I picked up this book for £1 at a local bookshop and have read it 5 or 6 times this year. A best-buy if ever I made one. It *is* a strange tale and I will not spoil your enjoyment by telling it here. Adrian Matthews' words paint wonderful pictures of the characters, you do feel that you know them and share each moment with them. If you see this book, buy it. If you don't mind waiting while Amazon find it, buy it!

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.

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.

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