The two main characters, Bremen and Gail, are telepathic and married. Gail dies from cancer and Bremen spirals down into depression and madness. The novel shifts between scenes from Gail and Bremen's married life (Bremen is a mathematician who ends up studying human consciousness), Bremen in the years after Gail's death, and a mysterious third party who intimately knows both Gail and Bremen.
The information about human consciousness and the effect of humanity of chaos and probability and the Universe was very interesting. However, many of the things that happen to Bremen post-Gail seem unnecessarily contrived and a little too scripted.
The moment when I close the pages of a book seems to crystalize my overall feelings on the book. For this book, I liked it, but I didn't feel regret that the story was over (unlike Tigana, where I flipped through the last blank pages, hoping for more) and I was kinda irritated by the conclusion. And when I was trying to figure out why the conclusion bothered me, I realized that it seemed that Simmons had come up with the ending and written a book to fit that ending. And the novel seemed a little shoe-horned into that ending.
What really struck me about the book was the discourse on the nature of human consciousness. I wish that had been taken farther, as I found it the most compelling portion of the novel.
