What do you think?
Rate this book
Maul
In a mall like any other, two gangs of teenaged girls are about to embark on an orgy of shopping and designer violence. In the battleground of cool, they'll fight for their lives to prove that "image is everything." And in another place, within a sealed room, a lone man fights an equally desperate war against a new virus and the scientists who have developed it. If anyone gets out alive, it will be a small miracle.
256 pages, Paperback
First published October 2, 2003
6 people are currently reading
426 people want to read
About the author
Tricia Sullivan
34 books75 followersTricia Sullivan (born July 7, 1968 in New Jersey, U.S.) is a science fiction writer. She has also written fantasy under the pseudonym Valery Leith.
She moved to the United Kingdom in 1995. In 1999 she won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for her novel Dreaming in Smoke. Her novel Maul was also shortlisted for the same award in 2004.
Sullivan has studied music and karate. Her partner is the martial artist Steve Morris, with whom she has three children.
She moved to the United Kingdom in 1995. In 1999 she won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for her novel Dreaming in Smoke. Her novel Maul was also shortlisted for the same award in 2004.
Sullivan has studied music and karate. Her partner is the martial artist Steve Morris, with whom she has three children.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
August 9, 2014
Maul is told with two parallel stories. Teenage fashionistas in a mall getting their fashion & gunplay on & a male test subject plugged into a game in a habitat at a research facility in a female dominant society. They're fascinating threads on their own that converge in a very interesting way.
Sun Katz is the main teen we follow at the maul & she's a great character. From the first page, it's pretty clear that she's got other things going on than just what shoes & lip gloss she's going to wear for the day. Sun & her girlfriends wear holstered guns as fashion accessories & the inherent problem in this becomes apparent when a typical squabble at the Estee Lauder counter between two groups of girls goes all hail of bullets & smashed up perfume displays. It's all a bit video game & pulpy but it's fun & engaging to read what happens as Sun flees the scene & has other "adventures" in the maul. I know that this is just half of the story but I found it all so engaging that I quite feel it could have stood on its own.
Meniscus is the test subject in the other story & he's been infected with Az97. He's often in pain & he's blue. He has an experience that almost kills him & he's basically taken out of NoSystems (the Mall game). His handlers are women who work at the research facility & I can honestly say, they're all odious. But in a deliciously terrible way that you can't stop reading about. We learn about the society in which they live & a bit about how women's ascendancy & men being relegated to something called a Pigwalk came to be. It's a twisted society but not so different in some ways from the one in which we exist so it's relatable. There's a murder-by-passive-infection plot that is put into motion by one of the women at the research facility & Arnie Henshaw (a prime Pigwalk contender) & we meet Starry Eyes/Carerra. He is a lot of the worst of people in general but he's also one of the most unvarnished & honest players here, so you don't really want him to die. I admit that I did tire of him abusing Meniscus rather quickly & no one giving a damn. In fairness, SE was treated mercilessly as well by the handlers & society in general. This side of the story is a little slow going at first but by the middle of the book you can see how both sides are running in tandem & where they converge. Then it's a ripping time where everything in both stories is amped up to the finish where both wind up on a highway with a lone wolf. Game over.
I would say there's a "big reveal" where you realize what is real & what isn't but I didn't really have that (maybe others do). The hallmarks are there throughout & it just winds tighter & tighter between the stories as you go along. I found it satisfying but have to admit that I was a little sad that some of the characters I adored were only virtual. Funny thing to say about characters in a book. It was a nice bit of mind twisting to try & determine what was influencing who & when from each side of the story.
This was the first book I've read by Tricia Sullivan but it won't be my last. I bought my copy in paperback as it wasn't available on Kindle (but is being reissued on Kindle for the AmazonUK store). I hope Ms. Sullivan will be offering her titles on the US Amazon Kindle shop soon.
Sun Katz is the main teen we follow at the maul & she's a great character. From the first page, it's pretty clear that she's got other things going on than just what shoes & lip gloss she's going to wear for the day. Sun & her girlfriends wear holstered guns as fashion accessories & the inherent problem in this becomes apparent when a typical squabble at the Estee Lauder counter between two groups of girls goes all hail of bullets & smashed up perfume displays. It's all a bit video game & pulpy but it's fun & engaging to read what happens as Sun flees the scene & has other "adventures" in the maul. I know that this is just half of the story but I found it all so engaging that I quite feel it could have stood on its own.
Meniscus is the test subject in the other story & he's been infected with Az97. He's often in pain & he's blue. He has an experience that almost kills him & he's basically taken out of NoSystems (the Mall game). His handlers are women who work at the research facility & I can honestly say, they're all odious. But in a deliciously terrible way that you can't stop reading about. We learn about the society in which they live & a bit about how women's ascendancy & men being relegated to something called a Pigwalk came to be. It's a twisted society but not so different in some ways from the one in which we exist so it's relatable. There's a murder-by-passive-infection plot that is put into motion by one of the women at the research facility & Arnie Henshaw (a prime Pigwalk contender) & we meet Starry Eyes/Carerra. He is a lot of the worst of people in general but he's also one of the most unvarnished & honest players here, so you don't really want him to die. I admit that I did tire of him abusing Meniscus rather quickly & no one giving a damn. In fairness, SE was treated mercilessly as well by the handlers & society in general. This side of the story is a little slow going at first but by the middle of the book you can see how both sides are running in tandem & where they converge. Then it's a ripping time where everything in both stories is amped up to the finish where both wind up on a highway with a lone wolf. Game over.
