In a world where most diseases are curable, the artist Jimson Alleca has incurable cancer. He has the choice to stay on his homeworld, receiving constant medical attention and live a roughly normal lifespan, or fulfil his dream and go out into the galaxy and be dead within the year. He chooses the latter and eventually finds himself on a dangerous journey with his former lover Russell, now a starship captain.
The plot in this book feels like a framework for Lynn to hang her characters from. We see the world through the eyes of a dying artist and this is what Lynn really wants to explore. The plot to recover the artefact from a dangerous world is one lens through which to see Jimson, and sort of fizzles out, although there is a twist to Jimson’s inevitable death that was quite nice.
So lots of good bits, I thought, but they didn’t fully gel into a whole for me.
