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david_agranoff's review against another edition
4.0
This is an interesting book and despite it being older than Lovecraft Country, I think most readers of this book found it after the amazing success of Ruff's novel that will be an HBO TV series launching this month. While Lovecraft Country might be a better novel, I think I enjoyed the experience of reading The Mirage even more. This book is an alternate history farce of the War on Terror and the awful foreign policy of the GW Bush years. I think some readers took the alternate history aspects a little too serious and were nitpicking aspects of the false history in a way that I think misses the point.
There are laugh-out-loud moments in the book but this is not a goofy satire. I like the balance that Ruff strikes in this book. It works in three modes. Bizarro satire/political commentary/uncomfortable reflection. I enjoyed all three modes as Ruff's experiment is simple. Flip the War on Terror. Using the tools of science fiction and alternate history Ruff sets his book in the UAS, the United Arab States that was formed after World War 2 out of the ashes of colonialism.
This democracy in the UAS is made up of states who are similar to the middle east nations we know. This country has governors like Baathist gangster Saddam Hussein and Senator Osama Bin Laden the son of the oil tycoon. Yeah, it is corrupt but when this timeline has a tattered plutocracy with Donald Trump can we really talk shit? The story takes place a decade after fundamentalist Christian highjackers send planes crashing into Baghdad's Tigris & Euphrates towers on November 9th,2001.
The main point of view character is Mustafa A Baghdadi a homeland security agent. While many of the well-known characters are sorta cartoonish satire versions of themselves I thought Mustafa was a good anchor for the story. Some of my favorite moments of the book were scenes when Mustafa's investigation brought him face to face with Saddam. I loved all these scenes that sees the Iraqi president as a brutal gangster and every bit as scary as he is in our world.
The narrative is a third-person broken up with fake wiki-pedia like entries from this world's equivalent to the online library of Alexandria. This is a helpful way for Ruff to do world-building without having the characters stop to explain the world. They are nicely laid out like the entry about Osama Bin Laden that comes pages after he is introduced. It gives us a few pages ponder his role on our own before filling in the blanks.
It is not until the second half that Mustafa travels to the fractured North American countries that we find out that the elderly LBJ has been an autocratic dictator since the killing of Kennedy. That he signed a civil rights act that was pretty much not worth the paper it was signed on. That the U.S. is mostly the eastern states and the country has broken apart, Texas for example is an evangelical nation. There several short military conflicts in North America but not much is said about Mexico and Canada. Some of the obvious characters from those years Dick Chainey and Donald Rumsfeld plays roles in the story but there are a few cool surprises I don't see coming when I get to spoilers I will explain.
Comparisons to Man in The High Castle are both obvious and at the same missing the point of both books. In High Castle PKD was making a point that the narrative of history is not always to be trusted. there is no binary On the High Castle world Vs our own. The world where the allies won in the novel inside of the novel of High Castle is not OUR world. The Mirage does set up this binary reality. There is a condition where people believe in our world, Mustafa finds a copy of the New York Times from September 12th that appears to be from our world.
The Mirage is not about the narrative of history it is about the War on Terror. The point is to show Americans how this "war" would look with the roles reversed. So the binary take on it is fine and makes sense. I personally would have preferred if this world just existed and there were no illusions to this other world.
So far so good, I am not sure I agree at all times with Ruff's idea about how this world would shake out but it is his mirror on our society and he can highlight what he chooses. Even if I don't agree I think it is a valuable one to look at. The Mirage is more of a thought experiment than novel, it is clear that Ruff got the episodic nature of Lovecraft Country in mind here but this is more one story.
There are some moments in spoilers I was not a huge fan of that took the book down a bit for me including a problematic core to the final act but it is a big spoiler. I suggest if the topic interests you to read and come back but if you don't plan to after the spoiler warning I will talk about a twist I liked and one I didn't. In the meantime overall I think This book should be read.
SPOILERS:
OK , there is a major twist in the third act when a CIA contacts Mustafa during his mission in the D.C. green zone. This agent is Timothy McVeigh working for the Christian Intelligence Agency on behalf of the republic of texas under the direction of a profit David Koresh who is working with a man called the Quail Hunter -clearly Dick Chainey. I didn't see this coming but it makes sense if you are flipping the War on Terror. I liked this twist.
The Twist I didn't like and thought was a problem is that despite flipping the stories the big twist at the end is that the Truthers in this world who think Bin Laden engineered the 11/9 attacks were proven correct. Yep, the end has an evil Muslims behind the whole thing twist. I was bothered that he couldn't commit in the story to the idea of Christian terrorists. I really didn't like this ending but still liked the book overall.
There are laugh-out-loud moments in the book but this is not a goofy satire. I like the balance that Ruff strikes in this book. It works in three modes. Bizarro satire/political commentary/uncomfortable reflection. I enjoyed all three modes as Ruff's experiment is simple. Flip the War on Terror. Using the tools of science fiction and alternate history Ruff sets his book in the UAS, the United Arab States that was formed after World War 2 out of the ashes of colonialism.