I would say there's a "big reveal" where you realize what is real & what isn't but I didn't really have that (maybe others do). The hallmarks are there throughout & it just winds tighter & tighter between the stories as you go along. I found it satisfying but have to admit that I was a little sad that some of the characters I adored were only virtual. Funny thing to say about characters in a book. It was a nice bit of mind twisting to try & determine what was influencing who & when from each side of the story.
This was the first book I've read by Tricia Sullivan but it won't be my last. I bought my copy in paperback as it wasn't available on Kindle (but is being reissued on Kindle for the AmazonUK store). I hope Ms. Sullivan will be offering her titles on the US Amazon Kindle shop soon.
November 30, 2016
This is another re-read of a longtime bookshelf inhabitant, a sci-fi novel I hadn’t read for so many years that I couldn’t remember what happened at the end. It stood up pretty well to re-reading, but definitely had more of an impact on me when I was younger. The reasons for this include, a) back then I’d rarely come across a sci-fi novel with a majority-female cast of characters, b) it is partially set within a shopping mall and explores the Ballardian notion of oppressive buildings promoting madness, c) I related to the main character Sun, as she finds violence far more interesting than boys and is obsessed with the collapse of civilisation. The last was probably the most important; Sun’s point of view remains the best thing about the novel in my opinion.
As to what ‘Maul’ is actually about, it has an Alice In Wonderland-esque ‘Which dreamed it?’ structure. Two parallel plot threads occur, one of which might be a hallucinatory allegory for part of the other, or two parts of reality bleeding into one another. This is left ambiguous. One thread consists of Sun and her friends heavily armed adventures in a shopping mall, the other is set in a future where most humans with a Y chromosome have been wiped out by plagues. In the latter, a group of female scientists have a man called Meniscus imprisoned in order to study the weird bugs he is infected with. A particularly effective aspect of both threads in the satire on consumer culture and advertising. The world-building of a ‘Y-plague’ decimated world is made vivid by snippets of advertising, suggesting that consumer culture has adapted easily to the conditions. (Now that I think about it, perhaps there is a subtextual framing of consumerism as an especially resilient virus?) I was less impressed with the treatment of gender, which seemed not dissimilar to that in Life’s; both books focus on the Y chromosome as central to gender.
I enjoyed the reread for nostalgia and my continued appreciation of Sun, however I can see why I forgot the ending. It isn’t especially notable. In fact, probably the most memorable thing about the novel is the beginning. It’s the only book I’ve ever read that opens with a woman’s thought-processes while masturbating.
As to what ‘Maul’ is actually about, it has an Alice In Wonderland-esque ‘Which dreamed it?’ structure. Two parallel plot threads occur, one of which might be a hallucinatory allegory for part of the other, or two parts of reality bleeding into one another. This is left ambiguous. One thread consists of Sun and her friends heavily armed adventures in a shopping mall, the other is set in a future where most humans with a Y chromosome have been wiped out by plagues. In the latter, a group of female scientists have a man called Meniscus imprisoned in order to study the weird bugs he is infected with. A particularly effective aspect of both threads in the satire on consumer culture and advertising. The world-building of a ‘Y-plague’ decimated world is made vivid by snippets of advertising, suggesting that consumer culture has adapted easily to the conditions. (Now that I think about it, perhaps there is a subtextual framing of consumerism as an especially resilient virus?) I was less impressed with the treatment of gender, which seemed not dissimilar to that in Life’s; both books focus on the Y chromosome as central to gender.
I enjoyed the reread for nostalgia and my continued appreciation of Sun, however I can see why I forgot the ending. It isn’t especially notable. In fact, probably the most memorable thing about the novel is the beginning. It’s the only book I’ve ever read that opens with a woman’s thought-processes while masturbating.
January 11, 2012
Neal Stephenson faces off with John Shirley and Pat Cadigan in this intriguing, often fascinating, feminist cyberpunk thriller from Tricia Sullivan. Imagine if you will, the nonchalant, often hilarious prose from Stephenson's "Snow Crash", mixed vigorously with vivid, descriptive, and often lyrical, prose from Shirley's "Eclipse" trilogy, and Pat Cadigan's memorable female anti-heroes from her short fiction and novels, adding up to a memorable, if not perfect, novel from this young Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author. Tricia Sullivan has conjured a bizarre, near future world of suburban malls inhabited by homicidal teenage girls running amok, armed with semiautomatic pistols and rifles, and acting as if they are inhabiting a cyberpunk computer game, without realizing the deadly consequences of their real-life actions. She deftly weaves this memorable saga featuring 16 year-old Sun Katz and her friend Suk Hee Kim, with another, equally compelling, tale of down-and-out loser Snake Carrera, who is imprisoned with Meniscus, the experimental "Typhoid Mary" of a deadly male plague, as part of a deadly medical experiment that will have unforseen consequences for both men, and the female team of researchers overseeing their welfare. Although both tales do not mingle, they do set the stage for a memorable conclusion about individuality and the future of humanity. Without question, with the publication of this novel, Tricia Sullivan has emerged, as one of our most interesting young writers of science fiction, and especially, as one of its most intriguing literary stylists.
