ISBN: 0-553-57702-6 Order from: Amazon.com
A fast moving plot combining romance, the price of of crime and revenge, and the struggle for unity, on a slightly surreal background.
Reviewed by David on August 03, 1998
Genre: Science Fiction (Cyberpunk)
Synopsis: Adrien, a young man in the near future, gets involved in intrigues of the Deep, an international cabal of illegal brain-computer research, drug- and computer-induced behavior modification and intelligence amplification.
Full Review: The book starts in media res, with the badly injured Adrien arriving on a train in Croatia. Sabina, a young woman musician looking for inspiration at the terminal, impulsively helps him and sends him on the way to recovery from his injuries, physical and psychic.
Adrien and his Watcher were trying to get I, a piece of advanced and illegal direct brain interface technology. It turns out that Adrien is a trans, a human whose perceptions are transmitted to a remote voyeur. Sort of the ultimate web-cam.
In general, the immersion technique is used to limn the slightly psychodelic world of the near future, instead of the more traditional expositionary lumps.
After many years as a trans, Adrien is unhappy with his Watcher's propensity to throw him into danger. As he tries to severe himself, Sabina is seduced and coerced into the shadowy world of illegal Human Interface Technology.
The plot unfolds from several viewpoints with dream-like introspection and episodes of mind-altering experiences. Slowly, a pattern of old crimes, vendettas and earning for immortality emerges around the struggle for I, a truly revolutionary device.
The surreal stream-of-consciousness passages and intense introspection were a bit intrusive. Adrien's slowness to recognize the true effects of I was rather annoying, coming as it did much later than the reader's. The setting, including the cyber-punkish hand-waving as well as choppy international scene changes, was competent but unexceptional.
On the other hand, the love affair is shown with warmth and refreshing unsentimentality, the martial art is my favorite Gojuru Karate, with familiar kata and realistic applications.
An interesting concept which the book explores is similar to Vinge's Singularity: the concept of the Deep, where a group of people communing brain-to-brain cause a qualitative leap of intelligence. This trans-human intelligence will exist more in the communication fabric itself than in the constituent minds.
This is a book that combines a love affair, martial art, exploration of computer-aided communication, the pain of (mental) violation and the cost of revenge, and the nature of creativity and selfhood. While it is too ambitious to succeed in these goals, it is a credit to its author that it comes so close while still being a pretty entertaining yarn.
Overall: 5.5; Plot: 6; Characters: 6; Style: 5.5; World-building: 5; Originality: 5;
Copyright date 1997, Bantam Books (Bantam Spectra), September 1997, Mass-market
ISBN: 0-553-57702-6 Order from: Amazon.com