MAPPA MUNDI by Justina Robson
Macmillan - October 2001
ISBN: 0333754387 - Paperback
SF/Thriller

Reviewed by Rachel A Hyde, MyShelf.com
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This is a chilling tale of the near future, a time when science fiction has become science fact and in the hands of the ruthless and powerful nightmare can become reality. It is a time when the human brain can be mapped, and a project to do some serious terraforming of that map can make people behave and think in any way their puppet master leaders can imagine. Psychologist Natalie Armstrong's project seems to be just another venture until it gets into the hands of the military and becomes something far more frightening. She meets up with Jude Westhorpe, a half-Native American FBI agent who is on the trail of a mysterious Russian with fingers in every conceivable pie and a tale to tell about his own half-sister and their home Reservation.
Suddenly they are sucked into an adventure that seems set to alter the world as they know it and turn it into something alien, inhuman but all too believable.

Robson's world of the near future is well realized and all too believable, a tale of science in the wrong hands that could come true which is what makes it both frightening and plausible. It could stand some editing, and tauter writing would have made for a more exciting story - as it is certainly an exciting subject - but once it gets going the reader is in for an exhilarating ride. The characters are the usual misfits and mavericks that this type of fiction seems to have as a mandatory feature and they suffer from not being particularly sympathetic, although they are reasonably well drawn. The flashes we get into their past make them more human than if the long introduction had been omitted but the star of this story is the meticulously-crafted story with its weird but credible science that starts out innocently until it gets misused. Stirring stuff that grips and won't let go…

 

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