This note contains spoilers for the book.

Fourth Ukiah Oregon novel.

Too much innovation. A duplicate of Ukiah (another split off of Magic Boy) turns up. The Cult has the bioweapons machines (the Ae, or founts), and may be about to wipe out all life on Earth through their ignorance. There's a DEA team that's tracked down the cult as producing a new sex drug (which is fatal when male humans stop taking it). And Ukiah's brother is on the DEA team and doesn't really know what he is. She also introduces the threat of the Ontongard here communicating with other planets, even though she says they destroy a planet and spread out (so they're a pathogen, clear and simple). So things start to look thinner and thinner.

I frequently get feelings of deliberate political correctness—but always in places where I agree with the position; it just feels forced, or excessive, to do so many of them in these books. Still, the two homosexual DEA agents really do make a sweet couple.