June 19, 2008
Tricia Sullivan, Maul (Night Shade, 2006)
Maul is everything I don't like about a book wrapped up in one package. So why is it that this thing works so very, very well? I don't have an answer to that, and I probably never will. And I'm not the only one that thought this, given some of the negative reviews I've read of the book. Sometimes, though-- it happens far more often in music-- you throw together all the stuff that makes a song pure crap and come out with absolute genius. Look at Better than Ezra's “A Lifetime” or Vertical Horizon's “Everything You Want”. It's rare that it happens in book form, but it does every once in a while. Maul is one of those books. It tosses together a vocabulary that makes next to no sense half the time (and weighs itself down with dialect all too often), uses a painful cliché as its turning point, is way too in love with its own postmodern flair, stops the action on a fairly regular basis to inject social commentary, and is desperately predictable. And yet, somehow, you put it all into the meatgrinder and what comes out the other end is delicious.
The book is divided into two parallel storylines. One deals with Sun, a Korean-American who, with two of her friends, is forced to go to the mall one Saturday morning (who's doing the forcing you find out later; too complicated to get into in a thousand words), where, thanks to one of her friends, she finds herself in a shootout with the city's toughest girl gang. The other, set in a world where a virus has wiped out most of the men, centers on Meniscus, a male clone who is a lab rat for designer genetic weaponry. He's autistic and noncommunicative, and Madeline, his handler, keeps him docile with a VR program called Mall. (You see where this is going already, I take it.) Meniscus' world is shaken up when a rogue male, whom Meniscus calls Starry Eyes, is brought into his bubble, an attempt to assassinate Starry Eyes with the plague that Meniscus is currently incubating. The whys and wherefores of the assassination attempt for the main mystery in this part of the book.
What makes this all work is Sullivan's crackling prose and flair for the B-grade dramatic; she knows exactly how to balance a cliffhanger to keep the reader pushing for just one more chapter. Despite the book's flaws (detailed above), I devoured it in a few sittings; Sullivan invents a near-future world of post-armageddon pop culture where an armageddon hasn't actually taken place, and it's fascinating to watch. Then, once you're hooked, she goes way over the top, and the fun is just hanging on to see how nuts this thing is going to get. Meanwhile, she's stealthily developing her characters, certainly more than I expected once I clued in to the B0grade nature of the book; by the end, it almost seemed as if Sullivan were crafting a parody of cyberpunk rather than the real thing. But not quite. And this is another aspect of the genius of Maul; having reflected on it as long as I have, I still can't quite tell. ****
Maul is everything I don't like about a book wrapped up in one package. So why is it that this thing works so very, very well? I don't have an answer to that, and I probably never will. And I'm not the only one that thought this, given some of the negative reviews I've read of the book. Sometimes, though-- it happens far more often in music-- you throw together all the stuff that makes a song pure crap and come out with absolute genius. Look at Better than Ezra's “A Lifetime” or Vertical Horizon's “Everything You Want”. It's rare that it happens in book form, but it does every once in a while. Maul is one of those books. It tosses together a vocabulary that makes next to no sense half the time (and weighs itself down with dialect all too often), uses a painful cliché as its turning point, is way too in love with its own postmodern flair, stops the action on a fairly regular basis to inject social commentary, and is desperately predictable. And yet, somehow, you put it all into the meatgrinder and what comes out the other end is delicious.
The book is divided into two parallel storylines. One deals with Sun, a Korean-American who, with two of her friends, is forced to go to the mall one Saturday morning (who's doing the forcing you find out later; too complicated to get into in a thousand words), where, thanks to one of her friends, she finds herself in a shootout with the city's toughest girl gang. The other, set in a world where a virus has wiped out most of the men, centers on Meniscus, a male clone who is a lab rat for designer genetic weaponry. He's autistic and noncommunicative, and Madeline, his handler, keeps him docile with a VR program called Mall. (You see where this is going already, I take it.) Meniscus' world is shaken up when a rogue male, whom Meniscus calls Starry Eyes, is brought into his bubble, an attempt to assassinate Starry Eyes with the plague that Meniscus is currently incubating. The whys and wherefores of the assassination attempt for the main mystery in this part of the book.
What makes this all work is Sullivan's crackling prose and flair for the B-grade dramatic; she knows exactly how to balance a cliffhanger to keep the reader pushing for just one more chapter. Despite the book's flaws (detailed above), I devoured it in a few sittings; Sullivan invents a near-future world of post-armageddon pop culture where an armageddon hasn't actually taken place, and it's fascinating to watch. Then, once you're hooked, she goes way over the top, and the fun is just hanging on to see how nuts this thing is going to get. Meanwhile, she's stealthily developing her characters, certainly more than I expected once I clued in to the B0grade nature of the book; by the end, it almost seemed as if Sullivan were crafting a parody of cyberpunk rather than the real thing. But not quite. And this is another aspect of the genius of Maul; having reflected on it as long as I have, I still can't quite tell. ****
September 30, 2011
I was exited to read this due to the description as well as some of the thematic approach to young girls having a gang war over fashion in a mall. And, well.. It ended up being something else entirely that I can't quite put my finger on. From the get go, on the first fucking page, a young girl is masturbating by inserting the barrel of her gun inside of her. Yeah, and this is supposed to be feminist fiction? Then she's off to go shopping with some friends at the mall, and if there's time face a rival gang as well. Then there is the other story that runs alternate of a man trapped in a zoo exhibit as they run biological testing on him, seemingly just for fun to see what happens, and it's turning him blue. In this other world most males are dead, they remaining are farmed out as sperm donors to the highest bidders, the rest of the population is made by cloning or gene splicing between to female hosts. The women on this side of the story are so desperate to get pregnant, they will lie, manipulate, and do much worse just to get at that precious man juice. Then one of the higher ups demands that they take the most viable donor, that is also immune top the plague that has killed off the men, and place him in captivity with the blue test subject in hopes of his new strain of virus infecting him. This brash man was by far the most enjoyable character in the book for me, crude, vulgar, and defiant - the only sensible and real feeling one.
