Blood Music

Meh, didn't much care for this. I know it's a popular book, when Bear passed away recently a lot of people cited it as their favorite. I think a lot of people responded to the body horror aspect of the story. Me, I just couldn't get past the uneven writing. From the 70s bachelor farce at the start to the horror to some big scifi that doesn't quite make sense. A particular irritation was the writing passages where the noocytes are communing with their hosts, some alien merged consciousness, and the writing is nearly incomprehensible. I gather that was deliberate but it did not work for me.

The premise is very interesting, the self-replicating life form. But then he takes this to some cracked idea about reality being altered by perception of reality and I felt he lost whatever great idea he had.

It's a creative book and there's a good story buried in there, just needed some refinement to come out more coherently.