while recovering from surgery (i.e., on prescription painkillers), and it was excellent. I do not know if the reading experience would be quite as good without the chemical enhancement, but who can snub a book that includes a character described as having "a dry, sardonic delivery that can corrode egos like a desert wind" (p. 147)? I found it to be full of similar clever turns-of-phrase. The plot was good, too -- it reminded me of John C. Wright's Golden Transcendence series, so similar on some plot points that I found myself anticipating the same scifi devices that Wright used. But Stross used totally different ones, addressing a nearly-orthogonal set of concerns about a nearly-identical futuristic technology.I also read Scott Sigler's Infected, recommended to me by Escape Pod. It was ok. I would not recommend it to anyone else with itchy skin or a tendency to obsess. I found that, having started the book, I had to finish it or risk the great danger of skin-scratching nightmares.
This post's theme phrase: "grotesque candle accident," as heard here.
