by Matt Ruff
Ruff’s first novel Fool on the Hill is one of my favourite all-time books while his Bad Monkeysis an acid trip of a read. (In a good way.) But I wasn’t sure how The Mirage would land. Well, he did a brilliant job. I love books featuring alternate histories or even just alternate cities. Ruff took th...
The best parts of Matt Ruff's alternate War on Terror world are when the story seems like a waking dream: characters sense their version of events is not quite the reality, yet the scenes are infused with details too vivid to be anything less. These parts, especially during the first half of the no...
This novel was...bizarre. I thought the premise sounded extremely interesting which is why I checked it out from the library, but the execution fell flat. It's not that the writing was bad (I thought it was actually quite good, actually, which is why I kept reading even after I realized I wasn't int...
Do you remember where you were when the towers fell? Mustafa al Baghdadi does. He was busting whiskey smugglers on the Tigris River when he saw the planes, hijacked by Christian fundamentalist insurgents, crash into the Tigris and Euphrates Twin Towers, ultimately bringing them down. That act, on...
I feel bad to give this only one star because I love this author. Unfortunately, this was not my kind of book. This is a political thriller/conspiracy novel. (Not my thing typically) The setting is an alternate reality or "mirage" if you will, where everything is opposite of the world as we know it....
I was drawn to this book once I read the summary. The whole premise of the book seemed fascinating to me. I haven't read much alternate history so I was excited to branch out into a different genre.It is clear to see that there was a huge amount of research put into this book. I loved how Ruff was a...
Every time I'd start to get into the story, there would be a "Library of Alexandria" entry that would jolt me right out of my suspension of disbelief. After the third or fourth time this happened, I gave up. I see what he's done here, but it just didn't work for me.
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