Product Description

Lenie Clarke-amphibious cyborg, Meltdown Madonna, agent of the Apocalypse-has grown sick to death of her own cowardice.

For five years (since the events recounted in Maelstrom0, she and her bionic brethren (modified to work in the rift valleys of the ocean floor) have hidden in the mountains of the deep Atlantic. The facility they commandeered was more than a secret station on the ocean floor. Atlantis was an exit strategy for the corporate elite, a place where the world’s Movers and Shakers had hidden from the doomsday microbe ßehemoth-and from the hordes of the moved and the shaken left behind. For five years “rifters” and “corpses” have lived in a state of uneasy truce, united by fear of the outside world.

But now that world closes in. An unknown enemy hunts them through the crushing darkness of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. ßehemoth- twisted, mutated, more virulent than ever-has found them already. The fragile armistice between the rifters and their one-time masters has exploded into all-out war, and not even the legendary Lenie Clarke can take back the body count.

Billions have died since she loosed ßehemoth upon the world. Billions more are bound to. The whole biosphere came apart at the seams while Lenie Clarke hid at the bottom of the sea and did nothing. But now there is no place left to hide. The consequences of past acts reach inexorably to the very floor of the world, and Lenie Clarke must return to confront the mess she made.

Redemption doesn’t come easy with the blood of a world on your hands. But even after five years in pitch-black purgatory, Lenie Clarke is still Lenie Clarke. There will be consequences for anyone who gets in her way-and worse ones, perhaps, if she succeeds...

ßehemoth: Seppukuconcludes the final act (begun in ßehemoth: ß-Max) of Peter Watts’s chilling and powerful Rifters series.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #384622 in Books
• Published on: 2004-12-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In Canadian author Watts's intense, beautifully written conclusion to his Rifters trilogy (after 2004's ßehemoth: ß-Max), Lenie Clarke, the near-psychotic, bio-engineered woman who loosed the deadly organism known as ßehemoth on an already environmentally compromised world, resurfaces from the ocean's depths to discover who's behind continuing efforts to destroy all life on Earth. Together with Lubin, a bio-engineered man who's a highly efficient killer, Clarke discovers an America that has been devastated, not just by ßehemoth but by attacks from heavily fortified, high-tech enclaves whose rulers will stop at nothing in a futile attempt to contain the out-of-control organism. Worse still, the battle is apparently being led by Achilles Desjardins, a murderous psychopath who has slipped the protective psychological programming that once kept his darker impulses under control. Aided by Taka Ouellette, a guilt-ridden, second-rate physician, Clarke and Lubin strive desperately to unravel the secrets of both ßehemoth and Seppuku, its even more dangerous mutation. Like some adrenaline-charged fusion of Clarke's The Deep Range and Gibson's Neuromancer, Watts's trilogy represents a major addition to early 21st-century hard SF.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Driven from Atlantis by the psychological disease a-max, Lenie Clarke searches for redemption on land. She and former spy Lubin hijack traveling medic Taka Oulette's mobile infirmary and discover that someone is shooting germs that the North American defense grid is destroying via containment burns. When Lenie and company get a sample, however, the germs seem to cure aehemoth, and the three start spreading them by courier. Then defense chief Achilles Desjardins shows up and tells them the germs are actually a more virulent strain of aehemoth. This is technically true, but Desjardins has reason to dissemble. Believing him, though, Lenie, Lubin, and Oulette split up to find their couriers, and Lenie finds one apparently in late-stage aehemoth, who then completely recovers. Desjardins isn't the hero Lenie had taken him to be, and still, there is hope for the world, after all. aehemoth: Seppuku lives up to the promise of aehemoth: a-Max [BKL Jl 04] and concludes the series begun in Starfish (1999) and maelstrom (2001)--perhaps, for this finale is nothing if not open-ended. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

Praise for Starfish and Maelstrom:

“I have no hesitation in recommending both books to readers interested in up-to-date science fiction with a seriously paranoid edge.”--The New York Times

“Watts moves from the relentless pressure of Starfishto the frantic speed of chaos in action, never losing the tight focus on his fascinating characters in this excellent sequel to his debut novel.”--Booklist[Starred Review]

“Watts has grown into a powerful hard-SF voice in the space of only two books....With its worst-case-scenario setting and thoroughly compelling characters, Maelstromdelivers on all the promises hard SF has ever thought to make, bundling future science and a suspenseful story into a single thrilling package.” -Locus

Praise for ßehemoth: ß-Max:

“One of the novel’s most fascinating aspects is its extremely inhospitable setting, under 300 atmospheres pressure at the ocean’s sunless floor. Readers will also find themselves unwillingly gripped by the simultaneously flawed and ferocious characters, shaped by a social situation bleaker than anything outside John Shirley’s early novels....They’re uncomfortably believable, like us at our least generous moments. Finally, the writing is compelling, jittery, full of dark irony.”-Publishers Weekly