From author Michael Swanwick -- one of the most brilliantly assured and darkly inventive writers of contemporary fiction -- comes the Nebula Award-winning masterwork of radically altered realities and world-shattering seductions. The "Jubilee Tides" will drown Miranda beneath the weight of her own oceans. But as the once-in-two centuries cataclysm approaches, an even greater catastrophe threatens this dark and dangerous planet of tale-spinners, conjurers, and shapechangers. For Gregorian has come, a genius renegade scientist and bush wizard. With magic and forbidden technology, he plans to remake the rotting dying world in his own evil image -- and to force whom or whatever remains on its diminishing surface toward a terrifying, astonishing confrontation with death and transcendence.
Industry Reviews
?"Stations of the Tide" is a heady mix of wild ideas and images, mean and tender, exciting and scary.?--"San Francisco Chronicle"?"Stations of the Tide" combines technological wizardry, exotic ecosystems and a journey across the face of a drowning world in a novel of great ingenuity and panache?a deeply engaging novel, which throws off enough pyrotechnics to fuel trilogies by lesser writer and ends in a deft turn of incident that is both unexpected and carefully prepared'on an apt and lovely note of closure.?--"Washington Post World"?Playful, erotic and disturbing?Mr. Swanwick challenges the routine ways we divide up the world. He pursues elusive truths that resist pigeonholing.--"New York Times Book Review"?From the author of the splendid "Vacuum Flowers," a dazzling far-future scenic-vs. magic puzzler?his complex creation ? to which no summary can do justice'possesses a rare cultural solidity and physical conviction. And the ironic perils presented by the Puzzle Palace give extra psychological dimensions to a novel already of extraordinary richness and scope. A magnificent achievement.? --"Kirkus Reviews"Swanwick spins a solid tale and even manages a truly transcendent finale, but it is his well-defined water world setting that makes the novel unusually effective. His picture of a civilization chaotically embracing its liquid rite of death and renewal perfectly sets the stage for the ultimate bureaucrat/mystic confrontation that resolves the story."--"Houston Post""Swanwick takes a fascinating mix of nanotechnology, magic, the vagaries of human nature (including the dynamics of office politics, transmitted to a higher plane, and an accidental genocide, and creates a futuristicdetective novel with believable, motivated characters and a tight and exciting plot. ?Swanwick's fluid prose is enriched by symbolism that adds to the maturity of this highly readable work."--"Publisher's Weekly""A sinuous narrative, worldly and very agreeably perverse."--William Gibson, author of "Neuromancer ""This is in all ways a magical book. It is wonderfully inventive, exotic yet hauntingly familiar, important, funny, intelligent and visionary. Michael Swanwick is a true seer, in the best sense of that word: he sees the marvelous and terrifying reality that underlays the world of Ocean (and our own world as well), and he opens our eyes to a new way of seeing it."--David Zindell, author of "Neverness""An expert orchestration of bizarrely beautiful images, aliens, and humans in haunting story of changes and magic. "Stations of the Tide" proves that science fiction can be intelligent, literate, and compelling-high-quality entertainment, sure to be one of the top books of the year."--Pat Cadigan, author of "Patterns" "Vivid and grotesque. . . . a novel of great ingenuity and panache".-- Washington Post Book World
