MINDS IN TRANSIT

In the long-awaited sequel to Brain Plague (2000), Chrysoberyl of Valedon, an artist with a colony of sentient microorganisms in her brain, is again awash on a sea of troubles (sometimes literally).

Chrys and her micros, the creative strain known as the Libertines, are somewhat overcommitted these days. While they collectively work on Chrys’ controversial light paintings, they are also responsible for multiple large architectural projects, including an entire floating city on the ocean moon of Shora—if she can only manage to get approval for her design from multiple stakeholders. Chrys is also hoping to remodel the Underworld, the lower layers of her city of Iridis, inhabited by the poor and desperate. The nobles of Valedon would simply prefer to bury the Underworld and relocate its inhabitants, as so-called “cancerplasts” are rooting there, causing earthquakes that shake the city and threaten to undermine it permanently. Meanwhile, the masters—micros that seek to take over their host, not work with it—have mutated into Traders, capitalists that use financial incentives to encourage their hosts to succumb to their control and who are no longer as easy to detect. In order to flush them out, Chrys has incorporated microscopic quantum computing units within herself, which collectively threaten to achieve sentience in their own right, which many see as a threat. And this barely scratches the surface of all the intrigue connected to the continuing fight for nonhuman sentient rights and political shakeups on both Valedon and Shora. Slonczewski is fond of overloading her characters with difficulties, but this story seems to take that tendency to an extreme. There is almost no letup to the implausible amount of burdens and responsibilities that others pile upon Chrys; she is allowed very little time to enjoy her unique position as a successful artist and a wealthy woman with a fascinating creative collective in her brain. Perhaps it’s her micros that prevent Chrys from having a nervous breakdown, even as they add to her stress. Ultimately, these tensions build to a crisis point, but the resolution afterward is rife with dangling and even expanding plot threads, suggesting that the author has merely chosen a place to rest, not to conclude. Presumably we won’t have to wait another 25 years to find out?

A welcome but less than satisfying reunion with beloved characters and their universe.