Most readers recognize L. E. Modesitt, Jr. as the author of a favorite fantasy series, be it The Magic of Recluce or The Spellsong Cycle. It's always a special treat when he turns his hand again to SF, and Archform: Beauty is no exception.

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 suffers for her music and fights bureaucracy and apathy. A news researcher delivers the essential background details but can't help looking deeper and wondering about the real story behind the grim incidents that make the headlines. A police investigator, assigned to study trends, begins to see a truly sinister pattern behind a series of seemingly unrelated crimes and deaths. A politician aids his constituents, fights the good fight and tries to get re-elected without compromising his principles. A ruthless businessman strives to make his family powerful, wealthy and independent.

Theirs is a world where technology takes care of everyone's basic needs but leaves most people struggling to extract a meaningful life from a world crowded with wonders but empty of commitment and human connection. 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, esthetic challenge and personal triumph. In the same way that he has built fantasy landscapes of surpassing fascination, Modesitt creates a believable future, one imbued with a deep understanding of the way politics works and how people act and react when their sense of themselves, of justice and truth, is exploited by others for power and control. 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.

Amazon.com Review
Technology, philosophy, politics, and mystery combine in this well-told tale of murder and corporate machination. Archform: Beauty weaves together the stories of five people in 24th-century North America who find themselves involved in a political conspiracy that spawns a string of murders. An old-style singer despairs over graceless contemporary music that uses overlaid resonances to emotionally manipulate the listener; a police investigator identifies a disturbing pattern of suicides and murders; a powerful senator and an equally powerful corporate tycoon pursue their own agendas toward a potentially violent collision; and a news researcher with a flair for background finds himself drawn into all of their affairs as pieces of various puzzles begin to come together.

Modessit handles the five voices well, particularly those of the detective, singer, and researcher, and sets their stories against a well-realized social and political background, incorporating interesting philosophical questions about reality and beauty into the action without slowing the pace. --Roz Genessee