Amazon.co.uk Review
When they take away your electronic add-ons, new senses and new ways of thinking, you get sick and apathetic and want to die. Yale and his wife Joanne built cities on the Moon, but now nobody wants to know; Artificial Intelligences have sent mere humans home, and the authorities are frightened of what people might be allowed to become if the wires are not stripped out of their heads. And now Joanne is mysteriously dead, and nobody wants to know about that either; Yale has had enough, and starts wandering around asking awkward questions, and soon people are trying to kill him, and he is discovering that he has a nasty temper... The gloomiest of Simon Ings' triptych of novels about the transhuman condition, this is less fancy than
Hot Head and
Hotwire; more like a thriller and less like a space opera. There is pain in all three books, but only here is there a sense that there are some pains which will never go away. Set in a decaying London and derelict Yorkshire of the near future, this is perhaps Ings' most adult and intelligent novel; sf that refuses the stock consolations of sf. --
Roz Kaveney
Robert W. Hayler in Vector, March 1999
Ings suggests a refreshingly conservative account of what it is to be human. We are defined by our use of language, our emotional responses and the limits of our natural senses. Yale's yearning to be returned to 'normal' humanity coupled with his despair at the death of his wife drives the story and leads us to a surprising, moving and properly tragic conclusion. Simon Ings seems to know what is important. He knows where science is at and how to extrapolate the seemingly magical convincingly. He understands and confronts some of the non-trivial questions in metaphysics. He also knows how to construct a taught and exciting SF-nal murder mystery and, most importantly, he realises that what draws you into such a book is carefully drawn characters struggling believably with their situation, each other and, crucially, themselves.
by Simon Ings
by Simon Ings
by Joe Haldeman
by Richard Morgan
by Terry Pratchett
