Description:

Suppose you could switch bodies with another person? What exciting new experiences would you choose to explore? What forbidden desires would you indulge? Suppose someone stole your life–how far would you go to get it back?

From New York Times bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson comes a pure adrenaline thriller of hijacked identities, elusive motives, and deeply buried secrets–a disturbing, thought-provoking excursion into a sleek, hedonistic society where nothing is your own...not even your soul.

Hopscotch

For a fee, Eduard Swan will swap bodies with people in distress–those facing surgeries, emotional crises, moments of unpleasantness or discomfort they can’t or would rather not deal with. Eduard will experience the suffering for them. It’s a lucrative business, and in a world in which no one is required to feel any pain, there is no end of clients. But someone doesn’t want to play by the rules. Someone doesn’t want to return his body. And, unfortunately for Eduard, that someone is one of the world’s most powerful men. Now Eduard has no choice but to steal back his life.

He has the perfect alibi–or so he thinks. For even in a world where you can hopscotch from body to body, you always leave a trail. And following that trail is a relentless dispenser of “justice” named Daragon, a childhood friend, now a zealous and ambitious agent of state security, who won’t let old friendships stand in the way of doing his duty.

When Eduard goes on the run, hounded at every turn by Daragon, his only hope is two other childhood friends: Garth, a tormented artist who gains success beyond his wildest dreams, only to discover the terrible price of fame; and Teresa, a spiritual seeker who risks losing her own body to a fanatical religious cult as she embarks on a harrowing quest to find her true identity.

Moving from underground hopscotch pleasure bars to the highest enclaves of power to a seamy underworld of illegal Phantoms, ancient minds who steal younger bodies in a quest for eternal life, Eduard and his friends seek the meaning of identity in a society in which appearances mean everything–and nothing–and where everything is relative...even murder.

From the Hardcover edition.

Amazon.com Review

In Hopscotch, evolution has provided humankind with the ability to swap bodies. All this hopscotching creates a corrupt, decadent society where just about anything goes and immortality is just one more body swap away. Bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson follows four twentysomethings: Garth, a driven artist; Eduard, an unfocused roustabout; Teresa, a self-destructive seeker of spiritual solace; and Daragon, a driven G-man who alone is not blessed (or cursed) with the ability to hopscotch. The four make their way through a dizzying reality where only their close friendship can be taken at face value. Daragon's inability to hopscotch results in his knack for revealing the true person behind the face, no matter what the body, a skill that propels him to the top of the Bureau of Tracing and Locations--a many-tentacled organization dedicated to finding people in a world where looks are always deceiving. Daragon's meteoric rise brings his three friends under the omnipresent gaze of his mentor, the novel's antagonist Bureau chief Mordecai Orb--a looming nemesis whose influence eventually corrupts them all.

Anderson, the bestselling author of novels set in the Star Wars and X-File realms, as well as coauthor of Dune: House Corrino, ventures into new territory with this clever premise, which provides a multifaceted backdrop to his foursome's travails, though at times he wanders a little far afield, leaving behind two-dimensional characters whose simple motivations offer little for the reader to care about. --Jeremy Pugh

From Publishers Weekly

Bestseller Anderson, author of numerous novels set in the Star Wars and X-Files universes, offers a dizzying, body-swapping plot that interlocks four central characters in a constantly shifting maze of confused identities and even more confusing chases upon chases. Emerging from Falling Leaves monastery and the care of motherly female monk Soft Stone, four orphan "Swans" take on the raging hedonism of a society whose absorption in virtual reality triggered the ability to "hopscotch" between bodies. A passion for painting drives talented artist Garth; the search for life's meaning possesses uncertain, questioning Teresa; risk taking impels impulsive Eduard, whose lucrative but risky business is feeling others' pain for them; and calm, reasonable Daragon, who inexplicably cannot hopscotch but who can "see" true identities, joins the powerful Bureau of Tracing and Locations headed by malignant Mordecai Ob, the nemesis who over the years tries to destroy them all. While body hopping makes for strange and improbable bedfellows, the device tends to disrupt the intersecting plot lines as much as the author's often trite dialogue and simplistic motivations. Nonetheless, Anderson poses a question sure to frighten his readers: what if those virtual reality games aren't so innocent after all? The unsettling, kaleidoscopic jacket art perfectly complements the text. (Feb. 4)Corrino (Forecasts, Aug. 20).

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