Breathing on glass

Rhea - dark, intense and brilliant - and her golden, voluptuous sister Amber are not alike, but they are bound tighter than most : by love, by the loss of their father and by the man who stands between them. Lewis is Amber's husband and the ferociously driven director of the biotech lab where Rhea is a rising star. In search of funding, academic advancement and in alchemical pursuit of the perfect stem cell -- their Holy Grail in one flawlessly reproducing genetic blueprint - Rhea and Lewis inhabit a rarefied world. Putting their trust in science, they are blinkered against the fatal human element: sex and envy, treachery and error. Amber, however, desperate for a child and embarking on fertility treatment, must confront precisely this flawed physicality and a Faustian pact is forged. As the three are increasingly drawn into a transgressive relationship, the result is a series of betrayals that none, finally, will be able to forgive. This is both coolly analytical and erotically subversive in its exploration of passion and power intertwined and breeds a whole DNA sequence of cautionary tales: on weakness, temptation, ambition and the limits of science.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.