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One of my pet peeves with most futuristic science fiction is that it's peppered with this fantastic and miraculous technology, yet the presence of that technology doesn't change the day-to-day lives of the characters. They wander around the story and generally act like us clods from the early 21st century. It leaves me feeling like the technology is there to aid the plot rather than be part of any kind of organic world building. Such is definitely not the case in Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder. In this hard sci-fi prequel to his debut novel, Ventus, the futuristic technology is the lives of the characters. It dictates who they see, what they see, and who they interact with. And like a lot of great futuristic sci-fi, the reader can see how this technology grew out of our own contemporary technology. In this case, filter bubbles. Inscape dictates every aspect of the characters’ lives, and Schroeder does an incredible job of showing how people interact with the technology without stopping the story to hit the reader over the head with repeated shovelfuls of unnecessary information (another pet peeve of mine).

The technology featured in Schroeder’s story has created an idyllic environment for the characters, who want for nothing and busy themselves with little more than gossip and politics, until a mysterious force arrives and disrupts it all, taking away this technology for its own end. The protagonist of the story, Livia Kodaly, flees with a couple friends to find help among the greater solar system to free their people. What they encounter is even more dazzling technology and a cast of characters who all have their own agendas.

Schroeder's ideas are what is on display here, and they are amazing. This book is incredibly imaginative. These are not the same, stale, recycled ideas. Not only is the tech original (while still managing to feel a little familiar, no matter how strange), but the social elements are just as unique and interesting as well, including two forms of government that I never would have imagined otherwise. The originality of this book while imbued with a classic story is what I enjoyed most. It's expertly done, and like Ventus, I imagine I'll be thinking about those ideas years after I closed the book.

This book barely missed a five-star rating from me, and the reason it did largely comes down to the characters. They were well-rounded, dynamic, complex, and well-suited to the story, but they just didn't come off the page for me. Years from now, I'll remember the ideas in the book, but most likely, I will have forgotten most of the characters as I have for Ventus, though admittedly character development is usually a little light in hard sci-fi. One other, smaller thing that bothered me was that there were so many incredible, fantastic, and huge ideas in this book, that the weight of them started to strain the story a little bit toward the end.

Although this is a prequel, I think it completely stands alone. Lady of Mazes deals with the origin story of the main antagonistic force in Ventus, but the stories aren’t tightly related and I feel they could be read in either order.

I highly recommend this book to sci-fi fans, and particularly fans of hard sci-fi. It's easily worth the time and money. I picked up this book without reading the synopsis or a sample. My experience with Ventus was enough to sell me on this book, and I will definitely pick up another one of Schroeder's books in the near future.