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laurenguydan's review against another edition
2.0
Such a fantastic plot idea squandered in a morass of bad writing. Very difficult to follow, characters very one dimensional, hard to care about them.
jeansisabook's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Basically a really long episode of "NCIS: Arabia". If you like police procedurals, Wikipedia-style context dumps, and international dramas, this will be decent for you. I like all those things. Most people in my life do not.
Suddenly tons of boring dialogue exposition in the last quarter. A whole lot of interesting world-building, though. Overall worth the read, though I wouldn't fault you for DNFing.
Suddenly tons of boring dialogue exposition in the last quarter. A whole lot of interesting world-building, though. Overall worth the read, though I wouldn't fault you for DNFing.
maxk525's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
bick_mcswiney's review against another edition
5.0
Great premise involving what would happen if the Middle East had become a superpower instead of the United States. More action than theory, but the alternate history portion of this book seems well thought out and clever. Pretty freakin' sweet.
mjspice's review against another edition
5.0
WOW! What can I say about this book. It was awesome! A thrilling ride from the beginning till the end
clawfoot's review against another edition
3.0
I couldn't help but think the first portion of the book was Matt Ruff showing off how clever he is. Yes, the book is very clever, and a lot of the reversals and the adjustments made to the world were extremely well-done. My favourite was "Green Desert." However, it took long enough to get to the plot that I started to wonder if there actually was one, and this wasn't just a very long "look how clever I am" exercise.
There is a plot, happily, and it's an engaging one.
There is a lot -- A LOT -- of exposition in the book, however. Several times I thought there was probably enough material covered to make a series of several novels if Ruff would stick to showing us the story, rather than just having a character (or even just the narrative) tell us what happened. There is a lot of backstory to cover, and the alternate "Library of Alexandria" entries (another piece of cleverness) are kind of required reading so you don't get lost. Familiarity with US history, politics and political names and nicknames are also a must. Keep Wikipedia handy if you aren't normally up on such things.
Overall, a good read. Not a fantastic read, mostly due to the slow start and the mountains of exposition and backstory. But a good one.
There is a plot, happily, and it's an engaging one.
There is a lot -- A LOT -- of exposition in the book, however. Several times I thought there was probably enough material covered to make a series of several novels if Ruff would stick to showing us the story, rather than just having a character (or even just the narrative) tell us what happened. There is a lot of backstory to cover, and the alternate "Library of Alexandria" entries (another piece of cleverness) are kind of required reading so you don't get lost. Familiarity with US history, politics and political names and nicknames are also a must. Keep Wikipedia handy if you aren't normally up on such things.
Overall, a good read. Not a fantastic read, mostly due to the slow start and the mountains of exposition and backstory. But a good one.
prcizmadia's review against another edition
2.0
I loved this book for the first 3/4ths, but it rapidly descended into something that I could scarcely recognize. It began with truly imaginative world-building and a truly tense and interesting investigation into reality itself. So, having built such a daring world that became an inquiry into what is real... why would he go and throw it all out at the end? Some may argue that he didn't actually do that, but to me, the implication is clear- and the characters may as well have woken up from a bad dream instead of what happened. There was such potential for deeply examining the roles of the US, Arab states, Israel, Europe... but it was thin-to-nonexistent, in my estimation. I was mightily annoyed that he would take a gutsy premise and then speed away from it so completely. If you're going to destroy and remake the world, make it stick.
blurhima's review against another edition
4.0
I enjoyed this far more than I expected I would. Ruff builds a great world with lots of details. I liked the main characters and how he approached the issues they struggle with (I am a therapist, so the development of these folks seemed to fit from my therapist lens). Some aspects of the world he creates don't seem to feel completely explained and/or don't completely sum up at the end. overall, I enjoyed the alternate take in this novel and reccomend it despite its flaws.
brizreading's review against another edition
5.0
What an inventive, illuminating spec fic book! This book really exhibited all that I love of well-made speculative fiction: by twisting only one aspect of our reality, it managed to provoke thought and delight. More often than not, I found myself smiling and shaking my head. "Oh my God, this is AMAZING," I kept thinking.
The twist (and it is pretty gimmicky, but what a payoff!): on November 11, 2001 (that is, 11/9), Christian fundamentalists ("Crusaders") crash two planes into the twin towers of Baghdad. Baghdad is one of the big cities of the "United Arab States" (UAS), the historical global superpower.
