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A review by theartolater
The Very Best of Tad Williams by Tad Williams
3.0
When you have an author who is one of your favorites, and they put out a compilation of some of their best short works, you want to give it a shot. The Very Best of Tad Williams is good, but not really the Very Best, especially if you walk in expecting more serious fare like his longform fantasy and fiction.
This is not to say all (or a lot of it) is bad. Far too much of it was silly for my tastes (most notably the "Wizard of Oz in Otherland" tale that really sold me on giving this a look to begin with), but when things are working, whether it be the genuinely freaky and creepy screenplay for "Black Sunshine" or the robot tale "Omnitron, What Ho!" toward the end, it really works.
This is probably a poor starting point for most Williams readers. Many would say to go to Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, I'm still partial to Otherland, but as a compilation of fiction of various stripes, it's certainly not bad for existing fans.
This is not to say all (or a lot of it) is bad. Far too much of it was silly for my tastes (most notably the "Wizard of Oz in Otherland" tale that really sold me on giving this a look to begin with), but when things are working, whether it be the genuinely freaky and creepy screenplay for "Black Sunshine" or the robot tale "Omnitron, What Ho!" toward the end, it really works.
This is probably a poor starting point for most Williams readers. Many would say to go to Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, I'm still partial to Otherland, but as a compilation of fiction of various stripes, it's certainly not bad for existing fans.