Light Music

I agree with what the other reviewers have said. Both the one saying that the ideas are near genuis and the one saying that the book is a difficult read. This is part three or four of an amazingly ambitious work. It was the book I happened upon first. Now that I've read Mississippi Blues, I feel sure this book will make more sense and I intend to go back and read it again. I don't suggest beginning with this book - but I do suggest reading it. I'm not that taken with Marie, but I loved the character Zeb. I guess I identify more with a crazy scientist than with a voodoo princess. Actually, I think I could go the rest of my life without reading any more about voodoo. But I did enjoy the New Orleans setting. Few writers would dare tackle a work this sweeping in scope. In fact, it boggles my mind how ANYONE could tackle such a huge work (other than possibly Vernon Vinge). But I'm glad she did.

In the latter part of the twenty-first century, nanotechnology is about to take man into the next evolutionary leap. Then continuous, mysterious, and unstoppable signals from space created The Silence, a state where radios, television and the net were inoperable. Crescent City was created in the Caribbean Sea, a sentient life form meant to be a repository of all human knowledge.Crescent City will one day turn itself into a space ship but before that could happen, pirates attack and destroy the coordinates needed to take the ship to it's proper destination. Jason Peabody and Dania leave Crescent City for Johnson Space Station in Houston where they can retrieve the coordinates the city so desperately needs. Their journey through a world altered by nanotechnology and decimated by plague is the stuff of legends.On one level, a person has to be a super genius to understand all the scientific concepts put forth in LIGHT MUSIC. On the other hand, if the readers are willing to let their imaginations flow freely, they will enjoy a fascinating story line populated with characters that are all too human despite their genetic differences. Kathleen Ann Goonan is a writer on the cutting edge of literature.Harriet Klausner