I received this book in a GoodReads First Reads giveaway.

This book was quite a bit different than the impression I got when reading the book description for this novel. The book was much darker than I expected with quite a bit of mythical and horror themes that I don't normally read. It was well written but I can say that this was not my favorite novel that I have read. If you enjoy these themes, this novel is probably a good fit for you and if not, their might be better choices.

3 stars for being well written ( )

10 Words: Lost, Confused, and Wondering. The end is never in sight....

... and I mean that for both the reader as well as the characters. This book really didn't make sense to me. It jumped between the lives of different people as they just tried to survive in a strange and confusing place that those living in know as The Maze. The stories reflect different events that happen over many different years in the maze.
The book is built strangely, and is non cathartic, which is a complicated thing to attempt to do... but left me lost reading the story and I probably wouldn't have bothered finishing it, if it wasn't for my determination to give it the best try I could because I was given it for free.
Yet given that the story doesn't make sense the writing is well done, the world described well and you can see that things are happening, that the world exists and that there is something strange but important going on here... its just disappointing that you are never really able to tell what that is... ( )

I found this book to be achingly slow. While the writing itself was quite beautiful, and there was definitely a lovely story, well, lovely stories, as there are several separate ones, the way they are broken up, and the way it jumps around constantly causes more than a little confusion, which caused me to lose interest very quickly. I struggled through to the end, only to find that there was no real ending, which made me feel like I'd wasted my time trudging through a book with no reward at the end. ( )

The story really caught me at the beginning because of the mystery of where the different characters stories were leading . Unfortunately no where happy. A very interesting concept, though I don't think I missed it, which never really addressed why or how people were transported to the Maze which was part of the mystery I was expecting to be solved within the narrative.

I found J.M. McDermott’s Maze to be an interesting read. It’s the latest LibraryThing Early Reviewer book on my TBR list and is quite different from a lot of what I’ve read recently.

Maze is divided into sections: the mazes of four different characters, Maia Station, Joseph, Wang Xin, and Julie Station. They all find themselves trapped in the same place, it would seem. A lot of repeating characters, and places. But they each have their own issues to deal with. Having thought about it since I finished the book, I feel like there are four separate mazes (at least) that all lie on top of one another. They interact and yet are somewhat separate. That probably doesn’t make any sense, unless you’ve read the book.

And even then…

I found McDermott’s prose to be solid and, occasionally quite lovely. The stories themselves are dark, violent, and in some cases, downright gross. The book is a mix of genres. Science fiction when we’re in Maia’s maze; she comes from a space station and looks at the maze from a scientific point of view. She’s the only one who does. Julie, Maia’s daughter, is born into the maze and doesn’t really understand the science her mother tries to teach her.

The two men’s stories are told more from a fantasy/horror point of view. They both came to the maze from a more prosaic planet Earth, stumbling into it. Well, Wang Xin trips over his bicycle, literally stumbling; Joseph is dragged into the sewer system by a ghost he brings to life.

I found Wang Xin to be the most interesting character of the bunch. Jenny Ghost, who has her own interlude in the book, drags Joseph into the plumbing, but gets to Wang Zin through his eye, and he (as a young boy) believes he can see the future because of this. A lot of things happen that convince him he’s right, and even when things don’t match up to his vision, he’s still convinced.

Wang Xin’s section of the book, his maze, is also the most disturbing. Part of his vision includes two women he is sure are in love with him. They aren’t and he ends up treating them badly–raping one, in fact. Xin pays for his bad behavior, and the author’s tearing down of his visions bit by bit is part of the payment.

Unlike most fiction I read, Maze has no resolution. Our protagonists never find their way out of their mazes, unless death is the way out. As Joseph says at the end of his story:

We made the best life we could in this terrible place.

This may be frustrating for readers who like a definitive ending to their stories. I didn’t mind it so much. My main problems concerned certain sections that weren’t as well written as others. Joseph’s section, in particular, felt stiffer and more confusing than the rest. And the scene with Parks on the bed reminded me of the first Evil Dead movie, and not in a good way. And the grotesqueness of what was done to her felt gratuitous. What was the point?

In general, though, I would recommend Maze. If you’re up for dark and troubling read with no easy answers, give it a try. ( )