From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. This extraordinary debut novel puts Marusek in the first rank of SF writers. Life on Earth in 2134 ought to be perfect: nanotechnology can manufacture anything humans need; medical science can control the human body's shape or age; and AIs, robots and contented clones do most of the work. If only there were a way to get rid of the surplus people. When Eleanor Starke, one of the major power brokers, is assassinated, her daughter's cryogenically frozen head becomes the object of a quest by representatives of several factions, including Eleanor's aged and outcast husband, a dense zealot for interstellar colonization, a decades-old little boy and husband and wife clones who are straining at the limitations of their natures. Marusek's writing is ferociously smart, simultaneously horrific and funny, as he forces readers to stretch their imaginations and sympathies. Much of the fun in the story is in the telling rather than its destination—which is just as well, since it doesn't so much come to a conclusion as crash headlong into the last page. But the trip has been exciting and wonderful.
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Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Booklist
In the "boutique economy," immortality is more likely than not, and most people don't have much to look forward to. Eleanor Starke, one of the few with real power, has just married packaging designer Samson Harger, and when she is selected for a governorship on the Tri-Disciplinary Council, it seems she's rocketing to the top. She and Samson even get a permit to have a child. But someone is setting her up. A scan shows anomalies in Samson's genetic footprint, after which he is "seared" and, hence, legally dead, considered a risk to society, and no longer eligible for parenthood. Forty years on, Eleanor and daughter Ellen are in a plane crash. Eleanor dies instantly, while Ellen's cryogenically preserved head goes missing, with a strange assortment of people looking for it. With subplots exploring the identity problems of clones, the solutions to a particularly nasty overpopulation problem, and the remnants of some invidious "biologicals" that have required the doming-over of major cities, Marusek presents a gripping conspiracy in an uncomfortably three-dimensional future. Regina Schroeder
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Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
