Mississippi Blues - Hardcover

Goonan, Kathleen Ann

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312859171 ISBN 13: 9780312859176

Publisher: Tor Books, 1997

Synopsis

Follows the journey of Verity across the wonderfully altered landscape of mid-America, in a vision of America transformed by new and apocalyptic technology

About this title

From the Inside Flap

The journey of Verity across the wonderfully altered landscape of mid-America began in Queen City Jazz. From a Shaker commune to the nanotech-enlivened walled city of Cincinnati, young Verity traveled to save her best friend, Blaze, and to reject her controlling destiny: to become the queen of Queen City. Now the journey continues, on down the river, in Mississippi Blues.

As the enlivened city of Cincinnati is about to be transformed, and the enslaved citizens freed, Verity causes the construction of a huge nanotech riverboat, launched so that she and Blaze can accompany the released but nano-plagued people of that city down the Mississippi River to the mysterious city of New Orleans, where a rumored salvation awaits them. On and on they travel, through a landscape altered and strange, past dead cities, drowned cities, and cities weirdly alive, always accompanied by the music of the river, possessed by jazz and the blues.

Reviews

Pudgy sequel to Queen City Jazz (1994), a medium-force vision of nanotechnology run riot. Former Shakers Verity and Blaze, having tamed Cincinnati with its crazy Bees and Flowers, decide to head downriver to Norleans, though even Verity doesn't know why, aboard a boat she orders the city to build using ``nan''; many of the city's former inhabitants will accompany her on rafts. Verity discovers that she doesn't know how to operate the boat, and also that she's pregnant. Downstream at Gambling Island the travelers acquire passengers Jack and Lil--but who are they really? Soon, in any case, Verity and the raft people grow sick: They're deprived of the metapheromones they need to survive. The boat supplies a remedy--or does it merely re-enslave them? Blaze acquires a guitar and sings the blues. Nanotech engineer Peabody, 12-year-old cigar- smoking Mattie, and Mark Twain join the voyage. Then pirates attack the boat, and Blaze takes the train to L.A., only to find a dome concealing a communal intelligence. After further adventures, the boat reaches Norleans, where a vague non-ending seems to promise yet more sequels. Heavy-handed technovariations without plot or control; pointless curlicues and flourishes in which all but the most committed readers will swiftly lose interest. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Goonan (The Bones of Time, LJ 3/15/96) follows up her acclaimed first novel Queen City Jazz (LJ 11/15/94), which showed how nanotechnology changed the world, with this excellent sequel. Verity travels down the river from Cincinnati to Norleans experiencing postnanotechnological America. Full of vibrant descriptions and musical analogies, this novel offers an optimistic view of the future, albeit a strange one. For most sf collections.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312859171
• ISBN 13: 9780312859176
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 511