Great book, 25 Jul 2008
I would higly recommend this book to everyone, I have been searching for a while for a good new author (A good new book to be honest) and I was quite suprised it was this book that won me over and not one of the others that I bough. Well written,great characters great story.

Almost coherent, 27 Oct 2006
This is a great novel about the changes wrought in our world by the new communications technology. Unlike most such novels, rather than fixating on the technology itself, Ryman looks at what the coming information revolution will mean to ordinary people living ordinary lives. Unlike any other such story I have read, his characters are not teenagers living in Western affluence, but villagers in a fictional Central Asian country, at the intersection of the Turkic and Chinese cultural spheres, in other words about as far from the West as you can culturally get in today's world. I thought it was fascinating and compassionate.

However. Ryman is a proponent of the "mundane science fiction" school and oddly enough the two most problematic elements for me in the book for me were the two most fantastic ones. The physical flood threatening to overwhelm the village threatened to be a rather overstated echo of the metaphorical deluge of the new technology, but I think Ryman just about got away with it in the end. The heroine's bizarre pregnancy, however, just did not work for me.

Beautiful, intelligent, gripping, 15 Oct 2006
If you're reading this, you already know about the power of the internet. Cast your mind back to before you had it. How did you sort out arguments about which film that actor on TV was in? Where did you get your books from? How did you know how much money was in your bank account? Where did you book your holidays? How on earth did you kill time at work?!?

Now imagine the next stage of the Internet: skipping the computer out altogether. Making the entire wealth of the internet accesible to your brain, for free, all the time.

This is exactly what happens to the last village in the world to go online, Kizuldah, a tiny hamlet in the nation of Karzistan. Imagine a world without telephones and running water suddenly being exposed to such a wealth of information, and you are in the world of Air.

The protagonist, Mae, is an illiterate peasant with lofty aspirations. She sells her services in the village as a "fashion expert", eking a living by making dresses and accompanying the wealthier women into town to get their nails done. Following the arrival of an internet-enabled TV in the village she rapidly figures out that with easy access to information, her services will become surplus to requirements, and so she begins an entrepenurial quest to stay ahead of everyone else. As she progresses in her understanding of the web, she also realises that it will effectively destroy the way of life in which her village has always lived. Then again, she is realistic enough to know that there never was a "golden time", that life was always hard and people always adapted.

This is a great book. The protagonist is astutely observed, the village a well-developed setting, and the sci-fi elements eminently plausible. This is one of those novels I burned through in a couple of days, have put away in my cupboard, and will probably come back to next year just to visit Mae and the others.

It's a book that falls outside staid and tired genres we are all so used to. Whatever kind of book you're looking for, this is the one. See you in Kizuldah.

Fantastic book, moving story, intelligent plot, 09 Dec 2005
I admit I love Geoff Ryman's work, even though you can never be quite sure what you're going to get with him. This is, I suppose, technically a straightforward science fiction novel in that the mechanism that moves the plot is a speculative expansion of Internet technologies into a sort of technologically created global telepathy. But Ryman's talent is in the way he locates the story in a wonderfully realised world - a distant Asian village - and makes us care about a flawed but fascinating central character, Chung Mae.

Tender, funny, scary, and enormously clever. I really can't recomment this novel highly enough.

Great book, 25 Jul 2008
I would higly recommend this book to everyone, I have been searching for a while for a good new author (A good new book to be honest) and I was quite suprised it was this book that won me over and not one of the others that I bough. Well written,great characters great story.

Almost coherent, 27 Oct 2006
This is a great novel about the changes wrought in our world by the new communications technology. Unlike most such novels, rather than fixating on the technology itself, Ryman looks at what the coming information revolution will mean to ordinary people living ordinary lives. Unlike any other such story I have read, his characters are not teenagers living in Western affluence, but villagers in a fictional Central Asian country, at the intersection of the Turkic and Chinese cultural spheres, in other words about as far from the West as you can culturally get in today's world. I thought it was fascinating and compassionate.

However. Ryman is a proponent of the "mundane science fiction" school and oddly enough the two most problematic elements for me in the book for me were the two most fantastic ones. The physical flood threatening to overwhelm the village threatened to be a rather overstated echo of the metaphorical deluge of the new technology, but I think Ryman just about got away with it in the end. The heroine's bizarre pregnancy, however, just did not work for me.

Beautiful, intelligent, gripping, 15 Oct 2006
If you're reading this, you already know about the power of the internet. Cast your mind back to before you had it. How did you sort out arguments about which film that actor on TV was in? Where did you get your books from? How did you know how much money was in your bank account? Where did you book your holidays? How on earth did you kill time at work?!?

Now imagine the next stage of the Internet: skipping the computer out altogether. Making the entire wealth of the internet accesible to your brain, for free, all the time.

This is exactly what happens to the last village in the world to go online, Kizuldah, a tiny hamlet in the nation of Karzistan. Imagine a world without telephones and running water suddenly being exposed to such a wealth of information, and you are in the world of Air.

The protagonist, Mae, is an illiterate peasant with lofty aspirations. She sells her services in the village as a "fashion expert", eking a living by making dresses and accompanying the wealthier women into town to get their nails done. Following the arrival of an internet-enabled TV in the village she rapidly figures out that with easy access to information, her services will become surplus to requirements, and so she begins an entrepenurial quest to stay ahead of everyone else. As she progresses in her understanding of the web, she also realises that it will effectively destroy the way of life in which her village has always lived. Then again, she is realistic enough to know that there never was a "golden time", that life was always hard and people always adapted.

This is a great book. The protagonist is astutely observed, the village a well-developed setting, and the sci-fi elements eminently plausible. This is one of those novels I burned through in a couple of days, have put away in my cupboard, and will probably come back to next year just to visit Mae and the others.

It's a book that falls outside staid and tired genres we are all so used to. Whatever kind of book you're looking for, this is the one. See you in Kizuldah.

Fantastic book, moving story, intelligent plot, 09 Dec 2005
I admit I love Geoff Ryman's work, even though you can never be quite sure what you're going to get with him. This is, I suppose, technically a straightforward science fiction novel in that the mechanism that moves the plot is a speculative expansion of Internet technologies into a sort of technologically created global telepathy. But Ryman's talent is in the way he locates the story in a wonderfully realised world - a distant Asian village - and makes us care about a flawed but fascinating central character, Chung Mae.

Tender, funny, scary, and enormously clever. I really can't recomment this novel highly enough.

A masterpiece of the Internet age, 14 Mar 2007
This is the story of a lifetime. The story of 253 lifetimes to be exact. It is the story of 253 twelve minute train journeys. With 253 words devoted to each and every character, the author is able to intertwine the secret lives of the passengers brilliantly. It is amazing how detailed a picture of someone can be built from so few words. This novel began its life on the internet where it attracted a huge cult following. Since being published in paper form, 253 has been heralded as a modern classic, a seminal work of twenty-first century literature. Join 253 faceless people, as they live twelve minutes of their lives, hurtling towards an inevitable future. This is such an easy book to read wherever you are. Just don't read it on the Underground, you might find yourself staring at people, wondering what secret their stony faced silence conceals.

Exciting and gripping read, 05 Apr 2006
I loved this book. It is funny, witty, and insightful. Although you know that the train crash is coming, the surprise and the impact it has on the characters that you have come to know throughout the book is still striking.
The concept is new, original and well executed.

Ruzz, 26 Feb 2006
One of the greatest books I've read.

It sounds terrible - one of those pseudo-mathematical exercises in writing much beloved of French experimental writers - but it isn't like that. Geoff Ryman writes brilliantly and each of 253 characters immediately involves you. I've read and re-read it.

Simply stunning.

253, 26 Feb 2006
A wonderful concept. this book reads you have dreamed it. imagine being able to take a small bite of everyones mind on the tube. shock ending that isnt a shock. how so? buy it.

Mouldbreaking concept; needs auditing, 30 Jun 2004
Fantastic concept for a book, with all the linking going on between all the different passengers. As revolutionary as Adrian Mole or e by Matt Beaumont, in converting it all into a different sort of medium.

It should certainly be read as a book first, but I'm off to the internet next to browse around the carriages, looking at all the links between passengers.

I'd recommend not hurrying the book - I found I could only go for 12 passengers max in a session before needing to put it down.

Has anyone checked that there are exactly 253 words devoted to each of the 253 passengers? We need that comfort. Maybe in the next printing, Mr Ryman could include certification of this from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

In the end I'm only going for 4 stars here because the book started to get tiring towards the end.

Great book, 25 Jul 2008
I would higly recommend this book to everyone, I have been searching for a while for a good new author (A good new book to be honest) and I was quite suprised it was this book that won me over and not one of the others that I bough. Well written,great characters great story.

