≫ Download Lady of Mazes Karl Schroeder 9780765350787 Books

Lady of Mazes Karl Schroeder 9780765350787 Books

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Lady of Mazes Karl Schroeder 9780765350787 Books

Much like every Karl Schroeder book I've read, the concepts and world building are incredible while the characters and plot are shallow and confusing.


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Lady of Mazes Karl Schroeder 9780765350787 Books Reviews

Karl Schroeder's premise in his fascinating but frustrating "Lady of Mazes" is that different cultures with different social structures require different technologies. To illustrate this point, he creates a world called "The Coronal," with its array of different societies (called manifolds), all maintained by AIs. The tech is known as the "Inscape," which creates virtual realities through which its citizens perceive the world. Also, to achieve this technological purity the author seems to advocate, there are "tech locks," which prohibit this or that manifold from creating an inappropriate tech. That seemingly allows any particular culture to be as primitive or advanced as it desires.

We zoom in first on Westerhaven, where the inhabitants travel in AI-generated "societies," and sometimes appear virtually and sometimes in person, wearing whatever clothing they imagine themselves to be in. (When somebody gets bored, they depart for a chat elsewhere and send in one of their animas). Then we zoom in on one of the inhabitants, Livia Kodaly, who (as we are constantly and perhaps not entirely necessarily reminded) once was one of the victims involved in a software failure that cost lives when their public transport crashed--for real.

Of course, soon invaders, led by the mysterious entity known as 3340, assault the Coronal, and Livia's off in search of help, which she eventually finds, after which she--well, you know.

Mr. Schroeder, since he never quite makes clear what is real and what is illusion (which may well be his point) is pretty much free to write his own rules as he goes along--since nothing is quite as it seems, anything can happen, and pretty much does.

Which brings us back to differing systems requiring different techs. That allows the author (or his publisher) to present this work as "hard" science fiction when it's nothing of the sort. For if you accept the notion that this melange of fascinating ideas and colliding interests is "hard" science fiction, you'll also have to concede that the "Alice" and the "Oz" books are, too.
That Karl Schroeder built an intricate, well-thought out world is clear from page one. But the way he proceeds to involve the reader, to bring us into his world, is off-putting and confusing.

In a style echoing Gene Wolfe and other "the pleasure is in figuring out what we're talking about" sci-fi writers, Schroeder jumps from one "in the middle of" story to another, using a litany of Schroeder/Lady of Mazes-specific proper nouns, to describe what would otherwise be a fairly straightforward cyber/sci-fi plot.

If there's a cool idea in here, it was lost to me in the folds of weird terminology, purposely confusing descriptions (not evocative but just annoying), illogical character behavior, and unbelievable cultural constructions.

Which is a shame, because half of Lady of Mazes seemed almost to reach that transcendental plane of sci-fi that goes beyond sci-fi and says something new about life/society/whatever (a la Gene Wolfe, Susan Palwick, Connie Wills, PK Dick), but the other half is lamely entrenched in high-school computers'n'rockets genre fiction.
Well-written and structured around some ideas I hadn't seen before despite looking hard for them. I enjoyed it. Ore and more as it went on and got deeper.
Very thought-provoking, even if it doesn't have the best ending.
Really a worthwhile read and very interesting conceptually as we witness the birth of both virtual reality as a popular technology and also the increasingly oppressive "liberation" of technocracy removing more and more popular restraints from the "hands" of the Western bodies politic.
This is one of the best books I've read in a long time, sci-fi or otherwise. I originally borrowed this book from the library after reading Permanence by Karl Schroeder. He has specific themes and ideas that you can see develop in his stories. It's very plausible physics, very believable evolution of the human species, and very frightening scenarios of how humanity can lose itself with the technology and opportunities that advanced technology provide. And all of this comes through with very rich, endearing and flawed characters that keep you rooting for the hero, and guessing who the enemies really are. I'm reading this book for the second time and still uncovering themes and concepts, so I'll probably be reading it another 2-3 times.
I was introduced to this author by the later Lockstep book. He has some amazing ideas about what it will be like to be human in the future. Unfortunately the book is let down a bit by shallow characters and a messy rambling plot that doesn't seem to know where to go.
Much like every Karl Schroeder book I've read, the concepts and world building are incredible while the characters and plot are shallow and confusing.