From Booklist
Hamilton concludes his Greg Mandel trilogy, which began with Mindstar Rising (1996) and continued with last fall's A Quantum Murder. Greg is a "psychic detective" who works for the British corporation Event Horizon, a conglomerate that rose to power because of its patents on a unique, universal energy system. Though Greg has retired to his citrus groves, which thrive in globally warmed southern England, he is called back for a final mission when Julia Evans, heir to Event Horizon, receives a mysterious flower whose DNA resembles nothing terrestrial. An alien, benign but large as a world, has crossed the vacuum of space to colonize earth. It must be sent on its way, which Julia and Greg manage with Greg's psychic powers of communication and Julia's near-psychic expression of herself on Event Horizon's advanced software. The already popular series is likely to become more so, with this able conclusion and with the new film Event Horizon. John Mort


From Kirkus Reviews
Third in Hamilton's trilogy (Mindstar Rising, 1996; A Quantum Murder, p. 1421) featuring Greg Mandel, of the psi- powered Mindstar Battalion. Now retired, Greg has taken up orange-farming in half-drowned, subtropical, 21st-century England. But then his old friend Julia Evans, of the preeminent Event Horizon corporation, receives a mysterious flower sent by her computer-whiz husband, Royan, who's been missing for eight months. The flower turns out to be extraterrestrial--and highly evolved. Then media manipulator Clifford Jepson of Globecast attempts to peddle scientific information that's clearly beyond current human capabilities. What's going on? It seems that Royan, as Julia discovers, sent a probe to Jupiter to investigate possible alien microbes. Greg, meanwhile, traces the flower via its courier, the high-class whore Charlotte Fielder, who received it from a Celestial Apostle cultist aboard New London, an asteroid that Event Horizon has nudged into Earth orbit. Charlotte is horrified to learn that she's been working for a lethal group of Russian gangsters. Finally, all the movers and shakers converge on New London for a showdown with Royan and a strange, powerful, and immensely dangerous alien. Gratifyingly complex and challenging--indeed, impossible to summarize adequately, what with battles, love stories, vendettas, imponderable aliens, and robust characters: a fine trilogy, sure, but this one's in a class by itself. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"Third (and longest) of the Greg Mandel series, which here reaches another level of excellence...an epic of ultra-technology, alien contact, and a love story that literally spans the stars. Brilliant."--Locus



Book Description
Peter F. Hamilton is one the rising stars of science fiction in the nineties. His epic space adventure, The Reality Dysfunction, was a major international bestseller, while his near future thrillers, Mindstar Rising and A Quantum Murder, introduced an intriguing new hero in the character of Greg Mandel, a freelance operative whose telepathic abilities give him a crucial edge in the high tech world of the twenty-first century. Now Mandel returns in a spectacular new adventure that blows open the possibilities of the next century.

Julia Evans: billionairess, owner of Event Horizon, for fifteen years undisputed power behind the world's economic renaissance. And in trouble.

With her computer-genius husband missing and rival companies suddenly claiming to have acquired a technology impossibly superior to anything on Earth, Julia has no time to notice an anonymously delivered flower. But this flower has genes millions of years in advance of terrestrial DNA.

Is it a cryptic alien message or a poignant farewell from her husband?Only Greg Mandel can discover its origin, but he is not alone in his desperate search. A vicious mercenary killer, a jade merchant, and a high-priced courtesan all have a part to play.

It was never going to be easy, but as Greg and Julia discover, simply being first in the race ins't nerly good enough as teh Nano Flower starts to bloom....

FROM THE PUBLISHER