Back to the mall, there is a shoot out between the girls, some riot cops show up, there is some really dumb sex.. And some how this is tied to a simulation that is allowing the test subject to work through his infection, so it's not real? In fact I really thought that the story with the girls was pointless and ended poorly, which sucked that was the story I was reading this for..
The other story actually ended up being fairly interesting, and had a great action packed conclusion. But, for being so called feminist fiction I thought it was very sexist toward women. I am a man, so maybe I just didn't get it, or didn't see that that kind of behavior is liberating for women.
In the end whatever this book was about - I just didn't get it.
Back to the mall, there is a shoot out between the girls, some riot cops show up, there is some really dumb sex.. And some how this is tied to a simulation that is allowing the test subject to work through his infection, so it's not real? In fact I really thought that the story with the girls was pointless and ended poorly, which sucked that was the story I was reading this for..
The other story actually ended up being fairly interesting, and had a great action packed conclusion. But, for being so called feminist fiction I thought it was very sexist toward women. I am a man, so maybe I just didn't get it, or didn't see that that kind of behavior is liberating for women.
In the end whatever this book was about - I just didn't get it.
February 20, 2022
Il libro è diviso in due storie parallele, che per alcuni particolari sembrano coincidere anche se sono molto diverse tra loro.
Da un lato abbiamo delle ragazzine adolescenti, pronte alla violenza e al sangue mentre passano un pomeriggio insieme al centro commerciale. La protagonista di questo arco è Sun Katz. E’ una tipa tutto pepe, pronta a difendere l’onore del loro gruppo di amiche. Il fatto di girare armata sembra essere la norma per lei, visto che non si fa problemi a sparare a chiunque le faccia un torto. Ho fatto molta fatica a seguire le sue vicende, perché è sempre in movimento, senza un vero obiettivo se non seminare caos. Le sue azioni sembrano guidate dalla follia, dall’impeto del momento, senza curarsi delle conseguenze. Non che le sue amiche siano differenti, visto che sono anche loro le prime a mettersi in mostra con gesti senza senso.
L’altra linea temporale è invece degna di un romanzo distopico. La popolazione maschile è quasi stata completamente spazzata via da un virus. In questo mondo dominato dalle donne abbiamo due uomini, esperimenti viventi, rinchiusi in una struttura di ricerca. Il primo Meniscus non ha idea di cosa ci sia nel mondo al di fuori del laboratorio, conosce solo la sua vita come cavia e il dolore che gli causano gli esperimenti a cui è sottoposto. Tutto cambia quando incontra l’altro uomo Carerra, che gli mostra come sia possibile scappare dal mondo che ha conosciuto fino ad adesso. La società descritta non è migliore rispetto a quella di Sun Katz, in quanto anche in questo arco troviamo violenza e soprusi, portati avanti in nome della scienza e della sopravvivenza.
La narrazione delle due linee culmina nel finale, molto aperto, che lascia entrambe le vicende in sospeso. E’ come se il libro si limitasse a mostrarci uno squarcio nelle vite dei vari personaggi, lasciandoci liberi di interpretarle come vogliamo. Se alcune situazioni, infatti, ricordano certe scene della nostra società moderna, è una conclusione a cui dobbiamo arrivare da soli, rendendo più potente il messaggio nascosto nel libro.
Da un lato abbiamo delle ragazzine adolescenti, pronte alla violenza e al sangue mentre passano un pomeriggio insieme al centro commerciale. La protagonista di questo arco è Sun Katz. E’ una tipa tutto pepe, pronta a difendere l’onore del loro gruppo di amiche. Il fatto di girare armata sembra essere la norma per lei, visto che non si fa problemi a sparare a chiunque le faccia un torto. Ho fatto molta fatica a seguire le sue vicende, perché è sempre in movimento, senza un vero obiettivo se non seminare caos. Le sue azioni sembrano guidate dalla follia, dall’impeto del momento, senza curarsi delle conseguenze. Non che le sue amiche siano differenti, visto che sono anche loro le prime a mettersi in mostra con gesti senza senso.
L’altra linea temporale è invece degna di un romanzo distopico. La popolazione maschile è quasi stata completamente spazzata via da un virus. In questo mondo dominato dalle donne abbiamo due uomini, esperimenti viventi, rinchiusi in una struttura di ricerca. Il primo Meniscus non ha idea di cosa ci sia nel mondo al di fuori del laboratorio, conosce solo la sua vita come cavia e il dolore che gli causano gli esperimenti a cui è sottoposto. Tutto cambia quando incontra l’altro uomo Carerra, che gli mostra come sia possibile scappare dal mondo che ha conosciuto fino ad adesso. La società descritta non è migliore rispetto a quella di Sun Katz, in quanto anche in questo arco troviamo violenza e soprusi, portati avanti in nome della scienza e della sopravvivenza.