Almost coherent, 27 Oct 2006
This is a great novel about the changes wrought in our world by the new communications technology. Unlike most such novels, rather than fixating on the technology itself, Ryman looks at what the coming information revolution will mean to ordinary people living ordinary lives. Unlike any other such story I have read, his characters are not teenagers living in Western affluence, but villagers in a fictional Central Asian country, at the intersection of the Turkic and Chinese cultural spheres, in other words about as far from the West as you can culturally get in today's world. I thought it was fascinating and compassionate.

However. Ryman is a proponent of the "mundane science fiction" school and oddly enough the two most problematic elements for me in the book for me were the two most fantastic ones. The physical flood threatening to overwhelm the village threatened to be a rather overstated echo of the metaphorical deluge of the new technology, but I think Ryman just about got away with it in the end. The heroine's bizarre pregnancy, however, just did not work for me.

Beautiful, intelligent, gripping, 15 Oct 2006
If you're reading this, you already know about the power of the internet. Cast your mind back to before you had it. How did you sort out arguments about which film that actor on TV was in? Where did you get your books from? How did you know how much money was in your bank account? Where did you book your holidays? How on earth did you kill time at work?!?

Now imagine the next stage of the Internet: skipping the computer out altogether. Making the entire wealth of the internet accesible to your brain, for free, all the time.

This is exactly what happens to the last village in the world to go online, Kizuldah, a tiny hamlet in the nation of Karzistan. Imagine a world without telephones and running water suddenly being exposed to such a wealth of information, and you are in the world of Air.

The protagonist, Mae, is an illiterate peasant with lofty aspirations. She sells her services in the village as a "fashion expert", eking a living by making dresses and accompanying the wealthier women into town to get their nails done. Following the arrival of an internet-enabled TV in the village she rapidly figures out that with easy access to information, her services will become surplus to requirements, and so she begins an entrepenurial quest to stay ahead of everyone else. As she progresses in her understanding of the web, she also realises that it will effectively destroy the way of life in which her village has always lived. Then again, she is realistic enough to know that there never was a "golden time", that life was always hard and people always adapted.

This is a great book. The protagonist is astutely observed, the village a well-developed setting, and the sci-fi elements eminently plausible. This is one of those novels I burned through in a couple of days, have put away in my cupboard, and will probably come back to next year just to visit Mae and the others.

It's a book that falls outside staid and tired genres we are all so used to. Whatever kind of book you're looking for, this is the one. See you in Kizuldah.

Fantastic book, moving story, intelligent plot, 09 Dec 2005
I admit I love Geoff Ryman's work, even though you can never be quite sure what you're going to get with him. This is, I suppose, technically a straightforward science fiction novel in that the mechanism that moves the plot is a speculative expansion of Internet technologies into a sort of technologically created global telepathy. But Ryman's talent is in the way he locates the story in a wonderfully realised world - a distant Asian village - and makes us care about a flawed but fascinating central character, Chung Mae.

Tender, funny, scary, and enormously clever. I really can't recomment this novel highly enough.

A masterpiece of the Internet age, 14 Mar 2007
This is the story of a lifetime. The story of 253 lifetimes to be exact. It is the story of 253 twelve minute train journeys. With 253 words devoted to each and every character, the author is able to intertwine the secret lives of the passengers brilliantly. It is amazing how detailed a picture of someone can be built from so few words. This novel began its life on the internet where it attracted a huge cult following. Since being published in paper form, 253 has been heralded as a modern classic, a seminal work of twenty-first century literature. Join 253 faceless people, as they live twelve minutes of their lives, hurtling towards an inevitable future. This is such an easy book to read wherever you are. Just don't read it on the Underground, you might find yourself staring at people, wondering what secret their stony faced silence conceals.

Exciting and gripping read, 05 Apr 2006
I loved this book. It is funny, witty, and insightful. Although you know that the train crash is coming, the surprise and the impact it has on the characters that you have come to know throughout the book is still striking.
The concept is new, original and well executed.

Ruzz, 26 Feb 2006
One of the greatest books I've read.

It sounds terrible - one of those pseudo-mathematical exercises in writing much beloved of French experimental writers - but it isn't like that. Geoff Ryman writes brilliantly and each of 253 characters immediately involves you. I've read and re-read it.

Simply stunning.

253, 26 Feb 2006
A wonderful concept. this book reads you have dreamed it. imagine being able to take a small bite of everyones mind on the tube. shock ending that isnt a shock. how so? buy it.

Mouldbreaking concept; needs auditing, 30 Jun 2004
Fantastic concept for a book, with all the linking going on between all the different passengers. As revolutionary as Adrian Mole or e by Matt Beaumont, in converting it all into a different sort of medium.

It should certainly be read as a book first, but I'm off to the internet next to browse around the carriages, looking at all the links between passengers.

I'd recommend not hurrying the book - I found I could only go for 12 passengers max in a session before needing to put it down.

Has anyone checked that there are exactly 253 words devoted to each of the 253 passengers? We need that comfort. Maybe in the next printing, Mr Ryman could include certification of this from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

In the end I'm only going for 4 stars here because the book started to get tiring towards the end.

A fictional look into Cambodia's past, 01 May 2006
I eagerly awaited Geoff Ryman's novel, The King's Last Song, that links the glories of the Angkor dynasty of King Jayavarman VII with modern-day Cambodia, and I was richly rewarded. It's excellent. I particularly loved the passages that yielded such a vivid and atmospheric recreation of life in the court of the King during the twelfth century that I could almost taste it. Okay, much of it was from the author's own imagination, but I believed it. The book swirls around the life story of Jayarvarman VII written on gold leaves which are found and subsequently stolen. The hunt is on for their recovery and with it, we gain an insight into the Cambodia of today. This book sets a towering standard for new fiction writing on Cambodia that will be difficult to match, let alone exceed. I take my hat off to the author for a wonderful and evocative story that I found impossible to put down. I urge everyone with an interest in Cambodia to buy this book and then encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Another brilliant Ryman, 25 Feb 2006
Got an early copy of this and devoured it over two days. Simply brilliant. No two Ryman books are the same - but for me this is almost as good as his last book, Air, which was one of the best pieces of fiction of this decade. Another brilliant book from Ryman - buy it.

Great book, 25 Jul 2008
I would higly recommend this book to everyone, I have been searching for a while for a good new author (A good new book to be honest) and I was quite suprised it was this book that won me over and not one of the others that I bough. Well written,great characters great story.

Almost coherent, 27 Oct 2006
This is a great novel about the changes wrought in our world by the new communications technology. Unlike most such novels, rather than fixating on the technology itself, Ryman looks at what the coming information revolution will mean to ordinary people living ordinary lives. Unlike any other such story I have read, his characters are not teenagers living in Western affluence, but villagers in a fictional Central Asian country, at the intersection of the Turkic and Chinese cultural spheres, in other words about as far from the West as you can culturally get in today's world. I thought it was fascinating and compassionate.

However. Ryman is a proponent of the "mundane science fiction" school and oddly enough the two most problematic elements for me in the book for me were the two most fantastic ones. The physical flood threatening to overwhelm the village threatened to be a rather overstated echo of the metaphorical deluge of the new technology, but I think Ryman just about got away with it in the end. The heroine's bizarre pregnancy, however, just did not work for me.

Beautiful, intelligent, gripping, 15 Oct 2006
If you're reading this, you already know about the power of the internet. Cast your mind back to before you had it. How did you sort out arguments about which film that actor on TV was in? Where did you get your books from? How did you know how much money was in your bank account? Where did you book your holidays? How on earth did you kill time at work?!?

Now imagine the next stage of the Internet: skipping the computer out altogether. Making the entire wealth of the internet accesible to your brain, for free, all the time.

This is exactly what happens to the last village in the world to go online, Kizuldah, a tiny hamlet in the nation of Karzistan. Imagine a world without telephones and running water suddenly being exposed to such a wealth of information, and you are in the world of Air.

The protagonist, Mae, is an illiterate peasant with lofty aspirations. She sells her services in the village as a "fashion expert", eking a living by making dresses and accompanying the wealthier women into town to get their nails done. Following the arrival of an internet-enabled TV in the village she rapidly figures out that with easy access to information, her services will become surplus to requirements, and so she begins an entrepenurial quest to stay ahead of everyone else. As she progresses in her understanding of the web, she also realises that it will effectively destroy the way of life in which her village has always lived. Then again, she is realistic enough to know that there never was a "golden time", that life was always hard and people always adapted.

This is a great book. The protagonist is astutely observed, the village a well-developed setting, and the sci-fi elements eminently plausible. This is one of those novels I burned through in a couple of days, have put away in my cupboard, and will probably come back to next year just to visit Mae and the others.

It's a book that falls outside staid and tired genres we are all so used to. Whatever kind of book you're looking for, this is the one. See you in Kizuldah.

Fantastic book, moving story, intelligent plot, 09 Dec 2005
I admit I love Geoff Ryman's work, even though you can never be quite sure what you're going to get with him. This is, I suppose, technically a straightforward science fiction novel in that the mechanism that moves the plot is a speculative expansion of Internet technologies into a sort of technologically created global telepathy. But Ryman's talent is in the way he locates the story in a wonderfully realised world - a distant Asian village - and makes us care about a flawed but fascinating central character, Chung Mae.

