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Categories: Science fiction Fantasy Mystery Romance Business Classic Sports Young adult Humor Memoirs See all categories... |
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Categories: Science fiction Fantasy Mystery Romance Business Classic Sports Young adult Humor Memoirs See all categories... |
Steel-eating mutant bacteria have reduced Europe to isolated, barbarous rubble and Nazi cossacks are at the gates of Imperial Paris. LizAlec, adopted daughter of Lady Claire, icily glamourous head of Imperial security, is kidnapped from a lunar Arrivals Lounge on her way to finishing school, and rescued by a one-lunged outcast who keeps his best friend's head in a coolbox. Everyone wants a piece of LizAlec--her mother's rivals, a murderous tele-evangelist who lives in a space ark, her burned-out cyborg rock star boyfriend, and whatever it is that lurks in her own body and makes her surprisingly competent in emergencies. Grimwood has made a modest career out of the realisation that cyberpunk long ago ceased to be the messianic next big thing in sf and became a set of gestures and a marketing ploy. The intelligent absurdities of his plotting, a vein of perverse eroticism, and his love affair with the brand-named impedimenta of an improbable high-tech future, add up to superior brain candy; a caper thriller with ideas in orbit above its station. There is a place for glossy fluff in sf, and Grimwood occupies it with real competence. --Roz Kaveney
