Product Description

In one volume, here are the last three novels in the classic SF adventure series, The World of Tiers: Behind the Walls of Terra , The Lavalite World , and More Than Fire . These are the great originals of universe-hopping adventure that later writers, including Roger Zelazny in his Amber Series, used as models. Zelazny himself says, "I admire his sense of humor and facility for selecting the perfect final sentence for everything he writes. He can be stark, dark, smoky, bright, and any color of the emotional spectrum....put quite simply, he arouses awe," The tierworld books are full of non-stop action and typify Farmer's boundless imagination. Who else would have thought of stacking up pocket universes like a ziggurat or the layers of a cake? Join Earthlings Robert Wolff and Paul Janus Finnigan (alias Kickaha) on an unforgettable adventure to big for any single world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #223313 in Books
• Published on: 1997-11-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Review

Ingram
The author of the bestselling Riverworld saga presents the second omnibus volume of classic SF novels from his popular World of Tiers series. These three action-packed novels--"Behind the Walls of Terra, The Lavalite World", and "More Than Fire"--are great originals of universe-hopping adventure and were later used as models by Roger Zelazny for his Chronicles of Amber.

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Customer Reviews

don't ruin the good taste from the first three!!!
I read the first three books of the tier world saga, and I really liked it. The characters are interesting, (especially Wolf), and the adventures are gripping and exciting. I gladly bought this volume of the next three, and was really disappointed. The stories are full of high pace action, but the characters aren't convincing and sometimes you just ask yourself "why do I care what will happened to them?". After the adventures on earth that are bareble, the next books just drag on and doesn't seem to get anywhere. I also found a few disturbing mistakes - places where some things don't fit what was written earlier. In the first three books I especially liked Wolf, so I was disappointed that not him nor Kreisais appear in those three, and at the end I was frustrated that there was no ending, and I suspect that the author just forgot that the original reason for Kikaha's and Anana's journey was to find Wolf. To summarize - if you really liked the third book (which is on Kikaha only) and you have a lot of spare time, go for it. Otherwise, don't ruin the good experience from the first three books.

I gave up on it after 100 pages...
This is one of the few books that I have outright abandoned. After about 100 pages, I was frustrated with the complete lack of character development and breakneck pace of the book. The concept upon which the book is based (multiple parallel worlds that are worlds stacked on top of each other) isn't that great to begin with, and the author does absolutely nothing to make it seem interesting.

I had purchased the first five books of this series in hardback from the Science Fiction bookclub, thus I was motivated to finish the books and not just donate the books unread to charity. However, after reading some of the other negative reviews on Amazon, I can tell that my initial impressions with the book were spot on and that it is only going to get worse. I will spare you the specifics, but please see the reviews from jackaroe or webtarkeena - they pretty much sum it up.

Good follow-up to the first volume
Not too much really to say about the stories themselves. A reader either likes the series or he/she doesn't. If you haven't read any of Farmer's "World of Tiers" books yet, by all means be sure to read the first one first (Maker of Universes). A new reader will be lost in the plot otherwise.

This particular volune (#2) consists of Farmer's 4th, 5th and 6th tales of Kickaha, Wolfe and the race of lords. "Behind the Walls of Terra" is a well done story centering on Kickaha's return to earth to search for the last living beller and his friend Wolfe (Jadawin), tangling with earth's lord, Red Orc and an interloper. The second story, "The Lavalite World", drags and is probably the weakest of the series. Readers will want to go thru that one only because it's part of the collection. The last volume, "More than Fire" I cannot comment on at this time since I haven't read it yet.

The set of stories by Farmer are imaginative, fast moving (for the most part) and handily available in the two paperback volumes. The book price, while not really cheap is not out of line for paperbacks sold today. Folks who enjoy tales of fantasy, other worlds or dimensions, and science fiction should pass many pleasant hours with the collection -- but read it in sequence to understand what's going on.

** Recommended **

~P~