/lit/ - Literature

Can we please talk about this series? I just finished reading all of them for the first time in a week and I've never read anything like it. It is like it all borders on being shit but also borders on being incredible at the same time. It's very bizarre.
The entire thing is like...
>Go into new simworld
>Get chased around and attacked and stalked
>Stop for a while, rest, talk about shit
>Run again
and then
>We don't know anything - keep talking about how we don't know what is happening
>We get close to something - oh no something went wrong now we are in the dark again
And then the third and forth books
>Character who knows what is happening begins to go into a 5 page long expository dialogue about what is going on so the reader can understand
>They all understand now, but things are all completely out of their control for the most part
>Doesn't really feel like they ever achieve anything
It's weird too because even though I fucking hated the main character, Renie, and her stupid feminist bullshit and liberal racial tidbits, I still cared for her somewhat, and it didn't feel like the author himself was trying to push the bullshit, it felt like her character was doing it. The character, and all characters for that matter, aside from Dread and Jongleur, felt pretty real.
Dread and Jongleur felt like generic evil villains, especially Dread, but I still kind of believed them too.
What a fucking confusing series.
Also the fucking books are longer than they should have been. I found myself getting tired of the shit by the third book and just skimming at points where the same shit was happening.

Also, I am kind of disappointed that Orlando and Sam never got together. That was probably one of the most disappointing things in the whole series as odd as it sounds. I dunno, I kind of felt the greatest connection with those two. Felt kind of blue balled at the end when they never even kissed. Just hugged and that was it. And apparently in the little spin off tale, Sam gets a boyfriend who isn't Orlando. Just felt kind of shitty. Like come on man, give Orlando something.

Otherland by Tad Williams is one of the best works of science fiction dealing with virtual reality and the future of the internet. There are a lot of parallels to Snow Crash, just taken to obscene levels of thought. The first novel in particular deals primarily with explaining the systems of the world, while the others explore the world the first was building.

>>6698869
Not exactly "like" Garth Nix, but this is another series I stupendously enjoyed around the same time I was reading those "Keys" books. It's a bit older, and also maybe a bit more adult, although it was fine for me in middle school, so it's probably not too challenging--pretty YA-like, I mean. I guess it's a little similar in the sense that it depicts a fantasy world that has surprising importance to the universe, and in which there are many different sub-settings with unique and charming characteristics.

Four hugely fat books. Otherland is the name of the series at large and all the individual volumes have different titles. It starts off a little slow, but it steadily builds up to become really, really cool and interesting. There's just so much going on that it takes some time to bring everything into the story.