Customer Reviews

Hermetech

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For the scenario we are reminded of Walter Jon William's Hardwired: a poisoned Erth ravaged by pollution and ozone layer's depletion, people living in domed cities with extremely corrupt lower sectors, huge orbital cities in the sky, nomads roaming the land. A group of these nomads, called "Star's Eye" stops near Ari Famber's house. Ari is the daughter of dead scientist Ewan Famber, who performed genetics experiments on her. The leader of the Star's Eye, Leila Saatchi, erstwhile colleague of Ewan Famber, convinces Ari, troubled by sexual problems, to join the group, headed toward the metropolis called Arkady. Here lives another colleague of Ewan Famber, the robopsychologist Quinx Roirbak, who, Leila hopes, will be able to deal with Ari's problems. With Quinx lives the obscure scientist Tammuz Malamute, a neuropsychologist in search of a job. Tammuz finds himself psychologically counseling the once street boy Zambia Crevecoeur, who unwittingly sold himself to the female pimp Jahsaxa Penumbra, who had him surgically modified as an intersex.

A great part of the novel is dedicated to Ari's voyage to Arkady with the group,a group of bizarre gypsy-like, vaguely hippie men and women, who'll help Ari to star coping with her identity.

The sexual energy she has been made capable of manifesting would change the life of all characters, celebrating the healing power of love and empathy.

This is a very interesting futuristic novel, blending elements of science-fiction and the fantastic in a style reminding us of Master of Space and Time of Rudy Rucker, and raising, in an intriguing way, the ever problematic issues of genetic manipulation and envirinment preservation. The world, as in Nemesis by Isaac Asimov,that also features a problematic adolescent, shall be saved by a child.

A celebration of love, sexuality and human potential that's pure Storm Constantine

I ordered this book because a friend recommended it to me as having a positive view of sexuality. After reading it I cannot say that I agree. The story is complex, there are at least two distinctive storylines happening throughout the book and sometimes a few more until characters meet up. While 'sex is dangerous' is a common message I would like to think that in a post-environmental disaster setting that relies on high tech to survive and promotes the strongly possibilities of physical manipulations that the idea that sex and gender are one could be overcome is embraced. Apparently not as in several instances biological sex is seen as the same thing as gender as in the case of Zambia, a poor soul whose been forced to undergo some odd surgeries that leave him more "feminine" even though I swear the implants he chose were anal in nature and not vaginal.

Ari Famber's journal of self discovery is interesting and complex but again the message of 'sex is dangerous' pervades her story. The danger here is of the heterosexual type -- she fears and is told to stay away from men, the very idea that she might want a female partner is never addressed. Again that seems very odd in a future world where the majority deity has become female and we are originally led to believe they've overcome so many other biases.

Leila Saatchi is the most interesting and believable character I think. A woman driven by an old promise, fighting her former desires to manipulate the body with her new authority and responsibility to a nomadic tribe that prowls the wastelands on pseudo-religious journeys.

Over all there is just too much here to focus on. Too many changes of view, too many hints of social, political and religious commentaries and "history" and frankly too much sex that doesn't seem to always progress the plot as much as I'd like. I would have preferred it if the book just looked at Ari and Leila's journey with Star Eye, introducing us to other relatively characters as they reach them and not before.