beeing somewhere on the net. Is there a connection between these kids and otherland? The young female african Renie and her friend !Xabbu, one of the last bushmen, start exploring the riddle. They don't know that several other people are working on the same problem. This is a story! It evolves over the four volumes and you have to read them all in a row. Actually there at least eight different stories that evolve parallel, cross and go into different directions. As some of these stories take place in real life, other in a virtual reality and some of them hop from one to the other. At many times it reminded me at Tolkiens "Lord of the rings", despite this is a piece of science fiction and not fantasy. The characters are very interesting and it is hard to put the book away. Just the end is a bit weird and this made nine instead of ten points. Nevertheless, this were more than 3000 pages that I will not forget. Do not start reading when there is a work you have to finish soon! And there is a moto I adopted... confident, cocky, lazy, dead.

Otherland ist eine rasante Fahrt durch das Cyperspace. Ich habe bis dahin und auch nie mehr danach ein Epos gelesen, in dem so viele Genre ineinander verflochten wurden. Ein Buch, wie ein Adventure-Spiel, welches ständig zwischen realer und virtueller Welt hin und her springt. Dieser erste Band dient dazu, in die Geschichte eingeführt zu werden. Letztlich werden kaum Fragen beantwortet, aber so viele gestellt, dass man ja nicht offline gestellt werden möchte und nach einem weiteren Level giert. Otherland ist für mich um Galaxien besser als „Ready Player One“. Das Buch von Cline ist nur billiges Fastfood, wie ein Jump‘n‘Run auf dem Smartphone, während Otherland das grandiose HD-Online-Game ist, in der wir uns am liebsten verlieren wollen. Das Beste, was ich in Sachen SciFi-Fantasy-VR-Thriller-Mix gelesen habe. Unbedingte Leseempfehlung, wenn man sich auf die 3.000 Seiten in vier Bände einlassen will.