Maze
From every corner of time and space, sometimes people go missing without a trace. They never come back.
Get lost in the long stone halls of the maze with the ones that find each other, form tribes, scrape out a life from rocks and sand. Their stories interweave. Maia Station is a scientist ripped from stasis, but she has no tools to test the way things are. Instead, she raises her daughter as best she can and survives. Wang Xin once had his head dipped in water, and a djinni in the water entered his eye. He sees the future, exactly as it was supposed to be if he hadn’t seen the light, but it does him no good in the life he has. In a world much like our own, Joseph comes home from a ten year high school reunion and encounters a light in the darkness. The light speaks.
My name is Jenny. Put me in your lung. Breathe deep.
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J. M. McDermott
J. M. McDermott graduated from the University of Houston in 2002 with a BA in Creative Writing. He resides in Arlington, Texas with an assortment of empty coffee cups, overflowing bookshelves and crazy schemes.
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Reviews and Comments
J.M. McDermott is to be commended for delivering on his rather ambitious concept. This is, first and foremost, the story of a maze . . . but it's also a tale of interwoven lives inside that maze. There is that of Maia, who remembers life aboard a space station, even if her daughter knows nothing but blood. There's Joseph, who returned home from his high school reunion to find something in the darkness. There is Wang, who sees a future that could have been. There's Julie, who knows nothing but a life inside the maze, and Lucius, the Neanderthal who loves her. And then there's Jenny, the ghost, who just may be much more than that. There is some very weird, very visceral horror surrounding these stories - the bug-like, plant-like, and beast-like monsters just scratch the surface. More than that, though, there's a palatable sense of hopelessness and dread to the maze and those who exist within it. It is neither a safe nor a happy place to be. For that matter, it's not a healthy place to be either, with the hopeless denizens surviving on blood, maggots, and even cannibalism. One character describes it as a sort of Bermuda Triangle that people stumble into it, but which is indifferent to them. What is it really? Why is there? What is its purpose? Well, we never really find out any of that, but that's not really the point. To get back to that idea of being literate, this is a very well-written, carefully-crafted tale. It's structured just so, with a mother and daughter bookending not just the pages, but the ideas and lives within. The language is short and abrupt, taking unexpected turns on a regular basis, and often doubles back on itself to repeat words, phrases, and more. It reads like a maze, but that's not to say it's futile or frustrating. Reading is itself an experience, with the stories a part of that experience. To be honest, I'm not sure if there's a great purpose or deeper message to the work, or whether this is just a story of survival against all odds. What I do know is that Maze makes for a fascinating read that may try a bit too hard, at times, to be literate, but which never forgets that it's higher purpose is to entertain.