Everything falls from that. While our protagonist is Mustafa, a Homeland Security cop, we cross paths with everyone from Rumsfeld to Osama bin Laden. And, as the story eventually says, "A dark prince in one world is a dark prince in all worlds." Indeed, everyone's Bizarro!roles are at once familiar and strange: often illuminating on some aspect of their real world character or circumstances. And the whole upside-down world is an amazing mental exercise: I, at least, was constantly confronted with my Orientalist and War on Terror prejudices. Why does a broken-out Washington DC, where children throw rocks at (UAS) Marine tanks, strike me as so unbelievable? Why did the (no doubt intentional) over-familiarizing of the Homeland Security cops' stories constantly pull me back to "how American it sounded". And the way Christianity was treated; with the same post-colonial hegemonic condescension as the way the West treats Islam... Really a great book! It reminded me in style and inventiveness of Lydia Millet's equally strange and superb "Oh Pure and Radiant Heart" (a story of atomic bomb scientists, Oppenheimer among them, waking up in 2003 New Mexico).
And what made me flip out, and give this the illustrious fifth star, is how - within this parallel worlds itself - our "real" world begins to push its way in. When the author introduced this, I was even more delighted - it was really exciting to see how he developed this.
Another thing this book did well (and a characteristic of my all-time favorite spec fic book, Gateway, by Fred Pohl) is the periodic primary document intervals: in this case, each chapter is prologued by a parallel-world Wikipedia article - here called the Library of Alexandria - on topics from women's rights to Saddam Hussein (here a mob boss) to 11/9 itself.
If I have one critique, it's that the story sometimes reads a bit too much like being TOLD (rather than shown) this amazing, strange place - especially when the author is establishing each cop's backstory (interesting as they all are). But that's a pretty small quibble, given how great the whole set-up and execution is.
SO. GOOD.
(Let it be known that my beloved Cory Doctorow first alerted me to this book via this Boing Boing post: http://boingboing.net/2012/02/07/matt-ruffs-the-mirage.html)
The twist (and it is pretty gimmicky, but what a payoff!): on November 11, 2001 (that is, 11/9), Christian fundamentalists ("Crusaders") crash two planes into the twin towers of Baghdad. Baghdad is one of the big cities of the "United Arab States" (UAS), the historical global superpower.
Everything falls from that. While our protagonist is Mustafa, a Homeland Security cop, we cross paths with everyone from Rumsfeld to Osama bin Laden. And, as the story eventually says, "A dark prince in one world is a dark prince in all worlds." Indeed, everyone's Bizarro!roles are at once familiar and strange: often illuminating on some aspect of their real world character or circumstances. And the whole upside-down world is an amazing mental exercise: I, at least, was constantly confronted with my Orientalist and War on Terror prejudices. Why does a broken-out Washington DC, where children throw rocks at (UAS) Marine tanks, strike me as so unbelievable? Why did the (no doubt intentional) over-familiarizing of the Homeland Security cops' stories constantly pull me back to "how American it sounded". And the way Christianity was treated; with the same post-colonial hegemonic condescension as the way the West treats Islam... Really a great book! It reminded me in style and inventiveness of Lydia Millet's equally strange and superb "Oh Pure and Radiant Heart" (a story of atomic bomb scientists, Oppenheimer among them, waking up in 2003 New Mexico).
And what made me flip out, and give this the illustrious fifth star, is how - within this parallel worlds itself - our "real" world begins to push its way in. When the author introduced this, I was even more delighted - it was really exciting to see how he developed this.
Another thing this book did well (and a characteristic of my all-time favorite spec fic book, Gateway, by Fred Pohl) is the periodic primary document intervals: in this case, each chapter is prologued by a parallel-world Wikipedia article - here called the Library of Alexandria - on topics from women's rights to Saddam Hussein (here a mob boss) to 11/9 itself.
If I have one critique, it's that the story sometimes reads a bit too much like being TOLD (rather than shown) this amazing, strange place - especially when the author is establishing each cop's backstory (interesting as they all are). But that's a pretty small quibble, given how great the whole set-up and execution is.
SO. GOOD.
