Mari is on a pilgrimage to confront her husband Kit who killed his own physical body in order to download his essence into digital form. He would have Mari join him in digital immortality. But to do so Mari would have to give up her humanity. Even though she is terminally ill she refuses to surrender that which makes her human. Included in vivid full color are all 28 wood carvings by Hokusai that Zelazny references in the text.

Zelazny at his best. Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best Novella.

Roger Zelazny was a science fiction and fantasy writer, a six-time Hugo Award winner, and a three-time Nebula Award Winner. He published more than forty novels in his lifetime. His first novel, This Immortal, serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction under the title ...And Call Me Conrad won the Hugo Award for best novel. Lord of Light, his third novel, also won the Hugo award and was nominated for the Nebula award. He died at age 58 from cancer. Zelazny was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2010.

"A storyteller without peer. He created worlds as colorful and exotic and memorable as any our genre has ever seen." -George R.R. Martin

". . . his performance was never anything other than dazzling." -Robert Silverberg