“Mazeworld” by Alan Grant, Arthur Ranson

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Rating: 3/5 Stars

By Alan Grant and Arthur Ranson, “Mazeworld” is an interesting story with an anti-hero protagonist, Adam Cadman. In our world, he has been sentenced to hang. But something strange happens during the hanging: he is transported to Mazeworld where, unable to remove his hanging hood, he is hailed as the returned ‘Hooded Man’ who will free the oppressed people from the masters of Mazeworld. Mazeworld itself is a set of mazes, set on a plateau which rises out of a sea of mysterious mists or clouds.

Unable to believe what is happening to him at first, Cadman’s first instincts is to flee and hide, but events happen to make him change his mind and help the rebels.

Told in three parts, the first part starts with his hanging and first appearance in Mazeworld. It ends with the overthrow of one of the masters of Mazeworld and his reappearance in our world when his hanging is aborted.

Cadman is then transported to a medical facility, where an attempt to understand what is happening to him (by probing his brain) transports him back to Mazeworld when he once again is involved with the rebels and faces a new threat: the Dark Man who has supernatural powers granted to him by an ‘angel’ he has imprisoned. In our world, the brain probe makes doctors realize that his mind has gone to another world and he is worthy of further examination.

Returned to our world, Cadman is now in a corporate testing facility, who hopes to make use of the world he has revealed. But here, Cadman (transported back to Mazeworld) faces his greatest test: to navigate the maze at the heart of Mazeworld in an attempt to save it from an invasion of devilish creatures. But it may end in failure, for evil is at the heart of the maze, and it wants to use Cadman to invade our world.

A fascinating, dark, fantasy story, with artwork that is full of details that, sometimes obscures what is happening, this is a story with an ending that shows Cadman saving the world, but with many little tragedies along the way.

Book read from 2021/05/13 to 2021/05/27