PositiveLocus... it’s more than chases and escapes and intrigue. Both worlds are filled with the expected Gibsonian oddball details and throwaway bits of invention ... Then there are those throwaway touches...hallmark[s] of Gibson’s imagination as the awareness of branding and fashion statements. It makes for an immersive, textured, and sometimes deeply strange setting, which is a good thing. Come for the intricate plotting, stay for the weird and wonderful mindscape.
Martine Arkady
PositiveLocusBehind the cloak-and-dagger maneuvers that drive the foreground action lies a consideration of the ways cultures maintain themselves and how individuals navigate \'belonging\' to such frameworks. It’s an absorbing and sometimes challenging blend of intrigue and anthropological imagination...It is also often quite funny, in a gentle and sneaky way. The title page does not announce this as the first of a series or trilogy, but I will be surprised and rather disappointed if there is not a sequel.
Ian McDonald
RaveLocus... lightning fast, relentless, and merciless, even when there is nothing to be gained except the destruction of enemies ... Those individual storylines are quite compelling, not only for themselves but as part of the fractally unfolding portrait of this future, this world, this cultural matrix. In fact, I was so taken by following the agendas of various cast members (established and new) that I didn’t ask, \'What is the main plot here?\' for quite a while – perhaps a third of the way through ... includes a series of striking set-piece sequences, not all of which involve bloodshed ... The spirits that I feel hovering over this expansive, inventive, immersive triptych are those of Heinlein, Alfred Bester, and Frank Herbert, with perhaps just a dash of Theodore Sturgeon and Samuel R. Delany. With godparents like that, how could the child not be wild and wonderful and just a bit scary?
