50books_poc | 47: Mardock Scramble by Tow Ubukata

47: Mardock Scramble by Tow Ubukata

I'll be reviewing this at greater length elsewhere, and when I do I'll post a link here. For now I'll just say: this is a 775-page-long science fiction thriller, part of the Haikasoru line, set in the future city of Mardock, centring on the quest of Rune-Balot, former child prostitute, to retrieve the stored memories of the man who tried to kill her. It's a great big baggy rambunctious mess of a novel, occasionally glorious, often infuriating, full of wild shifts in tone and content. There are flying sharks. There's a gang of assassins who have the body parts of their victims surgically implanted on their bodies. There are many, many metaphors involving eggs. (E.g. the main characters are called Balot, Oeufcoque, Dr Easter, Shell, and Boiled. And there's a casino called Eggnog Blue and an egg-shaped flying home called the Humpty.)

I don't know if I recommend it, exactly; parts of it were enormous fun to read, parts were rather dull, and I don't know that it amounts to very much, all told. Still, it was an interesting ride.