La narrazione delle due linee culmina nel finale, molto aperto, che lascia entrambe le vicende in sospeso. E’ come se il libro si limitasse a mostrarci uno squarcio nelle vite dei vari personaggi, lasciandoci liberi di interpretarle come vogliamo. Se alcune situazioni, infatti, ricordano certe scene della nostra società moderna, è una conclusione a cui dobbiamo arrivare da soli, rendendo più potente il messaggio nascosto nel libro.
June 17, 2011
(9/10) The Atrocity Exhibition set in a shopping mall. Maul is the story of two interacting paralell universes, both fairly dystopian -- a universe where most of the men have been wiped out by the plague and the remainder objectify themselves to earn the right to be planted in a pig fetus, and a world similar to our own except where the teenage girls have started to carry guns as a fashion symbol. I especially loved the latter plotline, which was an incredibly inventive fucked-up coming of age story as well as an action thriller. The more explicitly sci-fi end of the story was good too, even if it did veer into Perfectly Acceptable SF at some points, if that makes any sense. All the same, if the story had stuck to Sun and her friends shooting up the mall this would have probably got five stars.
Maul is fun and cool and all those things that genre fiction is supposed to be, but also has a lot to say about gender and sex and violence and how all three interact, and it does so in a way that's a lot more engaging and exciting than the pullquotes about its status as "Feminist SF" would make you think. Just a really great read, and I'll be looking out for more from Sullivan in the future.
Maul is fun and cool and all those things that genre fiction is supposed to be, but also has a lot to say about gender and sex and violence and how all three interact, and it does so in a way that's a lot more engaging and exciting than the pullquotes about its status as "Feminist SF" would make you think. Just a really great read, and I'll be looking out for more from Sullivan in the future.
July 4, 2012
This was a pretty amazing book-- it takes place on two separate levels: the experiences, more or less, of a man grown as a lab rat and then tested on as part of a matriarchal distopia, and on the other, a day at the mall for a teenage girl that splits the difference between video game levels of violence and very recognizable coming-of-age concerns. One level is real and one imaginary, but that doesn't matter-- though the clone story starts out a little slow, both are very entertaining by the time you're just a little way into them.
One thing that really impressed me here was the way the book needed both sides of its hybrid nature: the gender stuff seemed very much part of a contemporary literary satire and really worked on that level. But on the SF side of things, this whole notion of the longterm struggle between organisms that reproduce sexually and those that are asexual was kind of mind-blowing, and really well developed. The novel is also very prescient, maybe more than seems possible. But that's kind of beside the point.
A very strong, rewarding, and funny novel. Oh, I should mention that it's sexually very graphic.... like, it made me blush often. And I can be pretty filthy.
One thing that really impressed me here was the way the book needed both sides of its hybrid nature: the gender stuff seemed very much part of a contemporary literary satire and really worked on that level. But on the SF side of things, this whole notion of the longterm struggle between organisms that reproduce sexually and those that are asexual was kind of mind-blowing, and really well developed. The novel is also very prescient, maybe more than seems possible. But that's kind of beside the point.
A very strong, rewarding, and funny novel. Oh, I should mention that it's sexually very graphic.... like, it made me blush often. And I can be pretty filthy.
February 19, 2013
Most of the men are gone, those that are left compete to be the top 'Pig' and women who can afford it or who get it as a perk of the job vote on which one's offspring they want to have. Dr. Baldino already has a clone daughter but she wants the real deal and her work developing assassin bugs on a male 'Y-autistic' clone is supposed to get her there.
That's one thread of the novel, the other is girlz w/guns shooting up the maul.
Some mysteries are there to be seen throughout, you just have to twig, and others are slowly revealed over the course of the book. From about 40% (I'm a Kindle reader) it became unputdownable for me and I'll definitely be reading Tricia Sullivan's Lightborn soon.
That's one thread of the novel, the other is girlz w/guns shooting up the maul.
Some mysteries are there to be seen throughout, you just have to twig, and others are slowly revealed over the course of the book. From about 40% (I'm a Kindle reader) it became unputdownable for me and I'll definitely be reading Tricia Sullivan's Lightborn soon.
October 23, 2013
I haven't ever ready anything quite like this. Chock full of ideas, surreal and satiric, I loved it. Sullivan uses the now-familiar trope of all-the-people-of-a-certain-gender have died off in the most ingenious ways, the whole while dropping in name-braded humor that really was Laugh Out Loud.
This is one of those books that makes me look at the world differently, knowing that my take on reality isn't as solid as I would like to think.
Can't wait to read her other stuff.
(Oh, and it's feminist as hell. I kind of can't believe that this book got published, given both it's ideas and it's prevalent use of "cunt" and "pussies".)
This is one of those books that makes me look at the world differently, knowing that my take on reality isn't as solid as I would like to think.
Can't wait to read her other stuff.
(Oh, and it's feminist as hell. I kind of can't believe that this book got published, given both it's ideas and it's prevalent use of "cunt" and "pussies".)
March 9, 2014
I feel like this book deserves more stars for sheer inventiveness & the dark, violent humour of the writing. It's just that I'm not a fan of cyberpunk, & halfway through I was distracted by the thought that I couldn't decide which character I disliked more. I'm kinda pathetic like that. I need someone to root for. But kudos to Sullivan for such a striking book.
