In this busy tale of near-future virtual reality and real-life espionage, Hendrix (Empty Cities of the Full Moon)
mixes Renaissance Kabbalism, quantum computing and the memory techniques of a 16th-century Jesuit priest into a narrative of secret societies and spy agencies fighting to shape the course of human evolution. The disappearance of historian Jaron Kwok in China sets the Asian superpower and America on a collision course. Kwok's college roommate and now replacement, Ben Cho, is charged by his NSA superiors with finding out what the historian discovered in the old files of a CIA China expert. Meanwhile, Hong Kong detective Lu Mei-lin ("Marilyn Lu") struggles to solve Kwok's strange vanishing act, working on the only clue left behind, a pile of nanotech ashes. Hendrix plays with the concept of labyrinths and mazes as devices that both hide and reveal. The book features abstruse speculation on memory and forgetting, on the making and breaking of secrets and the mind's ability to manipulate the quantum nature of reality. Unfortunately, the earnestness of conspiracy theory punctures the dizzying metaphysical bubbles Hendrix blows, leaving the story a bit flat. And in an infinitude of infinite universes, where everything occurs, tragedy loses its significance and sting. (Mar. 30)
