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Thursday, February 13, 2014

Book Review: Maze by J. M. McDermott

Maze
by J.M. McDermott

Paperback, 214 pages
Published January 13th 2014 by Apex Book Company
From every corner of time and space, sometimes people go missing without a trace. They never come back.

Get lost in the long stone halls of the maze with the ones that find each other, form tribes, scrape out a life from rocks and sand. Their stories interweave. Maia Station is a scientist ripped from stasis, but she has no tools to test the way things are. Instead, she raises her daughter as best she can and survives. Wang Xin once had his head dipped in water, and a djinni in the water entered his eye. He sees the future, exactly as it was supposed to be if he hadn’t seen the light, but it does him no good in the life he has. In a world much like our own, Joseph comes home from a ten year high school reunion and encounters a light in the darkness. The light speaks.

My name is Jenny. Put me in your lung. Breathe deep.



From every corner of time and space, sometimes people go missing without a trace. They never come back.

There is a maze where people are snatched from different areas, maybe even different times and placed within. Individuals are taken and placed here, where they find a tribe and each other and learn to survive in this strange new world. Maia remembers life aboard a space station, brought here pregnant. She gives birth to a daughter, Julie in the maze. Julie knows nothing but a life inside the maze. Joseph returns home from his high school reunion to find a light in the darkness. Wang sees a future that could have been. There si also Lucius, the Neanderthal who loves Julie.

Strange and bewildering and yet, exhilarating, Maze reshapes mythology into something different and maybe a tiny bit familiar. If you’re looking for high fantasy like JRR Tolkein and George RR Martin writes then Maze is not for you. But you’re cheating yourself from a unique and wonderful experience that says fantasy is more. This book should not be ignored.

 4 sheep






Pamela K. Kinney Website Blog Facebook
aka Sapphire Phelan
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About the Author:
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His first novel was plucked from a slush pile and went on to be #6 on Amazon.com's Year's Best SF/F of 2008, shortlisted for a Crawford Prize, and on Locus Magazine's Recommended Reading List for Debuts. His short fiction has appeared in Weird Tales Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, Apex Magazine, and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, among other places. He has a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Houston, and an MFA in Popular Fiction from the Stonecoast program of the University of Southern Maine.

By night, he wanders a maze of bookshelves and empty coffee cups, and by day he wanders the streets of San Antonio, where he lives and works.

He tries to write in between.

2 comments:

  1. I've read it and can attest to its amazing-ness. There is a lot of correlation between the stories, at least I found there to be. I think the great thing about the story is it becomes something new to each of us...sort of like the people that end up in the Maze.

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  2. It is a great premise for a story. I haven't read it yet, but Pamela liked it a lot :) thanks for stopping by!

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