Customer Reviews

Vienna Blood: A Novel

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In 2026 Vienna, widow Petra Detmers asks columnist Oskar "Sharkey" Gewinnler to investigate the death of her spouse, Leo. Though officially declared a hit and run accident, Petra believes someone deliberately murdered her husband.

Sharkey is unable to resist the woman's lure (even if she is pregnant) and begins to investigate what happened to Leo. To his shock, Sharkey learns many things about Leo who is not what he seemed. Soon, Sharkey finds a major conspiracy in the powerful industrial health care-government complex that reaches back to the days of Hitler's experiments in creating a super race. As he gets closer to the truth, Sharkey knows that he could soon be joining Leo, as silence is golden to his foes.

VIENNA BLOOD is an intriguing futuristic drama that readers who enjoy a high tech tale with fully developed characters will enjoy. Vienna in the next century is cleverly designed so that much of the problems of this millennium still remain yet some technological breakthroughs have occurred. The characters feel genuine and the Hitler link works to provide the plot with a focus. Adrian Mathews pays homage to tales like The Third Man and even Star Wars (the cantina scene) with a novel that will one day have future writers pay similar esteem to him.

Ouch. This is a case where all the main ingredients necessary for a solid book - a combination of interesting premise, characters, plot and setting along with an obviously intelligent author - seem to be in place, yet the result is hardly worth a reader's time. In particular, the main shortcomings of Vienna Blood are:

1) The author's stilted writing style. Mathews' choice of words seems entirely at odds with the story he is trying to tell, and serves only to annoy the reader.

2) Poor use of Vienna as the novel's setting. The description of the city often consists of little more than place-name-dropping (This, incidentally, is often marred by typographical errors, especially in the second half of the book, when it seems as if the editors have also lost interest. Actually, this is too bad, since Mathews' writing definitely improves as the Vienna Blood goes on). To this he adds rehashes of old quotations about the Viennese mentality. It is hard to shake the impression that the author does not know the city as intimately as he would like to have the reader believe.

3) The lack of a credible futuristic atmosphere. Certainly, there are all sorts of techno-gadgets and glimpses of life in 2026-27, but nearly all of the cultural references made by Vienna Blood's characters are to people, places and events of the 20th century. These characters, therefore, come across as likely inhabitants of the present day, not the 2020s, destroying whatever suspension of disbelief has been built up.

Unfortunately, these shortcomings are rather major, making it impossible to recommend Vienna Blood. While not a complete disaster, there are far better and more satisfying ways to spend an evening.

A columnist in Vienna gets pulled into a possibly murder by the pregnant wife of a man he only met once. Genetic mystery set in the future, full of intrigue and politics.

I found the language irritatingly florid-- Mathews seemed to be writing from some obscure rule that required using the most obscure word possible for any given possibility. And I can't imagine that I was the only person who found the ending quite distasteful-- what exactly was he trying to say?

Some nice Vienna atmosphere, but unless you're really bored, I'd skip this one.

R917L@aol.com aus Köln, Deutschland Good beginning--but the plot falls apart Vienna Blood begins very promisingly, with rich description and an intriguing premise, but the plot disintegrates in the last third. Vienna Blood ultimately fails to live up to its initial promise, as an intriguing premise falls apart in the later stages of the story, leaving a lot of potential unrealized. Instead of questioning the morality of genetic and racial engineering, Mathews plumps for a pat ending where, suddenly, every villian turns out to be not so bad after all, leaving an unpleasant aftertaste lingering with the obligatory happy end that seems to endorse the very premise the author purports to attack. Given a re-write or two, this might have been a brilliant book, but, as it is, it seems to be a near-miss at best.

The characters and plot didn't compel me to get more than 1/4 of the way into the book. While the tone of the novel is cyber-punkish or noir-ish, that alone wasn't enough to keep me going.

I HAD NO IDEA this was going to be so good! I bought VIENNA BLOOD (in the airport) based almost entirely on its sinister cover--proves that sometimes you gotta trust your intuition. Adrian Mathews (whoever you are) is a genius, and this book is like nothing I've ever read. It's a wicked thriller, fast and completely surprising and not a little terrifying. But it's the WRITING that really knocks me out--smart, engaging, mind-bending prose that begs to be re-read and yet isn't too bloody pleased with itself. David Foster Wallace couldn't have written this book; but let's just imagine that David Foster Wallace walked into a dark alley one night and had every tooth knocked out of his head by Jim Thompson; then managed to crawl back to his typewriter to hammer out, while dying, a memorandum of what had just happened to him (he's dying, remember, so it would have to be to the point, more or less); and if that alley happened to be in Vienna, in the year 2026; and if what he wrote turned out to be VIENNA BLOOD--then, truly, he would not have died in vain.

I loved HAVANA BAY (the newest Arkady Renko from Martin Cruz Smith), and I recommend VIENNA BLOOD for a lot of the same reasons. Both authors write so evocatively about where their respective cities that Havana and Vienna become characters in their books--grand and shadowy and corrupt and crumbling. Both write with complexity and insight--there's plenty of action etc., but neither writer condescends to the reader. Both offer twisty, unexpected plotting that keep you turning the pages till the very end. And both have protagonists into whose skin you crawl, willingly, on page 1. It's heresay to say that ANY character is as compelling as Arkady Renko--but Sharkey runs a close second.

In his article, Ethnographic Critique and Technoscientific Narratives: The old mole, ethical plateaux, and the governance of emergent biosocial polities, in Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry (25: 355-93. 2001)Michael M.J. Fischer uses this book as a juxtaposition to ethnographic descriptions of bio-ethical realties. It's rather interesting and may possibly add some insight into the novel

No short review can give a full appreciation of the many wonderful things operating in this brilliant book. The plotting is intricate, the research is meticulous, the style is mordant, and the ending is perfection. I do not know when I have read a novel that I have enjoyed more. Get it!