Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1795166 in Books
• Published on: 1997-01-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 413 pages

From Amazon.com
In 1999 the world has gone to hell: global warming, AIDS, urban decay, environmental disasters, and, above it all, the Glimmering. The Glimmering is an accident of modern society, a phenomenon that is destroying the ozone layer and killing the earth. In these last days, Jack Finnegan, suffering from AIDS, has come home to his family's decaying Manhattan mansion to die. He will meet Trip Marlowe, a rock star hooked on the hallucinogenic IZE, and unknowingly play out a bizarre drama scripted by his former lover, the "sociocultural pathologist" Leonard Thrope. You won't be able to put down this engrossing tale.

From Library Journal
After a March 1997 Antarctic ocean avalanche released methane to mix with bromotetrachloride in the atmosphere during a solar storm, strange charged particles began the glimmering in the ozone layer. HIV-positive magazine publisher Jack Finnegan awaits the millennium in his crumbling New York mansion. Hand's (Waking the Moon, HarperPrism: HarperCollins, 1995) bleak ecological disaster novel, which straddles sf and fantasy, belongs in most collections.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Fin-de-siŠcle/apocalyptic yarn from the author of Waking the Moon (1995), etc. Earth's atmosphere, destroyed by pollution and ozone depletion, coruscates with bizarrely colorful discharges, banishing night and hiding the stars. In 1999, everyone's seemingly crazy, drugged, fanatical, or dying of AIDS. Photographer and ``sociocultural pathologist'' Leonard Thrope gives AIDS patient and former lover Jack Finnegan a new drug whipped up by a former Japanese WW II medical experimenter; Jack soon feels better but starts to see. . . ghosts? visions? Then Leonard jabs fundamentalist rock singer Trip Marlowe with a new synthetic drug, IZE, that's addictive, psychotropic, and confers the ability to see. . . what Jack sees? Trip spends a blissful afternoon in the arms of attractive waif Marz Candry, who then disappears. In despair, Trip tries to kill himself, but instead he's rescued from a Maine beach by AIDS victim Martin Dionysos, another of Leonard's exes. Later, Marz will turn up at Jack's, only to die in childbirth before a recovered Trip arrives. The Golden Family corporation, inventor and distributor of IZE, claims to be able to restore the atmosphere, but its fix-it airships are destroyed by ecoterrorist bombs. Leonard, meanwhile, revels in all the millennial weirdness he's helped create. Flashy and downbeat, a sort of pre-post-cyberpunk as depressing as it is pointless. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

What in the H-E-Double Hockeystix Was THAT?
I have long been a die hard fan of intense science fiction. The one star I'll give Hand for this book is for her excellent use of deep imagery in the work to invoke almost physical responses from the reader.

However, the rest of what makes a story into a novel is missing. The characters are lackluster (at best), having no real passion or direction, and gaining none as the story progresses. For a while I was truly enthralled by the read, one page pulling me into the next until I had burned through the first three hundred pages in as many minutes.

And then it died...not in a blast, or a convoluted plot twist, or even in any way that could be defined as heroic, romantic, philosophical, or otherwise. It faded as if it had never been. The story just seems to stop (like a car stalling silently on a fast highway) the story coasts in neutral for about 150 pages, flares like the engine sputtering to life for a heartbeat, (but not really) and then sliding onto the shoulder, making you wonder why you got in the car at all!

Even if you like the occasional anticlimactic plot twist, this takes the concept a step further, where the only characters who receive any sort of finality die in ignoble, boring ways. I am also a male reader, but unlike one of my fellow reviewers, I don't need a huge hollywood style ending.

I would, however, like an ACTUAL ending.

Hey, let's try to appeal to the mainstream...
OK... I understand that pop culture is what sells these days, but I don't think that you should push it to the extreme. Elizabeth Hand has tried to turn the next millenium into a Generation X sex fest. I am having a hard time finishing this book, due to the fact that I want to gag each time I read about Leonard Thorpe and all of Jack Finnegan's past homosexual activities and Trip Marlowe's narcissistic sexcapades. Who ever made the comment that this book is like Stephen King rewriting TS Elliot must not have read either of these authors. Elizabeth Hand should take time off from trying to write novels, and either write _Star Trek_ episodes or write for FOX's _Dark Angel_.

Extremely disappointing
I read this book around 2 years ago - having been a fan of previous books. What an extreme disappointment! No plot - no resolution and a feeling when I was finished of I'd like to return this book because it wasn't worth the money I'd spent.