Archform: Beauty

Four centuries in the future, the world is rich—nanomachines watch the health of the wealthy and manufacture food and gadgets for everybody—but no utopia, as we see in the lives of five very different people: a singing teacher, a news researcher, a police investigator, a politician and a ruthless businessman. Alternating the voices and experiences of these five characters in a tour de force of imaginative creation, Modesitt overlaps, combines and builds their disparate stories into a brilliant tale of future crime and investigation, aesthetic challenge and a personal triumph. When there's nothing left to need or want, will beauty live on in people's lives or disappear forever? L.E. Modesitt, Jr., asks difficult questions, sets himself unlikely challenges and once again delivers an absorbing tale that enlightens, entertains and uplifts all at once.