Tender, funny, scary, and enormously clever. I really can't recomment this novel highly enough.

A masterpiece of the Internet age, 14 Mar 2007
This is the story of a lifetime. The story of 253 lifetimes to be exact. It is the story of 253 twelve minute train journeys. With 253 words devoted to each and every character, the author is able to intertwine the secret lives of the passengers brilliantly. It is amazing how detailed a picture of someone can be built from so few words. This novel began its life on the internet where it attracted a huge cult following. Since being published in paper form, 253 has been heralded as a modern classic, a seminal work of twenty-first century literature. Join 253 faceless people, as they live twelve minutes of their lives, hurtling towards an inevitable future. This is such an easy book to read wherever you are. Just don't read it on the Underground, you might find yourself staring at people, wondering what secret their stony faced silence conceals.

Exciting and gripping read, 05 Apr 2006
I loved this book. It is funny, witty, and insightful. Although you know that the train crash is coming, the surprise and the impact it has on the characters that you have come to know throughout the book is still striking.
The concept is new, original and well executed.

Ruzz, 26 Feb 2006
One of the greatest books I've read.

It sounds terrible - one of those pseudo-mathematical exercises in writing much beloved of French experimental writers - but it isn't like that. Geoff Ryman writes brilliantly and each of 253 characters immediately involves you. I've read and re-read it.

Simply stunning.

253, 26 Feb 2006
A wonderful concept. this book reads you have dreamed it. imagine being able to take a small bite of everyones mind on the tube. shock ending that isnt a shock. how so? buy it.

Mouldbreaking concept; needs auditing, 30 Jun 2004
Fantastic concept for a book, with all the linking going on between all the different passengers. As revolutionary as Adrian Mole or e by Matt Beaumont, in converting it all into a different sort of medium.

It should certainly be read as a book first, but I'm off to the internet next to browse around the carriages, looking at all the links between passengers.

I'd recommend not hurrying the book - I found I could only go for 12 passengers max in a session before needing to put it down.

Has anyone checked that there are exactly 253 words devoted to each of the 253 passengers? We need that comfort. Maybe in the next printing, Mr Ryman could include certification of this from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

In the end I'm only going for 4 stars here because the book started to get tiring towards the end.

A fictional look into Cambodia's past, 01 May 2006
I eagerly awaited Geoff Ryman's novel, The King's Last Song, that links the glories of the Angkor dynasty of King Jayavarman VII with modern-day Cambodia, and I was richly rewarded. It's excellent. I particularly loved the passages that yielded such a vivid and atmospheric recreation of life in the court of the King during the twelfth century that I could almost taste it. Okay, much of it was from the author's own imagination, but I believed it. The book swirls around the life story of Jayarvarman VII written on gold leaves which are found and subsequently stolen. The hunt is on for their recovery and with it, we gain an insight into the Cambodia of today. This book sets a towering standard for new fiction writing on Cambodia that will be difficult to match, let alone exceed. I take my hat off to the author for a wonderful and evocative story that I found impossible to put down. I urge everyone with an interest in Cambodia to buy this book and then encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Another brilliant Ryman, 25 Feb 2006
Got an early copy of this and devoured it over two days. Simply brilliant. No two Ryman books are the same - but for me this is almost as good as his last book, Air, which was one of the best pieces of fiction of this decade. Another brilliant book from Ryman - buy it.

Was, 11 Mar 2006
As someone who aspires to write, this book is something I could readily die with as my greatest work.
This is a must read for anyone who loves Kurt Vonnegut or Douglas Coupland.
Geoff Ryman is best know for science fiction and steps out of this genre for Was which utilises his imaginative skills in a way that will leave you wondering why he is not a household name - how I wish he would give up science fiction.
I have recommended this book to half a dozen of my friends and all of them have said how much they loved it.
Please buy it - it warrants iconic status

Engrossing, but overlong and over elaborate, 13 Sep 2005
I don't usually like novels that try to tell several stories at once, but I did enjoy this. However, it was unnecessarily padded out - there are whole swathes of the book that could simply be discarded. The story of Dorothy's childhood in Kansas was moving and sad. Less succesful was the tale of Jonathan, the dying actor obsessed by Oz. The characters are well drawn, but this does rather add to the general bleakness of the book. I did not find the end at all uplifting, as it was clearly meant to be; I found it muddled, confusing, and something of a disappointment. The author's explanation of the roots of the story in reality was also unnecessary. Overall, an interesting and enjoyable read, but not a real masterpiece.

If it was a movie, it'd be described as a SLEEPER HIT, 13 Nov 2003
What if Dorothy from “The Wizard Of Oz” really existed, Uncle Henry was a predatory paedophile, and Aunty Em and the dreadful Miss Gulch were the same person? That’s basically the main plot of this superficially bizarre, but very heartfelt post-modern take on the Oz legend.

But if it sounds like one of those dreary comical rewrites where everything is subverted just for laughs, then I’ve done it an injustice. “Was” purports to be the story of the real Dorothy, who meets L Frank Baum, who goes on to write the story of the life she should have had – the Oz books themselves.

It’s also the story of the making of “The Wizard Of Oz” movie, Judy Garland’s family strife mirroring the real Dorothy’s, and dying AIDS patient Jonathan’s obsession with them both. Everything is linked across the hundred-year span of the novel, and the end is also the beginning. But the result, a swirling mass of parallel lives across the centuries, comes across like a literary cyclone itself.

That said, this isn’t a particularly literary novel. I found it very easy to read, but to really appreciate it you need to appreciate either the film or the Oz books themselves. This isn’t a happy book, and there is little let-up from the misery. There are certainly no happy endings in the conventional sense. In a way, the characters are just swept away at the end of the novel, but when you get that far, this kind of seems fitting.

Unfortunately, this book seems to go in and out of print regularly, so snap it up whilst you still can!

Great book, 25 Jul 2008
I would higly recommend this book to everyone, I have been searching for a while for a good new author (A good new book to be honest) and I was quite suprised it was this book that won me over and not one of the others that I bough. Well written,great characters great story.

Almost coherent, 27 Oct 2006
This is a great novel about the changes wrought in our world by the new communications technology. Unlike most such novels, rather than fixating on the technology itself, Ryman looks at what the coming information revolution will mean to ordinary people living ordinary lives. Unlike any other such story I have read, his characters are not teenagers living in Western affluence, but villagers in a fictional Central Asian country, at the intersection of the Turkic and Chinese cultural spheres, in other words about as far from the West as you can culturally get in today's world. I thought it was fascinating and compassionate.

However. Ryman is a proponent of the "mundane science fiction" school and oddly enough the two most problematic elements for me in the book for me were the two most fantastic ones. The physical flood threatening to overwhelm the village threatened to be a rather overstated echo of the metaphorical deluge of the new technology, but I think Ryman just about got away with it in the end. The heroine's bizarre pregnancy, however, just did not work for me.

Beautiful, intelligent, gripping, 15 Oct 2006
If you're reading this, you already know about the power of the internet. Cast your mind back to before you had it. How did you sort out arguments about which film that actor on TV was in? Where did you get your books from? How did you know how much money was in your bank account? Where did you book your holidays? How on earth did you kill time at work?!?

Now imagine the next stage of the Internet: skipping the computer out altogether. Making the entire wealth of the internet accesible to your brain, for free, all the time.

This is exactly what happens to the last village in the world to go online, Kizuldah, a tiny hamlet in the nation of Karzistan. Imagine a world without telephones and running water suddenly being exposed to such a wealth of information, and you are in the world of Air.

The protagonist, Mae, is an illiterate peasant with lofty aspirations. She sells her services in the village as a "fashion expert", eking a living by making dresses and accompanying the wealthier women into town to get their nails done. Following the arrival of an internet-enabled TV in the village she rapidly figures out that with easy access to information, her services will become surplus to requirements, and so she begins an entrepenurial quest to stay ahead of everyone else. As she progresses in her understanding of the web, she also realises that it will effectively destroy the way of life in which her village has always lived. Then again, she is realistic enough to know that there never was a "golden time", that life was always hard and people always adapted.

This is a great book. The protagonist is astutely observed, the village a well-developed setting, and the sci-fi elements eminently plausible. This is one of those novels I burned through in a couple of days, have put away in my cupboard, and will probably come back to next year just to visit Mae and the others.

It's a book that falls outside staid and tired genres we are all so used to. Whatever kind of book you're looking for, this is the one. See you in Kizuldah.

Fantastic book, moving story, intelligent plot, 09 Dec 2005
I admit I love Geoff Ryman's work, even though you can never be quite sure what you're going to get with him. This is, I suppose, technically a straightforward science fiction novel in that the mechanism that moves the plot is a speculative expansion of Internet technologies into a sort of technologically created global telepathy. But Ryman's talent is in the way he locates the story in a wonderfully realised world - a distant Asian village - and makes us care about a flawed but fascinating central character, Chung Mae.

