MAPPA MUNDI by Justina
Robson
Macmillan - October 2001
ISBN: 0333754387 - Paperback
SF/Thriller
Reviewed by Rachel
A Hyde, MyShelf.com
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a UK Copy
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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