This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Labyrinth of Reflections
Series: ----------
Author: Sergei Lukyanenko
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 271
Format: Digital Edition
Series: ----------
Author: Sergei Lukyanenko
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 271
Format: Digital Edition
Synopsis:
|
A Diver, a person
who can exit the Deep at will, is caught up in something much bigger
than he can imagine. It starts with him stealing the information for
a new “cure for the common cold”, which leads to a job offer by
the company he stole it from. He is then kidnapped and given the same
job offer by a mysterious Man without a Face. This job? To go to the
33rd level of a first person shooter game and rescue a
user who has somehow become stuck and who the company hired Divers
can't rescue.
The Diver has
adventures, finds the love of his life in a virtual brothel and
rescues the stranded user, only to find that the User isn't a human.
He might be an alien, a human from the future, a human from a
parallel universe or a newly emerged computer mind. Nobody knows but
they all want a piece of the action.
Leonid, the Diver,
takes the rescuee to a safe place and allows him to make his own
choice. In the process. Leonid is attacked by all the forces the Deep
can muster as well as by the creator of the Deep itself. With the
help of the rescuee, Leonid fights them all off and somehow gains the
ability to connect to the Deep without a modem (hahahahahahaa). The
visitor leaves and Leonid leaves the Deep and decides to meet his
virtual love in real life.
My
Thoughts:
|
This was originally written in '96 or '98 I believe and my goodness,
does it show. Lukyanenko waxes eloquent about the tech of the day and
it isn't pretty. Pentium computers, MEGS of ram, 28800 modems, Doom.
Then he mixes it with non-existing tech like full virtual reality
body suits and the Deep, which works on the unconscious as a way to
get around the horrible graphics of the day. It was such a mish-mash
that it kept throwing me out of the story. You just can't DO the
things he writes about on a 28.8K phone line.
This was pre-Matrix and the ideas are pretty cool, when Lukyanenko
isn't waxing full on melancholic Russian that is. That gets old
really fast. And I mean, really, really fast.
This felt more like a book where Lukyanenko was writing out his ideas
of what it means to be human (while denying God and Communism in the
same breath) and it felt rather sophomoric. At the same time, several
of the ideas here were carried over almost wholesale into his
Nightwatch series.
Overall, I don't feel like this was a waste of my time but I
certainly wouldn't want to introduce anyone to Lukyanenko's writings
with this book. I'd definitely steer them towards the Nightwatch.
★★★☆☆