From Booklist
In a future Europe now called the Eurostates, Dante is a hopelessly maligned but legally tolerated outcast. He is set apart from his society of genetic Normals because of his asthma and unusual senses of sight and hearing. After collaborating with revolutionaries (only in order to find a niche somewhere) and fleeing a house for misfits, Dante stows away on a trader ship and soon finds himself in a strange world of Portuguese space pirates known as malandros. Among them, Dante finally distinguishes himself with his singular artistic talent, which in a society of artisans and songsters is highly prized, and at last realizes his individual value within a higher pattern. Veteran sf novelist Lewitt very skillfully places original and realistic characters in an odd but vividly imagined carnival-like setting complete with fiestas and multicolored parrots. Sf fans looking for less emphasis upon high-tech gadgetry and more upon a future culture will be rewarded by his effort.
Carl Hays
Ingram
In the futuristic world in which he lives, Dante McCall, the only person not genetically identical to everyone else, is branded a freak, banished from Earth, and stranded among a strange starfaring culture.