Tender, funny, scary, and enormously clever. I really can't recomment this novel highly enough.

A masterpiece of the Internet age, 14 Mar 2007
This is the story of a lifetime. The story of 253 lifetimes to be exact. It is the story of 253 twelve minute train journeys. With 253 words devoted to each and every character, the author is able to intertwine the secret lives of the passengers brilliantly. It is amazing how detailed a picture of someone can be built from so few words. This novel began its life on the internet where it attracted a huge cult following. Since being published in paper form, 253 has been heralded as a modern classic, a seminal work of twenty-first century literature. Join 253 faceless people, as they live twelve minutes of their lives, hurtling towards an inevitable future. This is such an easy book to read wherever you are. Just don't read it on the Underground, you might find yourself staring at people, wondering what secret their stony faced silence conceals.

Exciting and gripping read, 05 Apr 2006
I loved this book. It is funny, witty, and insightful. Although you know that the train crash is coming, the surprise and the impact it has on the characters that you have come to know throughout the book is still striking.
The concept is new, original and well executed.

Ruzz, 26 Feb 2006
One of the greatest books I've read.

It sounds terrible - one of those pseudo-mathematical exercises in writing much beloved of French experimental writers - but it isn't like that. Geoff Ryman writes brilliantly and each of 253 characters immediately involves you. I've read and re-read it.

Simply stunning.

253, 26 Feb 2006
A wonderful concept. this book reads you have dreamed it. imagine being able to take a small bite of everyones mind on the tube. shock ending that isnt a shock. how so? buy it.

Mouldbreaking concept; needs auditing, 30 Jun 2004
Fantastic concept for a book, with all the linking going on between all the different passengers. As revolutionary as Adrian Mole or e by Matt Beaumont, in converting it all into a different sort of medium.

It should certainly be read as a book first, but I'm off to the internet next to browse around the carriages, looking at all the links between passengers.

I'd recommend not hurrying the book - I found I could only go for 12 passengers max in a session before needing to put it down.

Has anyone checked that there are exactly 253 words devoted to each of the 253 passengers? We need that comfort. Maybe in the next printing, Mr Ryman could include certification of this from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

In the end I'm only going for 4 stars here because the book started to get tiring towards the end.

A fictional look into Cambodia's past, 01 May 2006
I eagerly awaited Geoff Ryman's novel, The King's Last Song, that links the glories of the Angkor dynasty of King Jayavarman VII with modern-day Cambodia, and I was richly rewarded. It's excellent. I particularly loved the passages that yielded such a vivid and atmospheric recreation of life in the court of the King during the twelfth century that I could almost taste it. Okay, much of it was from the author's own imagination, but I believed it. The book swirls around the life story of Jayarvarman VII written on gold leaves which are found and subsequently stolen. The hunt is on for their recovery and with it, we gain an insight into the Cambodia of today. This book sets a towering standard for new fiction writing on Cambodia that will be difficult to match, let alone exceed. I take my hat off to the author for a wonderful and evocative story that I found impossible to put down. I urge everyone with an interest in Cambodia to buy this book and then encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Another brilliant Ryman, 25 Feb 2006
Got an early copy of this and devoured it over two days. Simply brilliant. No two Ryman books are the same - but for me this is almost as good as his last book, Air, which was one of the best pieces of fiction of this decade. Another brilliant book from Ryman - buy it.

Was, 11 Mar 2006
As someone who aspires to write, this book is something I could readily die with as my greatest work.
This is a must read for anyone who loves Kurt Vonnegut or Douglas Coupland.
Geoff Ryman is best know for science fiction and steps out of this genre for Was which utilises his imaginative skills in a way that will leave you wondering why he is not a household name - how I wish he would give up science fiction.
I have recommended this book to half a dozen of my friends and all of them have said how much they loved it.
Please buy it - it warrants iconic status

Engrossing, but overlong and over elaborate, 13 Sep 2005
I don't usually like novels that try to tell several stories at once, but I did enjoy this. However, it was unnecessarily padded out - there are whole swathes of the book that could simply be discarded. The story of Dorothy's childhood in Kansas was moving and sad. Less succesful was the tale of Jonathan, the dying actor obsessed by Oz. The characters are well drawn, but this does rather add to the general bleakness of the book. I did not find the end at all uplifting, as it was clearly meant to be; I found it muddled, confusing, and something of a disappointment. The author's explanation of the roots of the story in reality was also unnecessary. Overall, an interesting and enjoyable read, but not a real masterpiece.

If it was a movie, it'd be described as a SLEEPER HIT, 13 Nov 2003
What if Dorothy from “The Wizard Of Oz” really existed, Uncle Henry was a predatory paedophile, and Aunty Em and the dreadful Miss Gulch were the same person? That’s basically the main plot of this superficially bizarre, but very heartfelt post-modern take on the Oz legend.

But if it sounds like one of those dreary comical rewrites where everything is subverted just for laughs, then I’ve done it an injustice. “Was” purports to be the story of the real Dorothy, who meets L Frank Baum, who goes on to write the story of the life she should have had – the Oz books themselves.

It’s also the story of the making of “The Wizard Of Oz” movie, Judy Garland’s family strife mirroring the real Dorothy’s, and dying AIDS patient Jonathan’s obsession with them both. Everything is linked across the hundred-year span of the novel, and the end is also the beginning. But the result, a swirling mass of parallel lives across the centuries, comes across like a literary cyclone itself.

That said, this isn’t a particularly literary novel. I found it very easy to read, but to really appreciate it you need to appreciate either the film or the Oz books themselves. This isn’t a happy book, and there is little let-up from the misery. There are certainly no happy endings in the conventional sense. In a way, the characters are just swept away at the end of the novel, but when you get that far, this kind of seems fitting.

Unfortunately, this book seems to go in and out of print regularly, so snap it up whilst you still can!

Was, 11 Mar 2006
As someone who aspires to write, this book is something I could readily die with as my greatest work.
This is a must read for anyone who loves Kurt Vonnegut or Douglas Coupland.
Geoff Ryman is best know for science fiction and steps out of this genre for Was which utilises his imaginative skills in a way that will leave you wondering why he is not a household name - how I wish he would give up science fiction.
I have recommended this book to half a dozen of my friends and all of them have said how much they loved it.
Please buy it - it warrants iconic status

Engrossing, but overlong and over elaborate, 13 Sep 2005
I don't usually like novels that try to tell several stories at once, but I did enjoy this. However, it was unnecessarily padded out - there are whole swathes of the book that could simply be discarded. The story of Dorothy's childhood in Kansas was moving and sad. Less succesful was the tale of Jonathan, the dying actor obsessed by Oz. The characters are well drawn, but this does rather add to the general bleakness of the book. I did not find the end at all uplifting, as it was clearly meant to be; I found it muddled, confusing, and something of a disappointment. The author's explanation of the roots of the story in reality was also unnecessary. Overall, an interesting and enjoyable read, but not a real masterpiece.

If it was a movie, it'd be described as a SLEEPER HIT, 13 Nov 2003
What if Dorothy from “The Wizard Of Oz” really existed, Uncle Henry was a predatory paedophile, and Aunty Em and the dreadful Miss Gulch were the same person? That’s basically the main plot of this superficially bizarre, but very heartfelt post-modern take on the Oz legend.

But if it sounds like one of those dreary comical rewrites where everything is subverted just for laughs, then I’ve done it an injustice. “Was” purports to be the story of the real Dorothy, who meets L Frank Baum, who goes on to write the story of the life she should have had – the Oz books themselves.

It’s also the story of the making of “The Wizard Of Oz” movie, Judy Garland’s family strife mirroring the real Dorothy’s, and dying AIDS patient Jonathan’s obsession with them both. Everything is linked across the hundred-year span of the novel, and the end is also the beginning. But the result, a swirling mass of parallel lives across the centuries, comes across like a literary cyclone itself.

That said, this isn’t a particularly literary novel. I found it very easy to read, but to really appreciate it you need to appreciate either the film or the Oz books themselves. This isn’t a happy book, and there is little let-up from the misery. There are certainly no happy endings in the conventional sense. In a way, the characters are just swept away at the end of the novel, but when you get that far, this kind of seems fitting.

Unfortunately, this book seems to go in and out of print regularly, so snap it up whilst you still can!

Great book, 25 Jul 2008
I would higly recommend this book to everyone, I have been searching for a while for a good new author (A good new book to be honest) and I was quite suprised it was this book that won me over and not one of the others that I bough. Well written,great characters great story.

