Labyrinth 1 is an intricate structure of intercommunicating passages, through which it is difficult to find one's way without a clue; a maze. They have never met, they have been assigned strange pseudonyms, they inhabit identical rooms, which open out onto very different landscapes, and they have entered into a dialogue, which they cannot escape - a discourse defined and destroyed by the "Helmet of Horror". Its wearer is the dominant force they call Asterisk, a force for good and ill in which the Minotaur is forever present and Theseus is the great unknown. Victor Pelevin has created a mesmerising world where the surreal and the hyperreal collide. "The Helmet of Horror" is structured according to the Internet exchanges of the twenty-first century, yet instilled with the figures and narratives of classical mythology. It is a labyrinthine examination of epistemological uncertainty that radically reinvents the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur for an age where information is abundant but knowledge is ultimately unattainable.

2008-03-30 Not impressed

The synopsis alone is enough to dissuade me from buying this book, and I've a research degree in mythology and psychology. It's a passion with me.

For a start, the malignant figure isn't, in tradition, Asterisk (that's a keyboard symbol or a cartoon ancient Gaul.) He was Aster, potential ruler of Crete after the death of Minos.

To read this story in the best form, turn to Mary Renault's The King Must Die. I've had my copy since schooldays, almost fifty years ago and wouldn't part with it even now.

Why two stars? I'm feeling charitable.