Description:

Giraut Leones, special agent for the human Thousand Cultures' shadowy Office of Special Plans, is turning fifty--and someone is trying to kill him.

Giraut's had a long career; the number of entities that might want him dead is effectively limitless.  But recently Giraut was approached by the Lost Legion, an Occitan underground linked to an alliance of illegally human-settled worlds beyond the frontier. Also, it turns out that the Lost Legion colony has a "psypyx" --a consciousness-recording--of Shan, onetime boss of the Office of Special Plans. If they have that, they have literally thousands of devastating secrets.

Now, returning to his native Nou Occitan, Giraut will encounter violence and treachery from human and artificial consciousnesses alike.  As bigotry and mob violence erupt throughout the rapidly destabilizing interstellar situation, Giraut will be called on the make the ultimate sacrifice, for the sake of civilization itself…

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Splendidly wrapping up the far-future cloak-and-psychological-dagger series that began with AMillion Open Doors (1992), this last grand adventure of master spy and latter-day troubadour Giraut Leones covertly steers the Thousand Cultures of near-immortal humanity between "the box," total withdrawal into virtual reality, and interstellar war involving the "aintellects" Giraut loathes for wanting to enslave their human masters. Giraut and his team fend off assassination attempts, while his songs change the hearts of beings around him—and ultimately his own. Rich with glowing resonances of medieval Languedoc, the inspiration for Barnes's convincing Nou Occitan milieu and language, this final chorale of a long and brilliant SF symphony reprises some of his most intriguing characters via the "psypyx," the consciousness-recording device that allows individuals to die physically and be reborn in new bodies. As Giraut loses one love after another, he discovers that the artist must grow beauty around the wounds in his own heart, an echo of Provençal courtly love that drives him through "insane glorious dangers" into a final Cyrano-sweep of a plumed hat at death: quel geste!(Apr.)
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From Booklist

The vastly underrated Barnes' latest book seems to conclude the far-far-future saga that began with A Million Open Doors (1992). Giraut Leone, secret agent for the Thousand Cultures, is approaching retirement. One final mission remains, however: to track down a repository of deadly secrets established by a dissident group far beyond the frontier of settlement. After adventures that would give James Bond cardiac arrest, and a nervous breakdown, Leone locates the data, but not in time to prevent its release, which threatens social chaos among the Thousand Cultures. Does he have any hope of resolving the crisis, even at the cost of his own life and the abandonment of all hopes for a well-deserved retirement? Told in a graceful, fluid manner that considerably surpasses the level of writing in, say, most current mainstream thrillers, this book makes one hope this isn't the last of Barnes' impressive future universe, and that the Thousand Cultures will be explored further, from other angles and other characters' perspectives. Roland Green
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