When a sentient 400-year-old artificial intelligence named Cohen kills himself, scattering variously complete copies ("ghosts") into the void of space/time, it's up to his human wife to do the same. Catherine Li scattercasts herself across the known universe, and her various copies wake up in all sorts of places, each of them hoping to reunite with the consciousness, ultimately and incomprehensibly alien, that consumed her life until his death.
Chris Moriarty sets Ghost Spin in the same hard SF universe as his previous two books (Spin Control; Spin State), telling an intriguing story of artificial intelligence--a drama that's also an exploration of the ethics and social dynamics of a society that must contend with vast distances, astro-physical paradoxes and speculative technological marvels.
One version of Li ends up with a space pirate who is host to one of the more fully realized Cohen fragments; she ends up not just in his crew, but in his bed as well. Another version is reassembled from her constituent molecules on the mining planet where she was born. There, Li takes up her old name, Caitlyn, while connecting with the local law enforcement to find out more than she might have wanted to about the true nature of Cohen--and her own identity as a human being. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer & editor