Publisher's Weekly Review
Griffith's compelling follow-up to Ammonite is an intricate, cautionary tale of love, betrayal and self-discovery in near-future Europe. Heiress Lore Van Oesterling escapes kidnappers who plan to kill her after her family refuses to pay her ransom. Lying bloody and naked in the street, she's taken in by a reclusive female hacker named Spanner, with whom she forms an uneasy alliance to scam the rich and naïve. Lore finds herself falling in love and becoming more dependent on Spanner, but ``whenever Lore reached for her, she wavered and was gone, like the shimmering reflection on the oily surface of the river.'' At loose ends and tormented by the growing venality of their ``victimless crimes,'' Lore faces her culpability and decides to get on with her life: ``We all get hurt. But self-pity, lack of courage, leads to a sort of... mortification of the soul. Corruption. And then it takes more courage, costs more pain, to clean it up afterward.'' She assumes the identity of a dead woman, rents a flat and starts an honest job at a waste water-treatment plant, struggling to establish an identity independent of her family's name and wealth. Griffith's only misstep is to chronicle Lore's life through both first- and third-person narration; while the technique is refreshing at first, confusion mounts as the narrative modes converge. Otherwise, this exceptionally well-written novel could win yet more awards for its talented author. 25,000 first printing. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
When Lore, scion of the rich and powerful Van Oesterling family, is kidnapped, her family refuses to pay the ransom. After a courageous attempt to escape, she's dumped in the rain, naked and bleeding, in a northern English city. Spanner, a tough lady who makes a living from computer fraud and prostitution, offers her shelter. Once recovered, Lore assists Spanner with her intricate swindles and agrees to participate in sex shows for wealthy clients made tolerable by a powerful aphrodisiac drug. Another narrative strand details Lore's early training for the highest echelons of the Van Oesterling empire, founded on patented, genetically engineered bacteria that chew up pollutants. But Lore's father, Oster, attempted to sexually abuse her as a child until her eldest sister, Greta, put an unbreakable lock on her door. Lore's other sister, Stella, wasn't so fortunate, and eventually killed herself. In a third storyline, Lore breaks away from Spanner following the appalled realization that all their money is being spent on the sex drug. She takes legitimate employment at a sewage reclamation plant, where her Van Oesterling expertise helps avert a sabotage attempt by a rival company. Finally, Lore confronts her father, learns that her mother was the abuser, and discovers that Greta, who was running a secret dirty-tricks department within the family business, set up her kidnapping and then pocketed the ransom paid by Oster. Griffith (the Lambda Award-winning paperback Ammonite) handles her explicitly lesbian drama with skill and charm. Despite irritating switches in narrative tense and viewpoint, her grim near-future is persuasive.
Booklist Review
Lore Van Oesterling is the wealthy daughter of a powerful bioengineering magnate who, inexplicably, refuses to pay the ransom when she is kidnapped. After escaping and killing one of her captors, Lore allows herself to be taken in and supported by Spanner, a computer data thief, rather than return to the family she now despises. Using her black market connections to obtain stolen personal identity chips, Spanner supplies Lore with a different name and a work history that help her land a job in a water treatment plant. However, as Lore becomes more enmeshed in Spanner's corrupt business dealings and her suspicions about her real purpose at the treatment plant grow, she begins searching for a way back to the world she forsook. Griffith's style is refreshingly lucid and captivating, helping her arouse real concern for her main characters. Yet the book as a whole falls short of the promise of Griffith's award-winning debut, Ammonite (1992), and, despite its sf trappings, works best as a human-interest story about the nature of personal identity. (Reviewed July 1995)0345391659Carl Hays