From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Marusek's wide-ranging and creative imagination is very much in evidence in this ambitious second novel. In 2007's Counting Heads, a rocket ship crash, apparently sabotage, killed powerful financier Eleanor Starke and left her adult daughter, Ellen, gravely injured. Ellen, whose damaged head has been grafted onto the body of an infant, insists her mother is still alive, an apparent delusion that complicates her efforts to assert control over the family business empire. As clones and artificial intelligences begin to redefine humanity and sentience, powerful executives derail a space colonization plan for their own profit. While newcomers might wish for a short prologue or a glossary, those omissions don't significantly detract. With ambitious narrative scope and small moments of perfect prose, this tale of 22nd-century politics repays the close reading necessary to follow its many interweaving plots. (Jan.)
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From Booklist

Ellen Starke’s head, recovered from the crash that killed her mother, Eleanor, has a lot to deal with. She has a clone, but its body is a baby’s; she’s responsible for the teetering empire her mother created; she’s surrounded by people plotting against her; and she believes Eleanor can’t be dead. Applied People’s corporate fortunes are about to take a tumble, partly because Fred Londenstane’s on trial for his part in Ellen’s rescue. Andrea Tiekel, head of E-Pluribus, is maneuvering to take over the clone market and, in fact, angling for control of even more, including Heliostream and the entire extrasolar colonization plan. Heliostream CEO Merrill Meewee, one of Eleanor’s loyal agents, discovers some very interesting fish while skipping rocks in a pond on the Starke Enterprises campus. Intrigue, plotting, adventure, and bizarre conspiracies abound in this eminently satisfying follow-up to Counting Heads (2005). Marusek has built a solid world and paces the unfolding of corporate takeover and social mayhem so as to keep the reader fascinated. And the resolution is elegant and satisfying. --Regina Schroeder

The year is 2135, and the international program to seed the galaxy with human colonies has stalled as greedy, immoral powerbrokers park their starships in Earth’s orbit and begin to convert them into space condos. Ellen Starke’s head, rescued from the fiery crash that killed her mother, struggles to regrow a new body in time to restore her dead mother’s financial empire. And Pre-Singularity AIs conspire to join the human race just as human clones, such as Mary Skarland and her sisters, want nothing more than to leave it.

Welcome to , the sequel to Marusek’s stunning debut novel, , which called “ferociously smart, simultaneously horrific and funny.”

David Marusek’s most recent story for us, “We Were out of Our Minds with Joy” (November 1995), was a finalist for both the Hugo and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Although Mr. Marusek’s latest tale has a new cast of characters, he considers it the second in “what I hope to be a series of stories about life in the next century.” A substantially different version of “Getting to Know You” originally appeared in England in Horizon House Publications’ 1997 anthology, Readers can reach the author at his home page URL, which is: www.sff.net/people/david_marusek/