Customer Reviews

Ghost In The Shell - Stand Alone Complex Volume 3: White Maze (v. 3)

5 star:		(5)
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3 star:		(2)
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White Maze by Junichi Fujisaku is a novel based in the Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex universe. It seems that very important people among the government's elite are being killed. By vampires. Of course nobody within Section 9 believes a word of it. But when they start running into people with fangs and brainwashed minds, they start to wonder what is going on?
Another novel with plots within plots, wheels within wheels, a great book with Motoko, Batou and Togusa. Plus S&M, the wild Tachikomas and lots of combat action.

These novels, based on the films and manga Ghost in the Shell, illustrate how hard it is to translate from Japanese to English. To do so successfully, especially in fiction, the translator must also be a good writer. Unfortunately Camellia Nieh, the translator, is not and the novels come across as what the industry used to call "Juveniles" or books targeted at high school age kids.
The publisher probably has a contract with this translator to do the entire series, I wish they would put them through a rewrite after Camellia finishes with them, it would make these novels much better.

This book has it all. Mystery, a lot of that. Action, decetive work, not to crazy sci fi, more mystery. I love this book. its like reading a pulp novel. Yes, sometimes it can go to the immature side. But not for long. Read the book if you love the series or like reading pulp novels.

if you like the anime you should like this to because it was not a story in the anime series it is it's own story. but i got to warn you it was written by one of the writers of the anime and it reads like it to. you should also read the first two books also.

The best sci-fi novel I've ever read! It kept my interest through the entire story, never a dull moment. If you love reading Hard SF with momentum, then White Maze is for you. It's even better than "Excession" and "Marooned in Realtime".

The year is 2030. Advances in robotics and cyberbrain technology have transformed the world into a miraculous place where almost anything is possible--even the melding of humans and machines. In this not-too-distant future, the crimes of flesh and metal are investigated by Section 9, an elite counterterrorist squad headed by Chief Aramaki and his cyborg sidekick, Major Motoko Kusanagi. When dead bodies, drained of blood and with two bite marks on their necks, start turning up on the streets of Tokyo, it isn't long before the entire city is in a panic. As Major Kusanagi and the other members of Section 9 investigate the killings they begin to wonder--is the killer a real vampire or something much worse? In a dark world of murder, where cyberbrain hacks and treacherous conspiracies reach to the furthest heights of government, Section 9 is all that stands between the people and anarchy.

Nice follow up from Vol.2

I wish the listings made it clearer which of these are manga and which are novelizations. I enjoy the first, but dislike the latter, and wouldn't have bought this if I'd known it was a novel.