There is the sudden death of the other sensitives who have trained with Kaaro and the search for the force that is taking their lives. She has a mysterious past that is only revealed in yet another kidnapping episode when Kaaro has to fight for his life. There is his relationship with Aminat, the beautiful woman who “falls in like” with him, and he with her. There is Kaaro’s ongoing tension with Femi and S45, as he often ignores his assignments, forcing them to kidnap him again and again to force him to complete his work. There are several parallel strands to the story. His finding skills are put to the test, and then he is compelled by his new boss Femi to join the organization. One day he is kidnapped by a government agency called S45 that deals with alien phenomena. The passionate attachment to finding the lost thing is one of the few things that deeply stirs his emotions, and it makes him one of the best at what he does.
He has only to open his mind to the xenosphere for a client, and he can perceive at once a path through the xenosphere to the right location. The weightlessness, the lack of a single vector, the loss of control … is this dying? “ Rosewater, Kindle edition, p. I want to stop, to get off, to find my bearings. Alternating light and dark, shadow and flash, a rainbow of impossible colours, extended spectrum. My … presence, my consciousness keeps moving and changing direction too fast for me to think. Sometimes, entering the xenosphere is overwhelming:
A few people, known as sensitives, like Kaaro, can access the xenosphere and pick out the feelings, thoughts, attachments of people for various purposes. It uses this to infiltrate human minds, gradually replacing cells and drawing out information from millions in a one-way flow. It has been releasing artificial cells to form a worldmind called the xenosphere. It turns out he owes his insights as a thief to the alien presence. This enables him to victimize the wealthy who will not miss what he takes, and after a while he breaks into homes of the poor to leave part of what he has stolen. He has an uncanny ability to sense the precise location of hidden valuables. In his early years, he tells us he is indifferent to the world, amoral and a thief. We gradually learn more about him as he shifts among time periods in his life from Now (2066) to Then (his youth in Lagos in the 2030s and 40s and his years in the early Camp Rosewater of the 2050s).
Yet over time, Rosewater becomes a more established city and home to a large population, including Kaaro, who narrates the story. So people flock to the site to be cured, and for years the settlement is a rough shanty town sardonically dubbed Rosewater for its stench quite opposite to that fragrance.
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