Almost coherent, 27 Oct 2006
This is a great novel about the changes wrought in our world by the new communications technology. Unlike most such novels, rather than fixating on the technology itself, Ryman looks at what the coming information revolution will mean to ordinary people living ordinary lives. Unlike any other such story I have read, his characters are not teenagers living in Western affluence, but villagers in a fictional Central Asian country, at the intersection of the Turkic and Chinese cultural spheres, in other words about as far from the West as you can culturally get in today's world. I thought it was fascinating and compassionate.

However. Ryman is a proponent of the "mundane science fiction" school and oddly enough the two most problematic elements for me in the book for me were the two most fantastic ones. The physical flood threatening to overwhelm the village threatened to be a rather overstated echo of the metaphorical deluge of the new technology, but I think Ryman just about got away with it in the end. The heroine's bizarre pregnancy, however, just did not work for me.

Beautiful, intelligent, gripping, 15 Oct 2006
If you're reading this, you already know about the power of the internet. Cast your mind back to before you had it. How did you sort out arguments about which film that actor on TV was in? Where did you get your books from? How did you know how much money was in your bank account? Where did you book your holidays? How on earth did you kill time at work?!?

Now imagine the next stage of the Internet: skipping the computer out altogether. Making the entire wealth of the internet accesible to your brain, for free, all the time.

This is exactly what happens to the last village in the world to go online, Kizuldah, a tiny hamlet in the nation of Karzistan. Imagine a world without telephones and running water suddenly being exposed to such a wealth of information, and you are in the world of Air.

The protagonist, Mae, is an illiterate peasant with lofty aspirations. She sells her services in the village as a "fashion expert", eking a living by making dresses and accompanying the wealthier women into town to get their nails done. Following the arrival of an internet-enabled TV in the village she rapidly figures out that with easy access to information, her services will become surplus to requirements, and so she begins an entrepenurial quest to stay ahead of everyone else. As she progresses in her understanding of the web, she also realises that it will effectively destroy the way of life in which her village has always lived. Then again, she is realistic enough to know that there never was a "golden time", that life was always hard and people always adapted.

This is a great book. The protagonist is astutely observed, the village a well-developed setting, and the sci-fi elements eminently plausible. This is one of those novels I burned through in a couple of days, have put away in my cupboard, and will probably come back to next year just to visit Mae and the others.

It's a book that falls outside staid and tired genres we are all so used to. Whatever kind of book you're looking for, this is the one. See you in Kizuldah.

Fantastic book, moving story, intelligent plot, 09 Dec 2005
I admit I love Geoff Ryman's work, even though you can never be quite sure what you're going to get with him. This is, I suppose, technically a straightforward science fiction novel in that the mechanism that moves the plot is a speculative expansion of Internet technologies into a sort of technologically created global telepathy. But Ryman's talent is in the way he locates the story in a wonderfully realised world - a distant Asian village - and makes us care about a flawed but fascinating central character, Chung Mae.

Tender, funny, scary, and enormously clever. I really can't recomment this novel highly enough.

A masterpiece of the Internet age, 14 Mar 2007
This is the story of a lifetime. The story of 253 lifetimes to be exact. It is the story of 253 twelve minute train journeys. With 253 words devoted to each and every character, the author is able to intertwine the secret lives of the passengers brilliantly. It is amazing how detailed a picture of someone can be built from so few words. This novel began its life on the internet where it attracted a huge cult following. Since being published in paper form, 253 has been heralded as a modern classic, a seminal work of twenty-first century literature. Join 253 faceless people, as they live twelve minutes of their lives, hurtling towards an inevitable future. This is such an easy book to read wherever you are. Just don't read it on the Underground, you might find yourself staring at people, wondering what secret their stony faced silence conceals.

Exciting and gripping read, 05 Apr 2006
I loved this book. It is funny, witty, and insightful. Although you know that the train crash is coming, the surprise and the impact it has on the characters that you have come to know throughout the book is still striking.
The concept is new, original and well executed.

Ruzz, 26 Feb 2006
One of the greatest books I've read.

It sounds terrible - one of those pseudo-mathematical exercises in writing much beloved of French experimental writers - but it isn't like that. Geoff Ryman writes brilliantly and each of 253 characters immediately involves you. I've read and re-read it.

Simply stunning.

253, 26 Feb 2006
A wonderful concept. this book reads you have dreamed it. imagine being able to take a small bite of everyones mind on the tube. shock ending that isnt a shock. how so? buy it.

Mouldbreaking concept; needs auditing, 30 Jun 2004
Fantastic concept for a book, with all the linking going on between all the different passengers. As revolutionary as Adrian Mole or e by Matt Beaumont, in converting it all into a different sort of medium.

It should certainly be read as a book first, but I'm off to the internet next to browse around the carriages, looking at all the links between passengers.

I'd recommend not hurrying the book - I found I could only go for 12 passengers max in a session before needing to put it down.

Has anyone checked that there are exactly 253 words devoted to each of the 253 passengers? We need that comfort. Maybe in the next printing, Mr Ryman could include certification of this from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

In the end I'm only going for 4 stars here because the book started to get tiring towards the end.

A fictional look into Cambodia's past, 01 May 2006
I eagerly awaited Geoff Ryman's novel, The King's Last Song, that links the glories of the Angkor dynasty of King Jayavarman VII with modern-day Cambodia, and I was richly rewarded. It's excellent. I particularly loved the passages that yielded such a vivid and atmospheric recreation of life in the court of the King during the twelfth century that I could almost taste it. Okay, much of it was from the author's own imagination, but I believed it. The book swirls around the life story of Jayarvarman VII written on gold leaves which are found and subsequently stolen. The hunt is on for their recovery and with it, we gain an insight into the Cambodia of today. This book sets a towering standard for new fiction writing on Cambodia that will be difficult to match, let alone exceed. I take my hat off to the author for a wonderful and evocative story that I found impossible to put down. I urge everyone with an interest in Cambodia to buy this book and then encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Another brilliant Ryman, 25 Feb 2006
Got an early copy of this and devoured it over two days. Simply brilliant. No two Ryman books are the same - but for me this is almost as good as his last book, Air, which was one of the best pieces of fiction of this decade. Another brilliant book from Ryman - buy it.

Was, 11 Mar 2006
As someone who aspires to write, this book is something I could readily die with as my greatest work.
This is a must read for anyone who loves Kurt Vonnegut or Douglas Coupland.
Geoff Ryman is best know for science fiction and steps out of this genre for Was which utilises his imaginative skills in a way that will leave you wondering why he is not a household name - how I wish he would give up science fiction.
I have recommended this book to half a dozen of my friends and all of them have said how much they loved it.
Please buy it - it warrants iconic status

Engrossing, but overlong and over elaborate, 13 Sep 2005
I don't usually like novels that try to tell several stories at once, but I did enjoy this. However, it was unnecessarily padded out - there are whole swathes of the book that could simply be discarded. The story of Dorothy's childhood in Kansas was moving and sad. Less succesful was the tale of Jonathan, the dying actor obsessed by Oz. The characters are well drawn, but this does rather add to the general bleakness of the book. I did not find the end at all uplifting, as it was clearly meant to be; I found it muddled, confusing, and something of a disappointment. The author's explanation of the roots of the story in reality was also unnecessary. Overall, an interesting and enjoyable read, but not a real masterpiece.

If it was a movie, it'd be described as a SLEEPER HIT, 13 Nov 2003
What if Dorothy from “The Wizard Of Oz” really existed, Uncle Henry was a predatory paedophile, and Aunty Em and the dreadful Miss Gulch were the same person? That’s basically the main plot of this superficially bizarre, but very heartfelt post-modern take on the Oz legend.

But if it sounds like one of those dreary comical rewrites where everything is subverted just for laughs, then I’ve done it an injustice. “Was” purports to be the story of the real Dorothy, who meets L Frank Baum, who goes on to write the story of the life she should have had – the Oz books themselves.

It’s also the story of the making of “The Wizard Of Oz” movie, Judy Garland’s family strife mirroring the real Dorothy’s, and dying AIDS patient Jonathan’s obsession with them both. Everything is linked across the hundred-year span of the novel, and the end is also the beginning. But the result, a swirling mass of parallel lives across the centuries, comes across like a literary cyclone itself.

That said, this isn’t a particularly literary novel. I found it very easy to read, but to really appreciate it you need to appreciate either the film or the Oz books themselves. This isn’t a happy book, and there is little let-up from the misery. There are certainly no happy endings in the conventional sense. In a way, the characters are just swept away at the end of the novel, but when you get that far, this kind of seems fitting.

Unfortunately, this book seems to go in and out of print regularly, so snap it up whilst you still can!

