SOJALS rating:

Very good (4/5)

I first read this in 1996 and most recently on the 8th May 2006

Hundreds of years in our future, the spirits of the dead live on the Noosphere and you can talk to your ancestors. Interceding between mortal men and the realm of the dead are the Advocates, two of the best humanity have to offer, guiding and nurturing humanity with the guidance of all of humanity's ancestors.

Science offers an extended live. However the medical process is not perfect. The body remains outwardly, indefinitely young but the brain slowly slides into madness. Thus this future society offers health and youth but insists on a lifespan limited to one hundred years. This limitation is enforced whether you like it or not.

There's a problem, of course: the current Advocates have been going strong for one hundred and twenty years and they're now stark, raving mad and bad to the bone.

Under the Advocates' insane hegemony, it is the innocents who suffer most. There's Marea, Tunde, Nina and Nathan whose lives are uprooted and tossed in to horror and confusion.

Wow! A great novel and one of my favourites. I love the mystery and the excitement, and Chris Evans maintains this throughout the novel. Every time I re-read this I get lost in the glamour of these strange worlds with their bizarrely modified animals and vegetation.

Fab stuff.