In a concluding volume to the Nanotech Quartet, people begin vanishing in the wake of unearthly lights, and Jason Peabody, one of the few people who remember the Internet and accompanied by the resilient Dania, makes a startling discovery that prompts him to investigate the disappearances. When Crescent City, the sentient hub of a world reinvented by nanotechnology and cosmic revelations, falls under attack by pirates, Jason Peabody, one of the few remaining humans who remembers a time when the world relied on external communications for connections, undertakes a journey to unlock the secret behind the changes that have come to the world. Accompanied by Dania, a visionary who preaches the art of "seeing," Peabody travels halfway around the world in search of the one man who can reveal the truth to him. Goonan brings her "Nanotech Quartet" to a satisfying conclusion as she draws together threads from previous novels (Mississippi Blues, Queen City Jazz, Crescent City Rhapsody) and links them through the personality of a determined and dedicated young man in pursuit of the truth. Recommended, along with other series titles, for most sf collections. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Humanity's long, difficult, painful journey to a new mental and physical state began in Goonan's Queen City Jazz (1994) when a random pulse from somewhere else in the galaxy disrupted communications on Earth and produced the Silence, attended by mass confusion, despair, and physical changes in babies born during the pulse. Governments desperate to understand the signal seized many of those children, but others' families took them into hiding in remote settlements and cities protected by deep, comprehensive nanotechnology. Now in the moon colony, the floating environment Crescent City, and the Flower Cities around the world, people are awakening to an inner drive that almost lets them understand the signal as a blend of light, music, and information. Following that drive, a man and woman flee Crescent City to the Houston Space Center, a mother follows her son from a ranch in Argentina to Paris, and a woman and an autistic teen splash down in the Pacific after abandoning the lunar colony. Each driven person has a vital role to play in the transformation that will end humanity's 200-year-long journey. Archetypal characters--Coyote the Trickster, Cowboy, Caribbean pirates--join in as Goonan deftly weaves music, literature, and science in the brilliant conclusion to a tetralogy as consequential in sf as Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. Roberta Johnson Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved "Highly imaginative, peopled with intriguing characters and as intellectually demanding yet emotionally satisfying as Duke Ellington's best." (Publishers Weekly (* Starred Review *)) Kathleen Ann Goonan has published two previous books in her critically acclaimed "Nanotech Cycle," the first of which, Queen City Jazz, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She is also the author of Mississippi Blues, The Bones of Time, and numerous acclaimed short stories. She lives with her husband in Lakeland, Florida.