This democracy in the UAS is made up of states who are similar to the middle east nations we know. This country has governors like Baathist gangster Saddam Hussein and Senator Osama Bin Laden the son of the oil tycoon. Yeah, it is corrupt but when this timeline has a tattered plutocracy with Donald Trump can we really talk shit? The story takes place a decade after fundamentalist Christian highjackers send planes crashing into Baghdad's Tigris & Euphrates towers on November 9th,2001.
The main point of view character is Mustafa A Baghdadi a homeland security agent. While many of the well-known characters are sorta cartoonish satire versions of themselves I thought Mustafa was a good anchor for the story. Some of my favorite moments of the book were scenes when Mustafa's investigation brought him face to face with Saddam. I loved all these scenes that sees the Iraqi president as a brutal gangster and every bit as scary as he is in our world.
The narrative is a third-person broken up with fake wiki-pedia like entries from this world's equivalent to the online library of Alexandria. This is a helpful way for Ruff to do world-building without having the characters stop to explain the world. They are nicely laid out like the entry about Osama Bin Laden that comes pages after he is introduced. It gives us a few pages ponder his role on our own before filling in the blanks.
It is not until the second half that Mustafa travels to the fractured North American countries that we find out that the elderly LBJ has been an autocratic dictator since the killing of Kennedy. That he signed a civil rights act that was pretty much not worth the paper it was signed on. That the U.S. is mostly the eastern states and the country has broken apart, Texas for example is an evangelical nation. There several short military conflicts in North America but not much is said about Mexico and Canada. Some of the obvious characters from those years Dick Chainey and Donald Rumsfeld plays roles in the story but there are a few cool surprises I don't see coming when I get to spoilers I will explain.
Comparisons to Man in The High Castle are both obvious and at the same missing the point of both books. In High Castle PKD was making a point that the narrative of history is not always to be trusted. there is no binary On the High Castle world Vs our own. The world where the allies won in the novel inside of the novel of High Castle is not OUR world. The Mirage does set up this binary reality. There is a condition where people believe in our world, Mustafa finds a copy of the New York Times from September 12th that appears to be from our world.
The Mirage is not about the narrative of history it is about the War on Terror. The point is to show Americans how this "war" would look with the roles reversed. So the binary take on it is fine and makes sense. I personally would have preferred if this world just existed and there were no illusions to this other world.
So far so good, I am not sure I agree at all times with Ruff's idea about how this world would shake out but it is his mirror on our society and he can highlight what he chooses. Even if I don't agree I think it is a valuable one to look at. The Mirage is more of a thought experiment than novel, it is clear that Ruff got the episodic nature of Lovecraft Country in mind here but this is more one story.
There are some moments in spoilers I was not a huge fan of that took the book down a bit for me including a problematic core to the final act but it is a big spoiler. I suggest if the topic interests you to read and come back but if you don't plan to after the spoiler warning I will talk about a twist I liked and one I didn't. In the meantime overall I think This book should be read.
SPOILERS:
OK , there is a major twist in the third act when a CIA contacts Mustafa during his mission in the D.C. green zone. This agent is Timothy McVeigh working for the Christian Intelligence Agency on behalf of the republic of texas under the direction of a profit David Koresh who is working with a man called the Quail Hunter -clearly Dick Chainey. I didn't see this coming but it makes sense if you are flipping the War on Terror. I liked this twist.
The Twist I didn't like and thought was a problem is that despite flipping the stories the big twist at the end is that the Truthers in this world who think Bin Laden engineered the 11/9 attacks were proven correct. Yep, the end has an evil Muslims behind the whole thing twist. I was bothered that he couldn't commit in the story to the idea of Christian terrorists. I really didn't like this ending but still liked the book overall.
ugoglen's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
2.25
daynpitseleh's review against another edition
2.0
Ugh, I really enjoyed this book until about halfway through. At first, all the little references and inside jokes were cute, but they got to be annoying. I guess I was looking for a more interesting, alternative reality novel... and this was proved to be too satirical for me.
shawnwhy's review against another edition
5.0
I think this is the best Matt Ruff book I've read so far. the world is very very meticulously imagined. the ending kicks ass
thomasmannia's review against another edition
3.0
The plot was very detailed and intricate, but the mirage explanation was anticlimactic and did not fit in with the sudden surprise and nuanced developments. The ending of the mirage itself before the "truth" was revealed, however, was well-crafted. It was where the themes and quandaries lived and died.
rachelini's review against another edition
4.0
Often times, when I love an author, I'll put their latest book on hold without even looking to see what it's about, and then I'll start reading it without even an idea of what it's about. And then I'll be very confused, because it's talking about the Twin Towers in Baghdad and I can't decide if maybe I just don't know anything about the Middle East.
Or maybe the book is actually set in an alternate world where Arabia is the superpower and 11/9 attacks on Baghdad were by Christian fundamentalists. So I'm not crazy after all!
