Rating: 
Summary: "Blade Runner" & "3 Days of the Condor" with Cross-Dressing
Review: "Looking for the Mahdi" is just OK. At heart it is a love story between a (human) woman and an android mulched in with your typical government conspiracy thriller. In the not-to-distant future, Kay Bee Suliman is a women who posed as a man to cover a Mid-East war as a correspondent. Her boss under considerable pressure from an evil agency of the U.S. government pressures her into returning to the Mid-East to provide a cover for inserting an android (Halston) secret agent into the region. She accepts the assignment (again posing as a man), and finds out that nothing is what she thinks it is. The plot is like "Blade Runner" meets "Three Days of the Condor" with cross-dressing. Woods prose is good. Her smart-talking Kay Bee Suliman has quite a few pips during the course of the story. Her descriptive passages also have a wry humor worth reading. The science fiction in this story was unremarkable and incidental. Except for Halston, this could have been any clichéd reporter-does-spy-thing-for-double-crossing-government-agency story. The tech was pretty thin and unoriginal. In addition, I found the use of "a fictional Middle-Eastern country" bogus. The author went to a lot of work to get the culture correct. Throwing in the real names or extrapolating a possible future would not have been a far reach. "Looking for the Mahdi" is unremarkable. You've seen this story before, although probably without the gender-bending and the new millennium CNN-like spin. Frankly, in parts it was boring in its predictability. I only stuck with it for the prose. Read it for the main character's quips and 3rd world travelogue.
Rating:
Summary: "Blade Runner" & "3 Days of the Condor" with Cross-Dressing
Review: "Looking for the Mahdi" is just OK. At heart it is a love story between a (human) woman and an android mulched in with your typical government conspiracy thriller. In the not-to-distant future, Kay Bee Suliman is a women who posed as a man to cover a Mid-East war as a correspondent. Her boss under considerable pressure from an evil agency of the U.S. government pressures her into returning to the Mid-East to provide a cover for inserting an android (Halston) secret agent into the region. She accepts the assignment (again posing as a man), and finds out that nothing is what she thinks it is. The plot is like "Blade Runner" meets "Three Days of the Condor" with cross-dressing. Woods prose is good. Her smart-talking Kay Bee Suliman has quite a few pips during the course of the story. Her descriptive passages also have a wry humor worth reading. The science fiction in this story was unremarkable and incidental. Except for Halston, this could have been any clichéd reporter-does-spy-thing-for-double-crossing-government-agency story. The tech was pretty thin and unoriginal. In addition, I found the use of "a fictional Middle-Eastern country" bogus. The author went to a lot of work to get the culture correct. Throwing in the real names or extrapolating a possible future would not have been a far reach. "Looking for the Mahdi" is unremarkable. You've seen this story before, although probably without the gender-bending and the new millennium CNN-like spin. Frankly, in parts it was boring in its predictability. I only stuck with it for the prose. Read it for the main character's quips and 3rd world travelogue.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book
Review: Can't praise it enough. Barely science fiction, mostly a journalist/spy/love/culture story. Cynical and hopeful, very well written, lots of local color. Dense reality, good overview and philosophy. A thinking person's book. Lew
Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: Can't praise it enough. Barely science fiction, mostly a journalist/spy/love/culture story. Cynical and hopeful, very well written, lots of local color. Dense reality, good overview and philosophy. A thinking person's book. Lew
Rating:
Summary: Terrific
Review: Debut novel. I gobbled it up, first page to last. The words flow fast and slick, a delight to read; inciteful and clever. Global politics, a microchip, danger, sex, and, yes, more! Here is the story of a female journalist, who, disguised as a man, travels on assignment to the Middle East with a humanoid fabricant. In the first chapter, Kay Bee states: "As a woman, I was homely as a mud fence, but as a man, the same features were judged as craggy or distinguished." She adds: "There were no women field reporters in Khuruchabja except me. It's hard to do decent report if you're covered head to toe with fifteen yards of heavy red wool and banned from all male company except immediate family." What a terrific voice, first person, sarcastic and hopeful. I plan on reading it again.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific
Review: Debut novel. I gobbled it up, first page to last. The words flow fast and slick, a delight to read; inciteful and clever. Global politics, a microchip, danger, sex, and, yes, more! Here is the story of a female journalist, who, disguised as a man, travels on assignment to the Middle East with a humanoid fabricant. In the first chapter, Kay Bee states: "As a woman, I was homely as a mud fence, but as a man, the same features were judged as craggy or distinguished." She adds: "There were no women field reporters in Khuruchabja except me. It's hard to do decent report if you're covered head to toe with fifteen yards of heavy red wool and banned from all male company except immediate family." What a terrific voice, first person, sarcastic and hopeful. I plan on reading it again.
Rating:
Summary: A very good book.
Review: I found this book to be very enjoyable. The ideas that it presented though not knew are presented in an interesting fashion and made me more aware of the various dimensions of the middle east peace process.The prose I found was very easy to read. The protagonist I found was very entertaining. And though parts of the book are a bit predictable that didn't detract from the quality of the book.
Rating:
Summary: A very good book.
Review: I found this book to be very enjoyable. The ideas that it presented though not knew are presented in an interesting fashion and made me more aware of the various dimensions of the middle east peace process.The prose I found was very easy to read. The protagonist I found was very entertaining. And though parts of the book are a bit predictable that didn't detract from the quality of the book.
Rating: 
Summary: This novel twists the usual story into a much better one.
Review: I read this over the weekend. Well done, competently written, characters seem quite real (including the "Fabricant" -android), the author clearly has done a lot of research into the middle east, Islamic cultures, and news reporting. The problem I had with the book was that the near future setting was just too close to our own. I often felt like I was reading a techno-thriller or a modern day adventure story. On the other hand, if the book didn't have its strengths, I would never have even finished it.
Rating:
Summary: Competent but arguably too close to a techno-thriller for SF
Review: I read this over the weekend. Well done, competently written, characters seem quite real (including the "Fabricant" -android), the author clearly has done a lot of research into the middle east, Islamic cultures, and news reporting. The problem I had with the book was that the near future setting was just too close to our own. I often felt like I was reading a techno-thriller or a modern day adventure story. On the other hand, if the book didn't have its strengths, I would never have even finished it.
| 