Was, 11 Mar 2006
As someone who aspires to write, this book is something I could readily die with as my greatest work.
This is a must read for anyone who loves Kurt Vonnegut or Douglas Coupland.
Geoff Ryman is best know for science fiction and steps out of this genre for Was which utilises his imaginative skills in a way that will leave you wondering why he is not a household name - how I wish he would give up science fiction.
I have recommended this book to half a dozen of my friends and all of them have said how much they loved it.
Please buy it - it warrants iconic status

Engrossing, but overlong and over elaborate, 13 Sep 2005
I don't usually like novels that try to tell several stories at once, but I did enjoy this. However, it was unnecessarily padded out - there are whole swathes of the book that could simply be discarded. The story of Dorothy's childhood in Kansas was moving and sad. Less succesful was the tale of Jonathan, the dying actor obsessed by Oz. The characters are well drawn, but this does rather add to the general bleakness of the book. I did not find the end at all uplifting, as it was clearly meant to be; I found it muddled, confusing, and something of a disappointment. The author's explanation of the roots of the story in reality was also unnecessary. Overall, an interesting and enjoyable read, but not a real masterpiece.

If it was a movie, it'd be described as a SLEEPER HIT, 13 Nov 2003
What if Dorothy from “The Wizard Of Oz” really existed, Uncle Henry was a predatory paedophile, and Aunty Em and the dreadful Miss Gulch were the same person? That’s basically the main plot of this superficially bizarre, but very heartfelt post-modern take on the Oz legend.

But if it sounds like one of those dreary comical rewrites where everything is subverted just for laughs, then I’ve done it an injustice. “Was” purports to be the story of the real Dorothy, who meets L Frank Baum, who goes on to write the story of the life she should have had – the Oz books themselves.

It’s also the story of the making of “The Wizard Of Oz” movie, Judy Garland’s family strife mirroring the real Dorothy’s, and dying AIDS patient Jonathan’s obsession with them both. Everything is linked across the hundred-year span of the novel, and the end is also the beginning. But the result, a swirling mass of parallel lives across the centuries, comes across like a literary cyclone itself.

That said, this isn’t a particularly literary novel. I found it very easy to read, but to really appreciate it you need to appreciate either the film or the Oz books themselves. This isn’t a happy book, and there is little let-up from the misery. There are certainly no happy endings in the conventional sense. In a way, the characters are just swept away at the end of the novel, but when you get that far, this kind of seems fitting.

Unfortunately, this book seems to go in and out of print regularly, so snap it up whilst you still can!

Raw emotion, 07 Jul 2006
What an incredible book this is! The premise outlined in the blurb is promising (children grown in gardens in a tropical london educated via viruses). Seems gloriously messed up and it is easy to happily resign yourself to an exploration of these themes and their ramifications...

Instead you will read of the emotional and physical journey of one of the most remarkable heroines in modern literature. It is through her that we are guided around this very odd world. There are some fantastic shifts in narrative pace and style. Apologies for ruining anything for you but there is a breathtakingly beautiful 50 page chapter which leaves you in such a tangle of emotions that you realise you are totally embroiled in the world of the book and the peaks and troughs of Milena. It is a blistering moment of clarity when all those little questions, that sci-fi books like to throw up, are given some kind of disjointed but final closure. The most fantastic thing about that chapter - indeed, the reason I am writing this review, is that the end leaves you only halfway through a book which you will remember forever. I have been searching for something new this heartfelt in sci-fi for a while and I have found it. Geoff Ryman is one to watch.


The secret of a good book, 19 Oct 2004
Fantastic book!! I just wish I could have a chat with Geoff Ryman and clarify a few little questions in my mind -did it make perfect sense to everybody else when they read it as I think I was with it most of the time, but got slightly lost when they were putting on the show in space - I really enjoyed it though!!

Forget it!, 28 Apr 2003
If you have read the elegant and clever book 253 and are expecting more of the same, you'll be disappointed.

In this long, rambling story, I lost all symapthy with main character and couldn't care less what happened to her. Getting to the end was an orderal.

I got my copy from a second hand book stall and that's where its going back to!

Easily the best book I have ever read, 30 Oct 2001
The Child Garden is one of the few books I have read that has really moved me, and one of even fewer that I would instantly cite as the best book I have read in my life (and I've read quite a few!). The future it describes could be a dystopian commentary of our own society, but instead it's a story about people, who are ultimately the most important components of any society. It's a future where people are still flawed and petty, and life is not easy of perfect, and that there are always some people who will stand out and make their mark on history. Milena is one such person, a heroine who grows up during the course of the book, and painted so well by Ryman that your perception of her changes as she does. For any London dweller the description the city with a coral reef and rice paddies, sub tropical temperatures and the night lit by oil lamps is one that will strike into the heart and awake the imagination. You cannot help but be touched by its depth, and a little haunted by the future that we could all inherit. Read it, you won't be sorry.

A love story in reverse, 03 Aug 2001
It is years scince I read "Child Garden"- I think it was 9 years ago or thereabouts. I've re-read this masterpiece 3 times scince then. Each time I can't believe how much the book changes. Milena, the heroine, is fabulous. You will love the Bears and the decription of the eastend and the southbank in London.

Ryman's future London is hot, humid and covered in Rhodopsin (a photosynthetic chemical) and bamboo. People are almost dickensian and elaborate. The world has scaned the limits of genetic engineering and amongst this Milena looks for reality, love and truth. Stays with you.

Great book, 25 Jul 2008
I would higly recommend this book to everyone, I have been searching for a while for a good new author (A good new book to be honest) and I was quite suprised it was this book that won me over and not one of the others that I bough. Well written,great characters great story.

Almost coherent, 27 Oct 2006
This is a great novel about the changes wrought in our world by the new communications technology. Unlike most such novels, rather than fixating on the technology itself, Ryman looks at what the coming information revolution will mean to ordinary people living ordinary lives. Unlike any other such story I have read, his characters are not teenagers living in Western affluence, but villagers in a fictional Central Asian country, at the intersection of the Turkic and Chinese cultural spheres, in other words about as far from the West as you can culturally get in today's world. I thought it was fascinating and compassionate.

However. Ryman is a proponent of the "mundane science fiction" school and oddly enough the two most problematic elements for me in the book for me were the two most fantastic ones. The physical flood threatening to overwhelm the village threatened to be a rather overstated echo of the metaphorical deluge of the new technology, but I think Ryman just about got away with it in the end. The heroine's bizarre pregnancy, however, just did not work for me.

Beautiful, intelligent, gripping, 15 Oct 2006
If you're reading this, you already know about the power of the internet. Cast your mind back to before you had it. How did you sort out arguments about which film that actor on TV was in? Where did you get your books from? How did you know how much money was in your bank account? Where did you book your holidays? How on earth did you kill time at work?!?

Now imagine the next stage of the Internet: skipping the computer out altogether. Making the entire wealth of the internet accesible to your brain, for free, all the time.

This is exactly what happens to the last village in the world to go online, Kizuldah, a tiny hamlet in the nation of Karzistan. Imagine a world without telephones and running water suddenly being exposed to such a wealth of information, and you are in the world of Air.

The protagonist, Mae, is an illiterate peasant with lofty aspirations. She sells her services in the village as a "fashion expert", eking a living by making dresses and accompanying the wealthier women into town to get their nails done. Following the arrival of an internet-enabled TV in the village she rapidly figures out that with easy access to information, her services will become surplus to requirements, and so she begins an entrepenurial quest to stay ahead of everyone else. As she progresses in her understanding of the web, she also realises that it will effectively destroy the way of life in which her village has always lived. Then again, she is realistic enough to know that there never was a "golden time", that life was always hard and people always adapted.

This is a great book. The protagonist is astutely observed, the village a well-developed setting, and the sci-fi elements eminently plausible. This is one of those novels I burned through in a couple of days, have put away in my cupboard, and will probably come back to next year just to visit Mae and the others.

It's a book that falls outside staid and tired genres we are all so used to. Whatever kind of book you're looking for, this is the one. See you in Kizuldah.

Fantastic book, moving story, intelligent plot, 09 Dec 2005
I admit I love Geoff Ryman's work, even though you can never be quite sure what you're going to get with him. This is, I suppose, technically a straightforward science fiction novel in that the mechanism that moves the plot is a speculative expansion of Internet technologies into a sort of technologically created global telepathy. But Ryman's talent is in the way he locates the story in a wonderfully realised world - a distant Asian village - and makes us care about a flawed but fascinating central character, Chung Mae.

Tender, funny, scary, and enormously clever. I really can't recomment this novel highly enough.

A masterpiece of the Internet age, 14 Mar 2007
This is the story of a lifetime. The story of 253 lifetimes to be exact. It is the story of 253 twelve minute train journeys. With 253 words devoted to each and every character, the author is able to intertwine the secret lives of the passengers brilliantly. It is amazing how detailed a picture of someone can be built from so few words. This novel began its life on the internet where it attracted a huge cult following. Since being published in paper form, 253 has been heralded as a modern classic, a seminal work of twenty-first century literature. Join 253 faceless people, as they live twelve minutes of their lives, hurtling towards an inevitable future. This is such an easy book to read wherever you are. Just don't read it on the Underground, you might find yourself staring at people, wondering what secret their stony faced silence conceals.

