Miles Cash is a wealthy entrepreneur pursuing the project of a lifetime.  New Caral is to be a domed-city, making full use of environmental and security technologies, but only if Cash can find investors.  He plans to deliver a sales presentation for prospective partners on the space station Excelsior.

Cash has another reason for anticipating his visit in space.  The station, a combination floating lab and luxury hotel, employs female clones for the pleasure of the guests.  Leena Doda, one of the clones, is the woman of Cash's dreams, and he wants her in his life.
What Cash doesn't know can hurt him.  A former U.S. Intelligence officer has a plan to destroy China, and the Chinese will do anything to avert the apocalypse.  While Presidential advisors struggle to avoid an impending war, the fate of the world lies in the events that unfold on Excelsior.

Michael Paul's first novel is a fast-paced read, with clean, bright prose.   The plot is both logical and surprising, driving toward a final confrontation in space that will keep you riveted to the page until the
last paragraph.  Some science fiction novels give us a glimpse of future technology, projecting cutting-edge science.  Some look at political futures, others look at culture.  EXCELSIOR accomplishes the astonishing task of integrating all three, presenting a compelling world with internal logic and consistency.  But the novel goes deeper still, probing questions of subjectivity- What does it mean to be human?  And what can the changing ethical questions that new technologies require tell us about ourselves today?

I loved this book.  It was a good story, a complex work of imagination, and a thought-provoking barb that hooked my thoughts for days after finishing it.  Simply put, EXCELSIOR is the best science-fiction novel I've read in a decade.