Disappointing novel by the author of the excellent collection [b:The Brains of Rats|2246178|The Brains of Rats|Michael Blumlein|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1266667949s/2246178.jpg|1645519]. Frankie de Leon is an exotic dancer who falls in the line of duty during a bizarre audio-visual incident. When she wakes up, she is amnesiac apart from the knowledge that she is male. Her live-in boyfriend, a failed med student named Terry, suspects she is toying with him but humors her, hoping that he can pass her "test."

There some interesting stuff in here, particularly in the first half. Blumlein, a doctor himself, inserts occasional asides drawn from medical texts, including one on how certain types of sound can trigger neurological disorders. Whether this is what has happened to Frankie is never made clear for certain, though considering the supernatural solution to her problem doesn't work, that's my interpretation. The reader knows Frankie isn't fooling, because we see things from her POV, and there are some well-done sections on what it might be like if a man unexpectedly woke up in a female body.

It's in the second half that things fall apart. Frankie finally gets a handle on her physical form and decides to torture Terry both physically and mentally. This felt out of character for either persona to me. And while it's clear all along that Terry has an unhealthy attachment to Frankie, the lengths he is willing to go to satisfy her demands were unbelievable to me. The book veers off into some extreme territory that it doesn't really earn and, in the end, it just didn't work for me. Kathe Koja did this sort of thing better in her novels. ( )