Although critics have written that Baker is too good to be writingthis sort of erotic/pornographic fiction, I beg to differ.Baker has managed to do what so many writers of erotica cannot do-that is, escape the depths of pornographic slime. He does this in two ways. First, Baker's linguistic pyrotechnics make it difficult to remember at certain points that one is reading what most conservatives would consider smut.Secondly, at the end of a selfish and antihumanist plot, the ending is both humanistically poignant and stylistically magnificent. The loss of Fermata powers come at the only moment of true human contact, at the only point where love enters and lust departs. As for the the stylistic magnificence, I will leave that for the reader to discover.