August 17, 2021
Tricia Sullivan surely ranks among the top two or three writers working in science fiction today. While her work is uniformly inventive and deeply thought provoking in its extrapolation of where present trends might take us, one can see why she has said that she regards Maul as her finest work. It is reminiscent of Joyce’s Ulysses not only in the entire narrative covering just a single day, but in the quality of its writing. The characterisation is superb – seldom have I seen the teenage female mind done better, flitting from utter conviction to desperate uncertainty and back in an instant. Sun, the heroine, has a stronger moral compass than she knows, and manages to remain deeply likeable despite bouts of somewhat questionable behaviour. The dialogue crackles, the fast paced plot has so many twists and turns that the reader had better be concentrating, and the science and data science are spot on. This is sci-fi as literature, and that work of this quality is not currently in print is an indictment of both the current state of British publishing, and the public’s perception of the genre. Thankfully it is still available as a Gateway e-book, so buy it, read it, and let’s see if we can get it back in print – I want Maul on my bookshelf as a keeper.
December 27, 2021
This starts off with a teenage girl using a gun for a dildo, and things just get weirder from there, with two threads revolving around a siege in a shopping mall and a world where a virus is killing males and a mad scientist is experimenting on a clone to try and stop it. It’s one of the most twisted WTF things I’ve read in awhile. And boy is it good.
May 1, 2025
What begins with a unique premise, engaging voice fails and explosive opening fails to go anywhere afterwards.
That standard skip test of jumping 200 pages and going “They’re still in the mall?! These two are still talking in the same room?”
Would have made a great novella I think—I was happy to read it for the 150 pages I could be bothered to do so 🤩
That standard skip test of jumping 200 pages and going “They’re still in the mall?! These two are still talking in the same room?”
Would have made a great novella I think—I was happy to read it for the 150 pages I could be bothered to do so 🤩
June 6, 2017
Un livre décalé et décomplexé mais dont le propos se perd dans des longueurs interminables et des divagations dans je me serais bien passé.
Maul est un bon livre mais qui ne me convient pas, du moins, pas en ce moment.
Maul est un bon livre mais qui ne me convient pas, du moins, pas en ce moment.
May 16, 2020
Tiptree shortlist 2003
November 23, 2020
Very good. All go, tongue in cheek near future girls shootout in shopping mall.
May 1, 2013
Not 100% sure about this one, If I could, I'd give a 3.5. Some parts were brilliant, but some parts were frustrating, and unfortunately it was less than the sum of its parts. For a feminist sci-fi novel I found it odd that the two male protagonists and the first person narrator were the most sympathetic characters. Many of the other women characters could have just as easily been men in another novel. They are cardboard cutouts sprayed pink.
The novel didn't really say very much interesting about a future society ruled by women, It seemed to be junk-food corporate America-lite with women at the mercy of their desire to breed and the limited options available to them. Even the really smart Doctor does incredibly dumb things in the presence of male pheromones.
Yes, its supposed to be about evolution and the arms race between viruses and the human immunes system. So breeding is part of it, but it rankled that that only the male character who is immune to the Y-plagues does anything clever. (The graphic novel series: Y the Last Man is far superior in looking at a society where all the men die out).
Actually the more I think about it, the more this book irritates. Characters come and go. I still don't know what happened to Naomi, who I quite liked. The clone-daughter is there at the start, disappears in the middle, and then comes back: the clone-mother / Doctor has no feelings for her daughter at all, and by the end of the book I thought she was quite a despicable piece of human trash. Why she was a researcher I have no idea and she is completely unlike any scientist I have ever met.
Its actually a strength of the writing that it doesn't rankle so much when reading it. No, not 3.5 stars, just 3 stars. Or maybe 2.5. Which is a shame, because I want to like it more that but unfortunately it is flawed. I wanted a book where a future matriarchy was more though out, where women aren't just slaves to their desire to breed, where characters were clever and smart. Unfortunately I didn't get that.
The novel didn't really say very much interesting about a future society ruled by women, It seemed to be junk-food corporate America-lite with women at the mercy of their desire to breed and the limited options available to them. Even the really smart Doctor does incredibly dumb things in the presence of male pheromones.
Yes, its supposed to be about evolution and the arms race between viruses and the human immunes system. So breeding is part of it, but it rankled that that only the male character who is immune to the Y-plagues does anything clever. (The graphic novel series: Y the Last Man is far superior in looking at a society where all the men die out).
Actually the more I think about it, the more this book irritates. Characters come and go. I still don't know what happened to Naomi, who I quite liked. The clone-daughter is there at the start, disappears in the middle, and then comes back: the clone-mother / Doctor has no feelings for her daughter at all, and by the end of the book I thought she was quite a despicable piece of human trash. Why she was a researcher I have no idea and she is completely unlike any scientist I have ever met.
Its actually a strength of the writing that it doesn't rankle so much when reading it. No, not 3.5 stars, just 3 stars. Or maybe 2.5. Which is a shame, because I want to like it more that but unfortunately it is flawed. I wanted a book where a future matriarchy was more though out, where women aren't just slaves to their desire to breed, where characters were clever and smart. Unfortunately I didn't get that.
December 6, 2014
There's a lot to like in this book. The glimpses into a post-male world, much like Y-The Last Man, I think are the most fascinating parts of the book. Sullivan injects some social commentary through the characters in both of the parallel story lines and keeps a pretty frenetic story pace so there are few dull moments. One of the cover blurbs compares the book to Neal Stephenson, which is a fair if we're talking about Snowcrash.
