The Cusanus Game
Starred Review. In the year 2052, the world is collapsing after a nuclear disaster in Germany that lethally irradiated parts of Europe and accelerated the ongoing social breakdown. Domenica Ligrina is a young botanist living in Rome, now a violent, nearly abandoned borderland of cultural clashes. She is offered a mysterious job by the Papacy that could restore Europe's obliterated flora, and soon she learns that the work involves retrieving seeds from the Middle Ages—specifically the age of her hero, the scientist cardinal Nicolaus Cusanus. This is only one piece of a vast convoluted puzzle spread across both her life and the multiverse that constantly drops paradoxical hints from past, future, present, and alternate todays. €œWhat is reality?€ the story asks, and the answer is predictably complex and far-reaching. Jeschke's epic is a mind-expanding SF thriller that will grab readers and shake them up. (Oct.)