(Let it be known that my beloved Cory Doctorow first alerted me to this book via this Boing Boing post: http://boingboing.net/2012/02/07/matt-ruffs-the-mirage.html)
verkisto's review against another edition
3.0
Do you remember where you were when the towers fell? Mustafa al Baghdadi does. He was busting whiskey smugglers on the Tigris River when he saw the planes, hijacked by Christian fundamentalist insurgents, crash into the Tigris and Euphrates Twin Towers, ultimately bringing them down. That act, on November 9, 2001, sent the United Arab States into a full-blown “War on Terror,” driven by President Osama bin Laden, against the struggling theocracy in America. The UAS military forces maintain a presence there for many years, suffering losses from the forces there, led by such terror masterminds as Donald Rumsfeld, “The Quail Hunter” (a man who gets rid of his opponents by inviting them out on quail hunts and then “accidentally” shoots them), and a reference to a man who sounds a lot like George W. Bush. Add in some wild conspiracy theories behind how the UAS government was behind the attacks, and you start to find a lot of familiarity in a novel that upturns the entire history of 9/11 into the alternate history of 11/9.
Matt Ruff has created a compelling read that could have been just a thought experiment into jingoism, racism, patriotism, and the role of government following 9/11, but he also adds a fantastic plot to go along with this story to further cement it into our own history. The plot itself feels like a maguffin, since the point seems to be more about making the reader think, but the plot raises enough questions along the way to keep the reader moving forward through the story, and keeps it from being just a satire. It’s controversial, to say the least (it’s certainly disconcerting to read the words “President Osama bin Laden”), but it all feels deliberate, as if the point of this story is to make us a little uncomfortable by considering the viewpoint of the War on Terror from the other side.
That point makes it a little difficult to rate the novel on its story. It’s a little strange, and requires a significant suspension of disbelief in regards to the plot as the conspiracy begins to unravel, and ultimately I just found it to be hokey and disappointing. It also relies heavily on creating characters out of real people, which grew a little tiresome. They became charicatures of sorts, and as Ruff peppered the novel with more and more of them, swapping their moral and political sides from history to the novel, it turned into a guessing game where you wondered who was going to be the next bad guy or good guy. Thematically, it works, as it drives home the point of which is which in the War on Terror and how much of it depends on one’s perspective; story-wise, it was a bit of a failure for me.
The thing is, I liked the book. I can rely on Matt Ruff to write a compelling, interesting story with some wild suppositions, and that was certainly the case with The Mirage. It’s not as good as Sewer, Gas, Electric (though, admittedly, I should stop comparing his works against that novel, as it’s one of my favorites), but it raises some interesting questions and will keep you thinking long after you finish the book. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone (conservatives would find a lot to argue against here, I think), but if you’re curious about it, I think it’s worth reading.
Matt Ruff has created a compelling read that could have been just a thought experiment into jingoism, racism, patriotism, and the role of government following 9/11, but he also adds a fantastic plot to go along with this story to further cement it into our own history. The plot itself feels like a maguffin, since the point seems to be more about making the reader think, but the plot raises enough questions along the way to keep the reader moving forward through the story, and keeps it from being just a satire. It’s controversial, to say the least (it’s certainly disconcerting to read the words “President Osama bin Laden”), but it all feels deliberate, as if the point of this story is to make us a little uncomfortable by considering the viewpoint of the War on Terror from the other side.
That point makes it a little difficult to rate the novel on its story. It’s a little strange, and requires a significant suspension of disbelief in regards to the plot as the conspiracy begins to unravel, and ultimately I just found it to be hokey and disappointing. It also relies heavily on creating characters out of real people, which grew a little tiresome. They became charicatures of sorts, and as Ruff peppered the novel with more and more of them, swapping their moral and political sides from history to the novel, it turned into a guessing game where you wondered who was going to be the next bad guy or good guy. Thematically, it works, as it drives home the point of which is which in the War on Terror and how much of it depends on one’s perspective; story-wise, it was a bit of a failure for me.
The thing is, I liked the book. I can rely on Matt Ruff to write a compelling, interesting story with some wild suppositions, and that was certainly the case with The Mirage. It’s not as good as Sewer, Gas, Electric (though, admittedly, I should stop comparing his works against that novel, as it’s one of my favorites), but it raises some interesting questions and will keep you thinking long after you finish the book. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone (conservatives would find a lot to argue against here, I think), but if you’re curious about it, I think it’s worth reading.