The story that parallels the science experiment, the one that takes place in the mall, I understood to be a game simulation that is having real world biological effects; that's a pretty cool premise. The story starts off pretty cyberpunky and tense, but very quickly devolves into the same scene repeated over and over. The resolution of the mall story felt empty. By the time you're at the end, you're as burned out as the main character.
In the real world, events crescendo to an almost farcical, over-the-top comic book ending (very Snowcrash). This certainly keeps you turning the pages towards the climax, but the ending seems insubstantial and half-baked. The WORST part was how the author disposed of the main character in this story line: just snuffed her out in a meaningless explosion, after we've followed her for the entire book, her career issues, her concerns. There's no aftermath in the story that concerns her; she's just erased and forgotten. WTF?
This book is worth a read because of the interesting premise, even if I didn't really like it overall.
The story that parallels the science experiment, the one that takes place in the mall, I understood to be a game simulation that is having real world biological effects; that's a pretty cool premise. The story starts off pretty cyberpunky and tense, but very quickly devolves into the same scene repeated over and over. The resolution of the mall story felt empty. By the time you're at the end, you're as burned out as the main character.
In the real world, events crescendo to an almost farcical, over-the-top comic book ending (very Snowcrash). This certainly keeps you turning the pages towards the climax, but the ending seems insubstantial and half-baked. The WORST part was how the author disposed of the main character in this story line: just snuffed her out in a meaningless explosion, after we've followed her for the entire book, her career issues, her concerns. There's no aftermath in the story that concerns her; she's just erased and forgotten. WTF?
This book is worth a read because of the interesting premise, even if I didn't really like it overall.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 5, 2014
In Sullivan’s Dystopian future men are an endangered gender due to a gender specific retrovirus. Men are kept in reservations and those women who can apply for viable sperm opt to give birth to girls.
One cloned male in a laboratory has been infected with a tailored form of the virus in order to try and understand and cure the disease.
The clone is allowed certain privileges and is playing a computer game.
Meanwhile, in a seemingly unrelated time and place, a group of girls have challenged another girl on the internet and have arranged to meet her at the local shopping mall. Originally intended as a friendly meeting, misunderstandings have conspired to convert the meeting into something nearer to a fight challenge.
At the mall, events escalate to near riots and a siege situation. This is obviously not the world in which the cloned man exists, since in the Mall there are boys and security guards and other men not sequestered away behind a sterile screen.
The two stories run in parallel, and the reader quickly begins to realise how the two worlds are connected.
It’s a hectic read that barrels along energetically, raising questions about the medical ethics of cloning, but it is not a novel one would have thought capable of setting the SF world on fire.
There were no characters for which one could feel any empathy, apart from the badly treated clone, and that was sympathy rather than empathy. One would surely expect anyone to feel sympathy for a badly treated clone.
One cloned male in a laboratory has been infected with a tailored form of the virus in order to try and understand and cure the disease.
The clone is allowed certain privileges and is playing a computer game.
Meanwhile, in a seemingly unrelated time and place, a group of girls have challenged another girl on the internet and have arranged to meet her at the local shopping mall. Originally intended as a friendly meeting, misunderstandings have conspired to convert the meeting into something nearer to a fight challenge.
At the mall, events escalate to near riots and a siege situation. This is obviously not the world in which the cloned man exists, since in the Mall there are boys and security guards and other men not sequestered away behind a sterile screen.
The two stories run in parallel, and the reader quickly begins to realise how the two worlds are connected.
It’s a hectic read that barrels along energetically, raising questions about the medical ethics of cloning, but it is not a novel one would have thought capable of setting the SF world on fire.
There were no characters for which one could feel any empathy, apart from the badly treated clone, and that was sympathy rather than empathy. One would surely expect anyone to feel sympathy for a badly treated clone.
Want to read
January 27, 2014Zweiter Anlauf, mal schauen, wie weit ich dieses Mal komme.
Tricia Sullivan kommt sofort zur Sache. Nachdem sich Sun mit ihrer Pistole befriedigt hat, trifft sie sich mit Freundinnen und überlegt dabei:
"Mr Beardsley made us watch this film on the Holocaust and they showed bulldozers ploughing the bodies. I turned to Keri – who is also half-Jewish but doesn´t smoke so she was only keeping me company – and I said,
“Where were the girlz when this was happening?” and she said,
“They were oppressed and having babies,” and started going on about it, and Suk Hee in a small voice goes, “They were watching.”
…
I said, “Why didn´t they do something?”, thinking about the women who watched every war and mended their husbands´ battlefield socks or however it worked but of course Suk Hee didn´t know what I was talking about so she covered the mouthpiece of the phone and said, “I think you´d look good in Dusky Perls.”
…
It turns us on when you fight, I thought. That must be why. We got off on it. It´s OK with us if you don´t give head or haven´t historically – we don´t need orgasms as much as we need wars. Otherwise, why would you guys be fighting them?
…
We´re the engines of life. We´re it. And men think we´re their victims. How did that happen?"
Tricia Sullivan kommt sofort zur Sache. Nachdem sich Sun mit ihrer Pistole befriedigt hat, trifft sie sich mit Freundinnen und überlegt dabei:
"Mr Beardsley made us watch this film on the Holocaust and they showed bulldozers ploughing the bodies. I turned to Keri – who is also half-Jewish but doesn´t smoke so she was only keeping me company – and I said,
“Where were the girlz when this was happening?” and she said,
“They were oppressed and having babies,” and started going on about it, and Suk Hee in a small voice goes, “They were watching.”
