Looking for the Mahdi

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: 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: 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: Impressive
Review: I've had this book on my to-read shelf for over a year, and now I regret putting it off for so long.

The story is a deft blend of a spy thriller, a romance, and (yes) science fiction that manages to transcend all of its various genre labels.

What really made the story work, for me, was the surprisingly mature understanding of middle eastern politics and religion that the author displayed. In fact, the only detraction that the story held, for me, was the authors choice of placing the action in a fictious Islamic nation, rather than a real-world one. Given her grasp of the culture, I think that this was something of a cheat, on her part.

Even so, this is a well recommended book, if you can find a copy. It's a disappointment that a story as well crafted and sophisticated as this one should, so quickly, find its way to the remainders bin.

Rating:
Summary: SF in a near future middle east and media driven enviroment
Review: Kay Munadi is a burnt out war correspondent journalist who is persuaded to escort a humanoid fabricant (a biological human-based "android") to a middle eastern country that is not known for it's frendliness to the USA or women. (she goes disguised as a man as she is not a "pretty woman")

This book is very well written, and unusual for a number of reasons. The author appears to have a very good grasp of Muslim values and the resentment that first world countries (read europe and the USA) have stirred up there, by very effectively using divide and conquer methods.

However, all this is just background for a well written character based story as we get to know Kay and the "robot" John Halton better.

This is not based in some future where all our problems have been somehow fixed, instead it is based on a continuation and intensification of todays trends. It makes you think about the power of today's media and in the end you come away with a feeling that you have read an outstanding book.

Rating:
Summary: SF in a near future middle east and media driven enviroment
Review: Kay Munadi is a burnt out war correspondent journalist who is persuaded to escort a humanoid fabricant (a biological human-based "android") to a middle eastern country that is not known for it's frendliness to the USA or women. (she goes disguised as a man as she is not a "pretty woman")

This book is very well written, and unusual for a number of reasons. The author appears to have a very good grasp of Muslim values and the resentment that first world countries (read europe and the USA) have stirred up there, by very effectively using divide and conquer methods.

However, all this is just background for a well written character based story as we get to know Kay and the "robot" John Halton better.

This is not based in some future where all our problems have been somehow fixed, instead it is based on a continuation and intensification of todays trends. It makes you think about the power of today's media and in the end you come away with a feeling that you have read an outstanding book.

Rating:
Summary: Talmudic Golem story meets cyberpunk
Review: Like Marge Piercy's HE, SHE, AND IT, this book takes the story of a golem protecting a group of true believers and places it in the near future. But, instead of a magically animated golem, we have an android.

But the ending of this novel takes a big turn. In this unique ending, Wood suggests a way out of the usual cyberpunk, offending god ending.

This is both wonderful piece of cyberpunk and a light religious read.

I loved it. I read 60+ cyberpunk novels and short stories last year and this is one of my top 5.