Exciting and gripping read, 05 Apr 2006
I loved this book. It is funny, witty, and insightful. Although you know that the train crash is coming, the surprise and the impact it has on the characters that you have come to know throughout the book is still striking.
The concept is new, original and well executed.

Ruzz, 26 Feb 2006
One of the greatest books I've read.

It sounds terrible - one of those pseudo-mathematical exercises in writing much beloved of French experimental writers - but it isn't like that. Geoff Ryman writes brilliantly and each of 253 characters immediately involves you. I've read and re-read it.

Simply stunning.

253, 26 Feb 2006
A wonderful concept. this book reads you have dreamed it. imagine being able to take a small bite of everyones mind on the tube. shock ending that isnt a shock. how so? buy it.

Mouldbreaking concept; needs auditing, 30 Jun 2004
Fantastic concept for a book, with all the linking going on between all the different passengers. As revolutionary as Adrian Mole or e by Matt Beaumont, in converting it all into a different sort of medium.

It should certainly be read as a book first, but I'm off to the internet next to browse around the carriages, looking at all the links between passengers.

I'd recommend not hurrying the book - I found I could only go for 12 passengers max in a session before needing to put it down.

Has anyone checked that there are exactly 253 words devoted to each of the 253 passengers? We need that comfort. Maybe in the next printing, Mr Ryman could include certification of this from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

In the end I'm only going for 4 stars here because the book started to get tiring towards the end.

A fictional look into Cambodia's past, 01 May 2006
I eagerly awaited Geoff Ryman's novel, The King's Last Song, that links the glories of the Angkor dynasty of King Jayavarman VII with modern-day Cambodia, and I was richly rewarded. It's excellent. I particularly loved the passages that yielded such a vivid and atmospheric recreation of life in the court of the King during the twelfth century that I could almost taste it. Okay, much of it was from the author's own imagination, but I believed it. The book swirls around the life story of Jayarvarman VII written on gold leaves which are found and subsequently stolen. The hunt is on for their recovery and with it, we gain an insight into the Cambodia of today. This book sets a towering standard for new fiction writing on Cambodia that will be difficult to match, let alone exceed. I take my hat off to the author for a wonderful and evocative story that I found impossible to put down. I urge everyone with an interest in Cambodia to buy this book and then encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Another brilliant Ryman, 25 Feb 2006
Got an early copy of this and devoured it over two days. Simply brilliant. No two Ryman books are the same - but for me this is almost as good as his last book, Air, which was one of the best pieces of fiction of this decade. Another brilliant book from Ryman - buy it.

Was, 11 Mar 2006
As someone who aspires to write, this book is something I could readily die with as my greatest work.
This is a must read for anyone who loves Kurt Vonnegut or Douglas Coupland.
Geoff Ryman is best know for science fiction and steps out of this genre for Was which utilises his imaginative skills in a way that will leave you wondering why he is not a household name - how I wish he would give up science fiction.
I have recommended this book to half a dozen of my friends and all of them have said how much they loved it.
Please buy it - it warrants iconic status

Engrossing, but overlong and over elaborate, 13 Sep 2005
I don't usually like novels that try to tell several stories at once, but I did enjoy this. However, it was unnecessarily padded out - there are whole swathes of the book that could simply be discarded. The story of Dorothy's childhood in Kansas was moving and sad. Less succesful was the tale of Jonathan, the dying actor obsessed by Oz. The characters are well drawn, but this does rather add to the general bleakness of the book. I did not find the end at all uplifting, as it was clearly meant to be; I found it muddled, confusing, and something of a disappointment. The author's explanation of the roots of the story in reality was also unnecessary. Overall, an interesting and enjoyable read, but not a real masterpiece.

If it was a movie, it'd be described as a SLEEPER HIT, 13 Nov 2003
What if Dorothy from “The Wizard Of Oz” really existed, Uncle Henry was a predatory paedophile, and Aunty Em and the dreadful Miss Gulch were the same person? That’s basically the main plot of this superficially bizarre, but very heartfelt post-modern take on the Oz legend.

But if it sounds like one of those dreary comical rewrites where everything is subverted just for laughs, then I’ve done it an injustice. “Was” purports to be the story of the real Dorothy, who meets L Frank Baum, who goes on to write the story of the life she should have had – the Oz books themselves.

It’s also the story of the making of “The Wizard Of Oz” movie, Judy Garland’s family strife mirroring the real Dorothy’s, and dying AIDS patient Jonathan’s obsession with them both. Everything is linked across the hundred-year span of the novel, and the end is also the beginning. But the result, a swirling mass of parallel lives across the centuries, comes across like a literary cyclone itself.

That said, this isn’t a particularly literary novel. I found it very easy to read, but to really appreciate it you need to appreciate either the film or the Oz books themselves. This isn’t a happy book, and there is little let-up from the misery. There are certainly no happy endings in the conventional sense. In a way, the characters are just swept away at the end of the novel, but when you get that far, this kind of seems fitting.

Unfortunately, this book seems to go in and out of print regularly, so snap it up whilst you still can!

Was, 11 Mar 2006
As someone who aspires to write, this book is something I could readily die with as my greatest work.
This is a must read for anyone who loves Kurt Vonnegut or Douglas Coupland.
Geoff Ryman is best know for science fiction and steps out of this genre for Was which utilises his imaginative skills in a way that will leave you wondering why he is not a household name - how I wish he would give up science fiction.
I have recommended this book to half a dozen of my friends and all of them have said how much they loved it.
Please buy it - it warrants iconic status

Engrossing, but overlong and over elaborate, 13 Sep 2005
I don't usually like novels that try to tell several stories at once, but I did enjoy this. However, it was unnecessarily padded out - there are whole swathes of the book that could simply be discarded. The story of Dorothy's childhood in Kansas was moving and sad. Less succesful was the tale of Jonathan, the dying actor obsessed by Oz. The characters are well drawn, but this does rather add to the general bleakness of the book. I did not find the end at all uplifting, as it was clearly meant to be; I found it muddled, confusing, and something of a disappointment. The author's explanation of the roots of the story in reality was also unnecessary. Overall, an interesting and enjoyable read, but not a real masterpiece.

If it was a movie, it'd be described as a SLEEPER HIT, 13 Nov 2003
What if Dorothy from “The Wizard Of Oz” really existed, Uncle Henry was a predatory paedophile, and Aunty Em and the dreadful Miss Gulch were the same person? That’s basically the main plot of this superficially bizarre, but very heartfelt post-modern take on the Oz legend.

But if it sounds like one of those dreary comical rewrites where everything is subverted just for laughs, then I’ve done it an injustice. “Was” purports to be the story of the real Dorothy, who meets L Frank Baum, who goes on to write the story of the life she should have had – the Oz books themselves.

It’s also the story of the making of “The Wizard Of Oz” movie, Judy Garland’s family strife mirroring the real Dorothy’s, and dying AIDS patient Jonathan’s obsession with them both. Everything is linked across the hundred-year span of the novel, and the end is also the beginning. But the result, a swirling mass of parallel lives across the centuries, comes across like a literary cyclone itself.

That said, this isn’t a particularly literary novel. I found it very easy to read, but to really appreciate it you need to appreciate either the film or the Oz books themselves. This isn’t a happy book, and there is little let-up from the misery. There are certainly no happy endings in the conventional sense. In a way, the characters are just swept away at the end of the novel, but when you get that far, this kind of seems fitting.

Unfortunately, this book seems to go in and out of print regularly, so snap it up whilst you still can!

Raw emotion, 07 Jul 2006
What an incredible book this is! The premise outlined in the blurb is promising (children grown in gardens in a tropical london educated via viruses). Seems gloriously messed up and it is easy to happily resign yourself to an exploration of these themes and their ramifications...

Instead you will read of the emotional and physical journey of one of the most remarkable heroines in modern literature. It is through her that we are guided around this very odd world. There are some fantastic shifts in narrative pace and style. Apologies for ruining anything for you but there is a breathtakingly beautiful 50 page chapter which leaves you in such a tangle of emotions that you realise you are totally embroiled in the world of the book and the peaks and troughs of Milena. It is a blistering moment of clarity when all those little questions, that sci-fi books like to throw up, are given some kind of disjointed but final closure. The most fantastic thing about that chapter - indeed, the reason I am writing this review, is that the end leaves you only halfway through a book which you will remember forever. I have been searching for something new this heartfelt in sci-fi for a while and I have found it. Geoff Ryman is one to watch.


The secret of a good book, 19 Oct 2004
Fantastic book!! I just wish I could have a chat with Geoff Ryman and clarify a few little questions in my mind -did it make perfect sense to everybody else when they read it as I think I was with it most of the time, but got slightly lost when they were putting on the show in space - I really enjoyed it though!!

Forget it!, 28 Apr 2003
If you have read the elegant and clever book 253 and are expecting more of the same, you'll be disappointed.

In this long, rambling story, I lost all symapthy with main character and couldn't care less what happened to her. Getting to the end was an orderal.

