In a future Europe where everyone is genetically designed to be perfect, Dante is a throwback kept in a government-run complex, kept around for his unusual senses of sight and hearing. But when a suspicious fire kills his fellow outcasts, he is targeted in a plan to finally rid the planet of misfits.

Stowing away on a trader ship, he winds up in a strange world of space pirates where his artistic talents are valued, and where he may find his place within the pattern of life.

Songs of Chaos has “color and verve and momentum and a serious point...