It is a  look at a future in which the use of the Internet has become part of everyday life, and not just the film-noirish fringe. It’s also a very solid mystery that grows fangs, teeth, claws, as children begin to lapse into comas from which the medical profession is helpless to rescue them. The two — the propagation of computer use and the taking of the children — are intimately connected, as Renie Sulaweyo discovers. 

          But finding out the how and the why will lead Renie, her father, her student, and a handful of other net denizens that live a continent away, into the gateway of the famed and fabled Otherland. Williams is reclaiming the mythic for an audience that isn’t interested in suspending its disbelief enough to search it out in fantastic literature.