Amanda Flynn, Reviewer for
Book Description
Gereint, a biologist, haunted by the death of his fiance, searches obsessively to find the cause of death, and to remedy nature's mistake. Accompanied by Marti, a disgraced soldier, Gereint follows the legend of an immortality machine to an alien city. They find humanoids who are immune to suffering, and who have lost all sense of time, memory or themselves as separate entities. Their technology is a subtle art form, not a tool for saving time. Gereint's search leads him to Ahranrod, a long-lived woman and master of alien martial arts. She reveals to him how death arose among humans, but refuses his demands for the immortality machine. Marti encounters Zusi, an android programmed to awaken passion, and who offers him immortality. Desiring only a noble death, he rejects her.
The search for immortality takes Gereint through caverns filled with alien technology and labyrinths populated by paranoid androids. If he succeeds, he must forsake his human nature, or allow the long years to destroy his mind.
