Maximum Light
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
By the middle of the twenty-first century the worldwide fertility rate has declined nearly eighty percent. No one knows why. Now the average age in the United States is fifty-four, and children are treasured and spoilt by those lucky enough to have them and coveted by the vast majority who can't.
Maximum Light is the story of three people from different sections of this very different American society. Nick Clementi is seventy-five years old, a doctor, and an advisor to the Congressional Advisory Committee for Medical Crises. Shana Walders is twenty-six and has just finished her two years in the National Service Corps. Cameron Atuli is twenty-eight, a primcipal dancer with the National Ballet, and has willingly had a portion of his memory removed; what it was and why he did it, he doesn't know.
In her last days of National Service, Shana witnesses something so horrible that it is immediately brought to the attention of Clementi's committee, but so shocking that even the committee would like to believe that it can't be true. And what Cameron can't remember may be the key to the mystery.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in a near-future world beset by a declining birthrate and chemical pollution, where children are cherished not only for their increasing rarity but also for their earning power (a quarter of the American population is over 70), Kress's (Beggar's Ride) new novel finds the Hugo- and Nebula-winning author (for the novella "Beggars in Spain") again pitting social activism against wrongheaded or shortsighted thinking. The story is related by three intertwined narrators: Shana Walders, a teenager whose dearest desire is to enjoy an army career; Nick Clementi, an elderly, terminally ill physician who hopes to be allowed to die peacefully and with dignity; and 22-year-old Cameron Atuli, a gay ballet dancer who, for reasons integral to the plot, has had his memory wiped. These disparate individuals come together after Shana accidentally discovers monkeys that have had human faces "vivifactured" (genetically grafted) onto them. Though illegal, these creatures are highly prized in a world where healthy children are frighteningly rare and genetic research (the only apparent cure for much of society's ills) is against the law. Kress's plot moves briskly and her premise grips, but her characters' interactions with government agencies come off as unrealistic or simplistic at times, and the novel's moderately happy ending seems forced.
