I am in full accord with the review provided by bibliojim. I found the characters' voices and viewpoints particularly fascinating, engaging. Highly recommended. ( )

I think Maul is a brilliant book. It was on the shortlist for the 2003 Arthur C. Clark Award. Unfortunately, for me it is so brilliant it cannot be fully understood, hence the 4-star rating instead of five.

There are two plot lines. One is about a young man, possibly autistic, who has been infected with a deadly plague virus and through unclear abilities is able to interact with it inside his own body. The other is about a teenaged girl who participates in a shootout in a mall.

The mall storyline is the more engaging story. The point of view explores all areas of the young teenager's thought, all the passing thoughts about shopping, sex, fear, concern for friends, etc. The virus storyline takes a long time to begin to move forward.

I was around page 200 of 260 before I was finally able to discern a connection between the two storylines. After that point it rapidly became more clear what the connection was, but at no point until the last couple of pages were any characters in common between the two storylines, and even there it is not clear how the common character made a transition from one to the other. This is a weakness of the book. However, a re-read of the book would probably reveal suble connections that are only observed after one has the general idea. I'm very tempted...

The most wonderful quality of the book is the author's remarkable commentary on society and brash writing style that brings one very close to the mind of a bright and philosophical girl. Two quotes will suffice to illustrate.

"Then I saw a live picture of myself in one of the TVs. I stuck out my tongue just to be sure. It's a well-known fact that TV is more real than real life so when people say get a life what they really mean is, get on TV. Because either you're watching TV or you're on it, and if you're doing neither it's a little like Schrodinger's cat, neither alive nor dead till observed. So when I saw myself on the video screen I was pretty happy because it meant I was alive."

"The world. It's supposed to be big, but it's very small. It was never "out there," it was always in here. The dark purple carpet of Vinnie's with its scuff marks from thousands of sneakers of kids standing at the game consoles pouring themselves into the action. The fish-tank luminosity of the pinball machines. It doesn't matter how many movies you've seen where reality gets twisted because of some psychokinetic kid, or where somebody's dreams walk around on the street, or where a character violates a time paradox and everything goes bonkers. In those movies, there's always a neat solution. There's always some wise person to come along and explain things, give advice, help the hero fix whatever's wrong. Well let me just tell you, it's a whole nother story when you've got the reality in your face. Talk about trying to assemble a barbecue with no instruction manual! Try and assemble this!"

Despite the youthfulness of the protagonists, this is not a book for kids - it's definitely a book for adults, and in particular for thinking adults. I have no doubt that a second reading would help clarify a somewhat confusing book. The lack of clarity stands in the way of the book reaching a satisfying conclusion, though when one comes to the end one does understand that one has come to a critical point in the history of the world and the balance has been tipped in favor of mankind - though womankind may yet remain in charge.

If you enjoy brilliant writing and unusual viewpoints with sharp commentary on society, I highly recommend this book. Just be prepared to feel sure you have not wrung the book dry at the end of your first reading. ( )

Strangely the VR world has much better characters and is more realised than the 'real' world. A great ride. ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/59559.html...

I couldn't see the connection between the two storylines, one of a savage gun battle between girl-gangs in a contemporary shopping mall, and the other a future setting of women experimenting on one of the few remaining men in the world. There was a sort of hint that the contemporary setting was in some way an artifact of the nanobots in the body of the hero of the future setting, but it didn't really hang together for me. Having said that, the two storylines taken separately are convincingly and breathlessly written. ( )