Just Finished Reading Tad Williams' Shadowmarch

I was already familiar with the writing of Tad Williams, as a few years ago I read his four-part science fiction series Otherland (here is a link to my 2007 review of Otherland).  Having thoroughly enjoyed it, as I now consider it an important look into our our future, I decided to try out one of his fantasy series.  As Shadowmarch, the first of the also four-part Shadowmarch series, was available, I dove into it.  Not as fun to read as Otherland (I think this shows I'm more of a sci-fi enthusiast), it was nevertheless worth the effort as Williams is a master at character development, something on which I judge books heavily.  He actually has several characters whose stories he is concurrently telling from their viewpoints (much like George R.R. Martin has been doing in his ongoing A Song of Ice and Fire series).  The chief protagonists are offspring of abducted King Olin Eddon: teenage twins Princess Briony and Prince Barrick.  Of the two, Briony is the focus of Williams' attention, which reminds me of how another fantasy writer, Brandon Sanderson, used another teenage girl, Vin, for his protagonist in the Mistborn series.  There are typical fantasy genre elements in this series: a completely different world with its own continents and difficult-to-follow map, an aboriginal, mystical people (the Qar) who were overrun centuries before by humans but still present a challenge from the north, a strange emerging religion with evil connotations invading from the south, an established history with all sorts of arcane "facts" that I (as I usually do) have difficulty filtering out the relevant from the irrelevant, rival noble families competing for territory through marriage and war similar to Martin's Game of Thrones, and much revealed through usually very disturbing dreams.  Oh, and there is the wise "wizard" type in the physician Chaven, the soldier/guard hero type Ferras Vansen (besotted with Briony), an innocent and brave commoner (the diminutive Chert), and what I call the "wild-card" character of the boy "Flint", whose ultimate effect on the story, be it positive or negative, is a mystery...

As saturated as I am with fantasy literature, I have to admit that Tad Williams' Shadowmarch series is a winner so far, and knowing that it won't drag on for 11 or 14 volumes as did Terry Goodkind's The Sword of Truth and Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, respectively, gives me added impetus to read on to the end...