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Title: Labyrinth of Reflections
Series: ———-
Author: Sergei Lukyanenko
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 271
Format: Digital Edition
| Synopsis: |
A Diver, a person who can exit the Deep at will, is caught up in something much bigger than he can imagine. It starts with him stealing the information for a new “cure for the common cold”, which leads to a job offer by the company he stole it from. He is then kidnapped and given the same job offer by a mysterious Man without a Face. This job? To go to the 33rd level of a first person shooter game and rescue a user who has somehow become stuck and who the company hired Divers can’t rescue.
The Diver has adventures, finds the love of his life in a virtual brothel and rescues the stranded user, only to find that the User isn’t a human. He might be an alien, a human from the future, a human from a parallel universe or a newly emerged computer mind. Nobody knows but they all want a piece of the action.
Leonid, the Diver, takes the rescuee to a safe place and allows him to make his own choice. In the process. Leonid is attacked by all the forces the Deep can muster as well as by the creator of the Deep itself. With the help of the rescuee, Leonid fights them all off and somehow gains the ability to connect to the Deep without a modem (hahahahahahaa). The visitor leaves and Leonid leaves the Deep and decides to meet his virtual love in real life.
| My Thoughts: |
This was originally written in ’96 or ’98 I believe and my goodness, does it show. Lukyanenko waxes eloquent about the tech of the day and it isn’t pretty. Pentium computers, MEGS of ram, 28800 modems, Doom. Then he mixes it with non-existing tech like full virtual reality body suits and the Deep, which works on the unconscious as a way to get around the horrible graphics of the day. It was such a mish-mash that it kept throwing me out of the story. You just can’t DO the things he writes about on a 28.8K phone line.
This was pre-Matrix and the ideas are pretty cool, when Lukyanenko isn’t waxing full on melancholic Russian that is. That gets old really fast. And I mean, really, really fast.
This felt more like a book where Lukyanenko was writing out his ideas of what it means to be human (while denying God and Communism in the same breath) and it felt rather sophomoric. At the same time, several of the ideas here were carried over almost wholesale into his Nightwatch series.
Overall, I don’t feel like this was a waste of my time but I certainly wouldn’t want to introduce anyone to Lukyanenko’s writings with this book. I’d definitely steer them towards the Nightwatch.
★★★☆☆
Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road 
Back when having a pentium was all it was about… ill skip🙈
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Yep, if he’d been vague’r about the tech, this story would have worked a LOT better. Maybe it was his first book or something…
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To be fair, I still wax poetic about all that tech…
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Seriously? Would you mind giving me an example because my mind boggles at “waxing poetic” over something obsolete.
And we are talking about the tech itself, right, not the feeling you had when using it back in the day?
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Thank you for an excellent and informative review. I read and loved the Night Watch series and I’m not remotely tempted to tuck into this offering:).
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I am a big fan of his Night Watch series too and that’s what tempted me to try this. If he ever writes more stuff, I’ll be a bit more careful 🙂
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Although it sounds as if someone dusted off his earlier writing on the back of the Night Watch and as we know – writers mostly need to learn their craft by painful trial and error before they are fit to read…
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You know, that is way more likely. It got me, right? 😀
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So he chose to incorporate the technology of the time in with futuristic themes? That is a big no no haha. It dates a book before it is even released.
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Yeah, by the time pentiums were around, tech was changing every year, or less. He should have known better.
However, I am wondering if it was his first book or something.
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Pentium computers…boy does that take me back! Oh for the days when excitement was Pac-Man and Asteroids on the Atari or a Space Invaders game console in the hotel lounge on holiday!
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I never really did like pac-man myself. I got a little yellow pacman game console when I was in 4th grade and it just never did it for me. Now, I also got a Contra handheld game and boy, did I use that a lot!
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Mmmm… Cyberpunk (if this is the correct definition for this book) was never one of my favorite sub-genres, and this one is also dated…
I think I’ll pass, thank you! 😀
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I’d call this the russian equivalent of cyberpunk, just without all the emo goth crap 🙂
Alcohol replaces that, lol…
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Ah well, then it must be a very spirited story…. 😛
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Comment BAN!!!!
😉
Mrs B heartily approved that comment…
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Sounds like early LitRPG, if the game world was as involved as your review indicates. I was wondering about the light-whip on the cover, but if this was set in a glorified video game it all makes sense. 🙂
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Yeah, it was one of the weapons used in a Doom clone. I think it was supposed to be the delivery system for a virus or something?
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It just looks a bit silly on the cover…
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My first thought was that it was an indie book until I realized it was by the author of the Night Watch series. Looks like something someone did for free
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Oh wow, I think I pass. I like Lukianenko, but virtual reality/computer games is nothing I like to read about.^^
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It wasn’t really good and I think he would have been better served to let it lie unpublished.
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Sounds like bad vision, but at least it wasn’t completely awful huh..
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Limited vision for sure. I think authors now realize how dated their stuff becomes if they use specific culture or tech references…
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