This was a great book, highly detailed and subversively funny, about some Arabic homeland security agents who start to find hints that maybe the world is not quite...right, that it's backwards somehow.
Or maybe the book is actually set in an alternate world where Arabia is the superpower and 11/9 attacks on Baghdad were by Christian fundamentalists. So I'm not crazy after all!
This was a great book, highly detailed and subversively funny, about some Arabic homeland security agents who start to find hints that maybe the world is not quite...right, that it's backwards somehow.
greatlibraryofalexandra's review against another edition
3.0
First book of 2022.
I really don’t know what to rate this. It was a weird one, y’all.
I enjoyed reading it. It was funny, provocative, and chock full niche references and alt history easter eggs. I’m not sure I could quite, from the text alone, figure out what Matt Ruff was trying to do - but his own explanation is that this book was still about American’s, and the “mirage” we were treated to when our leaders promised we were righteous in our response to 9/11.
Ruff holds a mirror up to the faults and darkness of US foreign policy and cultural zeitgeist using the flipped perspective, but there’s also a thin line there between the US (rightly) being the butt of the joke and a world in which the Arab states are advanced being the joke, and it’s a precarious one.
I loved the final line of the book (pre-Epilogue). I also loved the tongue-in-cheek references and subtle nuances laced throughout.
Definitely a weird one. A good one. I think a huge drawback of it is that you as a reader need a pretty extensive knowledge base of national security, terrorism, US foreign policy, and US domestic politics, to fully appreciate the eerie comedy of a lot of this book’s content.
“A wicked prince in one world is a wicked prince in all worlds.”
I really don’t know what to rate this. It was a weird one, y’all.
I enjoyed reading it. It was funny, provocative, and chock full niche references and alt history easter eggs. I’m not sure I could quite, from the text alone, figure out what Matt Ruff was trying to do - but his own explanation is that this book was still about American’s, and the “mirage” we were treated to when our leaders promised we were righteous in our response to 9/11.
Ruff holds a mirror up to the faults and darkness of US foreign policy and cultural zeitgeist using the flipped perspective, but there’s also a thin line there between the US (rightly) being the butt of the joke and a world in which the Arab states are advanced being the joke, and it’s a precarious one.
I loved the final line of the book (pre-Epilogue). I also loved the tongue-in-cheek references and subtle nuances laced throughout.
Definitely a weird one. A good one. I think a huge drawback of it is that you as a reader need a pretty extensive knowledge base of national security, terrorism, US foreign policy, and US domestic politics, to fully appreciate the eerie comedy of a lot of this book’s content.
“A wicked prince in one world is a wicked prince in all worlds.”
amerdale's review against another edition
2.0
Meine Rezension: https://amerdale.wordpress.com/2016/02/26/gelesen-matt-ruff-mirage/
arensb's review
3.0
It’s not clear whether this is alternate-history science fiction or straight-up fantasy, but there’s no rule that says a book has to fit neatly into one category or another. In fact, it’s good to have books that resist pigeonholing.
Without revealing too much The Mirage is about a world in which the roles of West and Middle-East have been reversed; Baghdad is the cultural and financial center of the world, while North America is a collection of states led by one religious warlord or another. It takes place a decade after 11/9, when a group of Christian terrorists hijacked four planes and brought down twin towers above the Tigris and Euphrates.
The book is not without its flaws: it wants to present a vast world in just a few hundred pages, so there’s a lot of exposition. And the middle drags quite a bit, though it’s worth soldiering through until it makes a sharp left turn and down the roller-coaster near the end.
It also suffers from a problem common to time-travel and alternate-reality stories: the author can’t resist having the characters meet just about everyone of note in the story’s setting. The Mirage includes everyone, from David Koresh, Dick Cheney, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and more.
At the same time, it’s interesting to consider how all of these people would belong in this alternate timeline. One of the premises of the story is that even though the world may change, people’s character remains the same: a sociopath in one world is a sociopath in the other.
Without revealing too much The Mirage is about a world in which the roles of West and Middle-East have been reversed; Baghdad is the cultural and financial center of the world, while North America is a collection of states led by one religious warlord or another. It takes place a decade after 11/9, when a group of Christian terrorists hijacked four planes and brought down twin towers above the Tigris and Euphrates.
The book is not without its flaws: it wants to present a vast world in just a few hundred pages, so there’s a lot of exposition. And the middle drags quite a bit, though it’s worth soldiering through until it makes a sharp left turn and down the roller-coaster near the end.
It also suffers from a problem common to time-travel and alternate-reality stories: the author can’t resist having the characters meet just about everyone of note in the story’s setting. The Mirage includes everyone, from David Koresh, Dick Cheney, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and more.
At the same time, it’s interesting to consider how all of these people would belong in this alternate timeline. One of the premises of the story is that even though the world may change, people’s character remains the same: a sociopath in one world is a sociopath in the other.