Otherland is an epic science fiction quartet by Tad Williams, available in mass market paperback at your local bookstore. The books are as follows:

Volume One: City of Golden Shadow

Volume Two: River of Blue Fire

Volume Three: Mountain of Black Glass

Volume Four: Sea of Silver Light

The Germans granted Williams a Corine Award in 2004 for the quartet.

Now, what is it about?

For decades, the Grail Brotherhood, a collection of the some of the most powerful people in the world, have been carefully and secretly working to create a vast, incredibly advanced network for their own use. The network is known as Otherland, and it is very well guarded.

But all advancement has its price, and recently children children the world over have been slipping into unexplainable comas. Children with great internet access.

Renie Sulaweyo, a teacher of programming at an impoverished college in South Africa, is unaware of this. Between campus bombings, a father turned alcoholic by the loss of his wife and injury of his back, and a younger brother on the verge of being a juvenille delinquent, she's got her hands full. As she teaches and becomes friends with a most unusual student, the bushman !Xabbu, her life begins to look up. Then her brother suddenly goes into a coma. The search for a cure, or at least a cause, will lead Renie and !Xabbu to some of the strangest and most dangerous places on the net, and in real life.

Paul Jonas is in hell. Otherwise known as the trenches in France, World War One. One day, he ventures out of the trenches, and then things begin to get...strange. A gift of a feather from an angel caged in a castle among clouds. Running out of the trenches and into a world that is a chessboard. As he flees one bizarre situation to encounter another, Paul must deal with some rather pressing questions. Why do one hugely fat and one terribly skinny man follow him everywhere, destroying what they can? Who is that angel? Who is he?

Orlando Gardiner is better known as Thargor, the most formidable character in the Middle Country simworld. Then, in a strange incident, Thargor gets killed. Even stranger, in the eyes of Orlando's best friend Sam Fredericks, is that Orlando doesn't care. Orlando, through Thargor, has glimpsed an enchanting, real-seeming, golden city, which he is determined to find. A city that seems to glow with hope, something a boy who bought himself an early birthday gift since he is fully aware that he may not last another two months could really use.

Christabel lives on a peaceful military base, quite happily. Recently, she's become friends with the strange old mister Sellers, who tells her great stories very different from those on her storybook glasses. But her parents, all the military people, don't want anyone near mister Sellers. And mister Sellers himself is asking her to do weird things like stealing soap from her house, and cutting wires in one of the fences...

He calls himself Dread. And he knows how to inspire it. He goes where the Old Man tells him to, destroys whatever and kills whoever the Old Man tells him to, creating the occaisional...artwork on the side. But now he's getting interested in the Old Man's work, and in how he could use it.

The Old Man himself. He sits as Osiris, lord of life and death, simulated servants at his beck and call. He presides over the Grail Brotherhood, directing the flow of money, who among the brotherhood is allowed to survive, how to achieve the Grail...and escape Mr. Jingo.

In the second book, we are introduced to even more lovely characters.

Decatur Ramsey is a lawyer, and very devoted to his job. So when his clients the Fredericks ask him to look into the coma of their daughter Sam and her best friend Orlando, he takes it very seriously. As he digs deeper, he becomes more consumed by the incredible circumstances, and begins to find paths leading to the largest company out there, and a very strange network.

Olga Pirofsky is a relic from a dead age. Once a circus performer, she is now one of the actors behind the most popular children's program character, Uncle Jingle. She does it for the children. When she hears of and looks into the strange comatose state of increasing numbers of children, she begins to notice some strange patterns, and determines to do something to help.

Calliope Skourous is even better than most in Sydney Homicide at pissing her superiors off. In exchange, she and her partner Stan Chan get a cold case recently dismissed as not being related to the infamous Real Killer after all. But Skourous intends to see the case through. In spite of the lack of leads, she's going to catch the man who cut up a homeless young woman and put stones in the place of her eyes.

Dulcinea Anwin has a gift for code, for hacking. Naturally, she markets these skills where they are best appreciated, the criminal underworld. It pays well. But when she agrees to help the well-connected if somewhat creepy Dread investigate an extraordinary network, she may at last be in over her head.