A review by aligeorge
Vurt by Jeff Noon

A friend from work gave me this one to read on the basis I said I like dystopia. This is not something I'd have picked up otherwise, and I'm not sure how I feel about it hence no rating. Vurt is a combination of rave culture, drugs and cyberspace set in an alternate/future Manchester. It's quite postmodern in style, has lashings of bestiality and incest, and not a huge amount happens. Basically the main character, Scribble, is looking for his sister Desdemona, who has been lost in a kind of alternate reality you can only get to by taking a particular strain of drug (people take various colour coded feathers to get different highs). The world building is thoroughly uncompromising, nothing is really explained, and please look elsewhere if you want any development of your female characters beyond their age and hotness. I found it a bit of a slog, essentially - but there were some good bits and interesting use of language. Also like I say I kind of knew from the outset it might not really be my bag.