…
I said, “Why didn´t they do something?”, thinking about the women who watched every war and mended their husbands´ battlefield socks or however it worked but of course Suk Hee didn´t know what I was talking about so she covered the mouthpiece of the phone and said, “I think you´d look good in Dusky Perls.”
…
It turns us on when you fight, I thought. That must be why. We got off on it. It´s OK with us if you don´t give head or haven´t historically – we don´t need orgasms as much as we need wars. Otherwise, why would you guys be fighting them?
…
We´re the engines of life. We´re it. And men think we´re their victims. How did that happen?"
June 23, 2008
I bogged down about a hundred pages into this; I can't be sure if this is my own state of mind or the quality of the book, so I'll probably try it again in a few months.
What I think I bounced off in this first attempt to read it was not quite buying the didactic-feeling future (it's worth noting that I have liked most of both Joanna Russ' and Sherri Tepper's books, many of which involve similar male-free societies, so it's not simply the fact of that aspect of the plot, I don't think). It might have been something like feeling as if Sullivan was letting the characters (whether the fashionista teens in the "present" sections, or the over-earnest but doggedly neurotic and snarky scientists in the "future" sections) drift into becoming characitures of themselves rather than just being realistic characters.
Anyhow, I'll try it again later in the year/decade and see what I think then.
What I think I bounced off in this first attempt to read it was not quite buying the didactic-feeling future (it's worth noting that I have liked most of both Joanna Russ' and Sherri Tepper's books, many of which involve similar male-free societies, so it's not simply the fact of that aspect of the plot, I don't think). It might have been something like feeling as if Sullivan was letting the characters (whether the fashionista teens in the "present" sections, or the over-earnest but doggedly neurotic and snarky scientists in the "future" sections) drift into becoming characitures of themselves rather than just being realistic characters.
Anyhow, I'll try it again later in the year/decade and see what I think then.
Read
October 21, 2007http://nhw.livejournal.com/59559.html[return][return]I couldn't see the connection between the two storylines, one of a savage gun battle between girl-gangs in a contemporary shopping mall, and the other a future setting of women experimenting on one of the few remaining men in the world. There was a sort of hint that the contemporary setting was in some way an artifact of the nanobots in the body of the hero of the future setting, but it didn't really hang together for me. Having said that, the two storylines taken separately are convincingly and breathlessly written.
March 29, 2016
il romanzo è veramente ben scritto e la traduzione secondo me è veramente ottima (brava Chiara Reali!) ma la storia non mi ha preso. E' un tipo di fantascienza fuori dalle mie corde. La parte "attuale" mi ha lasciato molto perplesso mentre quella "futura" è più interessante ma mi ha dato l'impressione di deja-vu, dovuto probabilmente al lasso tempoerale intercorso dalla sua pubblicazione in originale (2003) a quella meritevole di Zona42 (2016). Comunque un libro che consiglio a tutti coloro che cercano qualcosa di veramente differente dalla SF classica.
August 4, 2016
2-2.5 stars.
Malgré une multitude de questions sans réponse, j'ai bizarrement assez apprécié ma lecture.
J'ai gobé les 540 pages en 2 jours étonnement, mais sans jamais avoir d'émotions particulières. J'étais intéressée de savoir ce qui allait se passer, mais sans plus, aucune connection avec aucun des personnages.
Et malheureusement, il y a tellement d'évènements qui arrivent sans explication claire, ou des faits admis normaux, alors qu'ils n'ont pas été présentés auparavant, Bref, j'ai lu ce livre sans vraiment le comprendre à certains endroits.
Malgré une multitude de questions sans réponse, j'ai bizarrement assez apprécié ma lecture.
J'ai gobé les 540 pages en 2 jours étonnement, mais sans jamais avoir d'émotions particulières. J'étais intéressée de savoir ce qui allait se passer, mais sans plus, aucune connection avec aucun des personnages.
Et malheureusement, il y a tellement d'évènements qui arrivent sans explication claire, ou des faits admis normaux, alors qu'ils n'ont pas été présentés auparavant, Bref, j'ai lu ce livre sans vraiment le comprendre à certains endroits.
May 9, 2009
I actually enjoyed this well enough in the end, but it's not the type of sci-fi I usually like. One storyline is set in a world where men contract a horrible plague that kills/disfigures them and follows a research subject being experimented on with different plagues. The other is set in a crazy mall with adolescent girls trying to kill each other. Entertaining and way out there.
July 13, 2016
This was a very confusing book. I think that the events in the maul are supposed to represent what's happening inside the body of Meniscus, but it's a bit disjointed. This book is interesting - there's some great elements here that I've not seen anywhere else - but I'll probably have to re-read it to work out whether I actually LIKE it.
September 16, 2015
It's an interesting concept, the way the story goes back and forth between the two worlds.
Although, for a book that is labeled 'feminist sci-fi,' it had a little too much evo-psych for me with the way it treated gender. Especially everyone's reaction to the Starry Eyes character.
Although, for a book that is labeled 'feminist sci-fi,' it had a little too much evo-psych for me with the way it treated gender. Especially everyone's reaction to the Starry Eyes character.
November 12, 2007
decent book - hard science fantasy with a sort of feminist overlay.
I liked how you began to realize how the two threads of the story were interconnected.
I liked how you began to realize how the two threads of the story were interconnected.
July 30, 2007
Maybe I need to read this again to grok it. Parts of it were fascinating, and other parts... really confused me.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews