Analog
The story is nicely complemented by the Venetian ambiance, and the Net technology is well imagined.

From Library Journal
Cecelie, a computer security apprentice at Sept-Fortune in Venice, must break an online bank security system the company designed in order to pass the test for senior apprentice. While retrieving the data, she discovers that the Septs are planning to take over the net to control the wealth and power of information. The high-tech intrigue and real vs. virtual masks recommend Lewitt's (Memento Mori, LJ 11/15/95) work for most collections.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The Internet has been tamed, and companies called Septs, descendants of the original hackers, now control access to it, with rival Septs in cities throughout the world. In Venice, a young acolyte named Cecilie takes the test for senior apprenticeship in Sept-Fortune, a test that removes her from youth and begins her introduction into a world of intrigue and antagonism. As the Septs jockey for position to complete their dominance, Cecilie stumbles upon an alien presence in the Net. Meanwhile, the choirs of Venice, relied upon by the Septs to provide a sort of live choral Muzak to induce docility, are enmeshed in strange events linked to the subversive, almost forgotten music known as jazz. Lewitt's distinctive style is admirably suited to her story's rapid yet intricate pace, as Cecilie and the mysterious musician David are ever more deeply caught up in events. Lewitt's depiction of the future Venice and the labyrinthine intertwining of real life and the virtual cityscape are lyrical and compelling, and her characters are much more than shadows. Dennis Winters

From Kirkus Reviews
Lewitt's (Memento Mori, 1995) near/medium-future cyberspace (though she avoids the term) yarn is set in Venice, where Septs dominate the computer software industry and tightly restrict access to the worldwide computer net. To test her fitness for promotion, Cecilie of Sept-Fortune is invited to crack a bank computer system designed and built by Sept-Fortune itself--a task that apparently violates all Sept-Fortune's own ethical codes. Deeply perturbed, Cecilie complies but loses confidence in her employer. Soon, she meets David Gavrilli, the maverick heir to a business empire who has fled his family in order to develop his own hacker expertise independently of the suffocating, monopolizing, Septs--and so he can play jazz, a music forbidden because of its anarchistic overtones in an age when orthodox music is merely a tool used to evoke defined responses from its audiences. When David's sponsor is murdered, he hires Cecilie to find out why and by whom. The Septs, meanwhile, are meeting to thrash out the details of a scheme to gain exclusive control of access to the computer net, a move naturally opposed by David and his terrorist associates. And during her researches Cecilie discovers that aliens have logged on to the system and are trying to build a communications protocol. Satisfyingly complicated, though the details are more for show than logical necessity, the immature characters soon grow tiresome, and the best idea here--aliens in the computer net--languishes undeveloped. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER