Maul
This is an enjoyable piece of work. A cartoonish thriller, heavy on the thriller element and light on scientific logic, it sets out to shock from the opening masturbation scene. Now normally this would just bore me, but it’s so fast paced that you just move through the story so quickly that you don’t have time to sit down and think about the absurdities and excesses.
The main plot takes place in a near future society where most males have been wiped out by an artificial phenomenon known as the Y plagues. The lead character is an autistic male clone, called Meniscus, who is used as a guinea pig in experiments designed to harvest useful chemicals from the human body by using modified Y plague strains. This process causes Meniscus terrible pain and the only thing that lessens it is immersion in a game called Mall.
The Mall forms the second thread of the story, an ultraviolent story of gun toting teenage girls, with the Jewish-Korean Sun as the main character. This part is very incoherent and sometimes completely ridiculous, but then again I suspect that this is a deliberate move to reflect the unreal nature of the Mall.
This book is a bit of a mess, but still a lot of fun. I wouldn’t read it if you were looking for subtle characterization or plausible science.
I’d recommend it if you’re in the mood for a pumped up, fast moving, science fiction thriller.