The Number of the Best -- A Novel of Ourselves (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781682355817)

"You don't need lauding, Kristen Anne. Good fucking Christ, didn't you get enough of that at school? And then who takes up with Mr. Perfect, letting yet more time slip by before you even thought to look for me? And then when your precious friends pushed you to confront your bad conscience, you did everything you could to avoid it. I know, sister. We merged, right? I know everything about your feelings regarding me. Then when I thought we were tight, when we were dancing in the blood of our enemies together, raking them with no stopping us, you lied to me, there on the roof-top of that unholy school. I should have killed you then and there." Seraphim declared coolly.

"And saved me the torment of doing it myself." Her sister softly replied.

Not many people yet realized that the self who dreams is not the same self who then wakes and lives out the day, day after day. And in such dreams from which we do awaken - and indeed, there are those additional to the unconscious from which we never again emerge - what, perchance, remains of the days within which all dreams come to grief? (From the book.)

Imagine yourself set down indeed. In volume eight of Kristen-Seraphim, we follow the startling itinerary of the six only partially human heroes who had left Earth for points unknown at the end of the previous arc. The two sisters of fate find that the wider, cosmic mystery centers around their most intimate acts, that Smiley's alien kinfolk are only half-glad to welcome him home, and that their bare survival will require of them all of their skills and genius, metaphysical and otherwise. It will also require their shocking return to the world they had all once believed was their truest home. In turn, the remainder of the legendary community is forced to awaken from an unexpected dormancy to provide the epic narrative with its most astonishing climax yet.

According to one reviewer, "A stunning display of imaginative discourse, this first full-length novel of the ever-widening saga will appeal as much to adult readers, given its ingenious plot devices. 'The myth that myth is dead' animates the narrative and gives it a life beyond its own storytelling. More than this, we now understand for the first time the true relations amongst the principals, their origins, and perhaps also a nascent sense of their destinies, as well as perhaps our very own."