I bought this book because i loved the concept behind it. A hermaphroditic race evolving out of humanity's remains in a post-apocalyptic world. This edition is a trilogy collected into an omnibus edition. Its about 800 pages long and held my interest for about 500 of them (it faded toward the end of every book of the three). The plot relies heavily on deus ex machina. In fact, the story, such as it is, consists of the protagonist wandering aimlessly (the interesting part) until a deus ex machina intervenes, at which point, the character blindly follows his fate. The writing is good, sort of a new Gothic. People who are interested in sexuality, especially alternate sexuality in science fiction shouldn't miss this book, others, might want to think twice before shelling out the $20 for it.