I got my copy from a second hand book stall and that's where its going back to!

Easily the best book I have ever read, 30 Oct 2001
The Child Garden is one of the few books I have read that has really moved me, and one of even fewer that I would instantly cite as the best book I have read in my life (and I've read quite a few!). The future it describes could be a dystopian commentary of our own society, but instead it's a story about people, who are ultimately the most important components of any society. It's a future where people are still flawed and petty, and life is not easy of perfect, and that there are always some people who will stand out and make their mark on history. Milena is one such person, a heroine who grows up during the course of the book, and painted so well by Ryman that your perception of her changes as she does. For any London dweller the description the city with a coral reef and rice paddies, sub tropical temperatures and the night lit by oil lamps is one that will strike into the heart and awake the imagination. You cannot help but be touched by its depth, and a little haunted by the future that we could all inherit. Read it, you won't be sorry.

A love story in reverse, 03 Aug 2001
It is years scince I read "Child Garden"- I think it was 9 years ago or thereabouts. I've re-read this masterpiece 3 times scince then. Each time I can't believe how much the book changes. Milena, the heroine, is fabulous. You will love the Bears and the decription of the eastend and the southbank in London.

Ryman's future London is hot, humid and covered in Rhodopsin (a photosynthetic chemical) and bamboo. People are almost dickensian and elaborate. The world has scaned the limits of genetic engineering and amongst this Milena looks for reality, love and truth. Stays with you.

A fictional look into Cambodia's past, 01 May 2006
I eagerly awaited Geoff Ryman's novel, The King's Last Song, that links the glories of the Angkor dynasty of King Jayavarman VII with modern-day Cambodia, and I was richly rewarded. It's excellent. I particularly loved the passages that yielded such a vivid and atmospheric recreation of life in the court of the King during the twelfth century that I could almost taste it. Okay, much of it was from the author's own imagination, but I believed it. The book swirls around the life story of Jayarvarman VII written on gold leaves which are found and subsequently stolen. The hunt is on for their recovery and with it, we gain an insight into the Cambodia of today. This book sets a towering standard for new fiction writing on Cambodia that will be difficult to match, let alone exceed. I take my hat off to the author for a wonderful and evocative story that I found impossible to put down. I urge everyone with an interest in Cambodia to buy this book and then encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Another brilliant Ryman, 25 Feb 2006
Got an early copy of this and devoured it over two days. Simply brilliant. No two Ryman books are the same - but for me this is almost as good as his last book, Air, which was one of the best pieces of fiction of this decade. Another brilliant book from Ryman - buy it.

Great book, 25 Jul 2008
I would higly recommend this book to everyone, I have been searching for a while for a good new author (A good new book to be honest) and I was quite suprised it was this book that won me over and not one of the others that I bough. Well written,great characters great story.

Almost coherent, 27 Oct 2006
This is a great novel about the changes wrought in our world by the new communications technology. Unlike most such novels, rather than fixating on the technology itself, Ryman looks at what the coming information revolution will mean to ordinary people living ordinary lives. Unlike any other such story I have read, his characters are not teenagers living in Western affluence, but villagers in a fictional Central Asian country, at the intersection of the Turkic and Chinese cultural spheres, in other words about as far from the West as you can culturally get in today's world. I thought it was fascinating and compassionate.

However. Ryman is a proponent of the "mundane science fiction" school and oddly enough the two most problematic elements for me in the book for me were the two most fantastic ones. The physical flood threatening to overwhelm the village threatened to be a rather overstated echo of the metaphorical deluge of the new technology, but I think Ryman just about got away with it in the end. The heroine's bizarre pregnancy, however, just did not work for me.

Beautiful, intelligent, gripping, 15 Oct 2006
If you're reading this, you already know about the power of the internet. Cast your mind back to before you had it. How did you sort out arguments about which film that actor on TV was in? Where did you get your books from? How did you know how much money was in your bank account? Where did you book your holidays? How on earth did you kill time at work?!?

Now imagine the next stage of the Internet: skipping the computer out altogether. Making the entire wealth of the internet accesible to your brain, for free, all the time.

This is exactly what happens to the last village in the world to go online, Kizuldah, a tiny hamlet in the nation of Karzistan. Imagine a world without telephones and running water suddenly being exposed to such a wealth of information, and you are in the world of Air.

The protagonist, Mae, is an illiterate peasant with lofty aspirations. She sells her services in the village as a "fashion expert", eking a living by making dresses and accompanying the wealthier women into town to get their nails done. Following the arrival of an internet-enabled TV in the village she rapidly figures out that with easy access to information, her services will become surplus to requirements, and so she begins an entrepenurial quest to stay ahead of everyone else. As she progresses in her understanding of the web, she also realises that it will effectively destroy the way of life in which her village has always lived. Then again, she is realistic enough to know that there never was a "golden time", that life was always hard and people always adapted.

This is a great book. The protagonist is astutely observed, the village a well-developed setting, and the sci-fi elements eminently plausible. This is one of those novels I burned through in a couple of days, have put away in my cupboard, and will probably come back to next year just to visit Mae and the others.

It's a book that falls outside staid and tired genres we are all so used to. Whatever kind of book you're looking for, this is the one. See you in Kizuldah.

Fantastic book, moving story, intelligent plot, 09 Dec 2005
I admit I love Geoff Ryman's work, even though you can never be quite sure what you're going to get with him. This is, I suppose, technically a straightforward science fiction novel in that the mechanism that moves the plot is a speculative expansion of Internet technologies into a sort of technologically created global telepathy. But Ryman's talent is in the way he locates the story in a wonderfully realised world - a distant Asian village - and makes us care about a flawed but fascinating central character, Chung Mae.

Tender, funny, scary, and enormously clever. I really can't recomment this novel highly enough.

A masterpiece of the Internet age, 14 Mar 2007
This is the story of a lifetime. The story of 253 lifetimes to be exact. It is the story of 253 twelve minute train journeys. With 253 words devoted to each and every character, the author is able to intertwine the secret lives of the passengers brilliantly. It is amazing how detailed a picture of someone can be built from so few words. This novel began its life on the internet where it attracted a huge cult following. Since being published in paper form, 253 has been heralded as a modern classic, a seminal work of twenty-first century literature. Join 253 faceless people, as they live twelve minutes of their lives, hurtling towards an inevitable future. This is such an easy book to read wherever you are. Just don't read it on the Underground, you might find yourself staring at people, wondering what secret their stony faced silence conceals.

Exciting and gripping read, 05 Apr 2006
I loved this book. It is funny, witty, and insightful. Although you know that the train crash is coming, the surprise and the impact it has on the characters that you have come to know throughout the book is still striking.
The concept is new, original and well executed.

Ruzz, 26 Feb 2006
One of the greatest books I've read.

It sounds terrible - one of those pseudo-mathematical exercises in writing much beloved of French experimental writers - but it isn't like that. Geoff Ryman writes brilliantly and each of 253 characters immediately involves you. I've read and re-read it.

Simply stunning.

253, 26 Feb 2006
A wonderful concept. this book reads you have dreamed it. imagine being able to take a small bite of everyones mind on the tube. shock ending that isnt a shock. how so? buy it.

Mouldbreaking concept; needs auditing, 30 Jun 2004
Fantastic concept for a book, with all the linking going on between all the different passengers. As revolutionary as Adrian Mole or e by Matt Beaumont, in converting it all into a different sort of medium.

It should certainly be read as a book first, but I'm off to the internet next to browse around the carriages, looking at all the links between passengers.

I'd recommend not hurrying the book - I found I could only go for 12 passengers max in a session before needing to put it down.

Has anyone checked that there are exactly 253 words devoted to each of the 253 passengers? We need that comfort. Maybe in the next printing, Mr Ryman could include certification of this from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

In the end I'm only going for 4 stars here because the book started to get tiring towards the end.

A fictional look into Cambodia's past, 01 May 2006
I eagerly awaited Geoff Ryman's novel, The King's Last Song, that links the glories of the Angkor dynasty of King Jayavarman VII with modern-day Cambodia, and I was richly rewarded. It's excellent. I particularly loved the passages that yielded such a vivid and atmospheric recreation of life in the court of the King during the twelfth century that I could almost taste it. Okay, much of it was from the author's own imagination, but I believed it. The book swirls around the life story of Jayarvarman VII written on gold leaves which are found and subsequently stolen. The hunt is on for their recovery and with it, we gain an insight into the Cambodia of today. This book sets a towering standard for new fiction writing on Cambodia that will be difficult to match, let alone exceed. I take my hat off to the author for a wonderful and evocative story that I found impossible to put down. I urge everyone with an interest in Cambodia to buy this book and then encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Another brilliant Ryman, 25 Feb 2006
Got an early copy of this and devoured it over two days. Simply brilliant. No two Ryman books are the same - but for me this is almost as good as his last book, Air, which was one of the best pieces of fiction of this decade. Another brilliant book from Ryman - buy it.