The name of Vladimir Maltsev (b. 1957), traveler, speleologist, photographer, geologist, programmer, etc., as well as the author of scientific articles and the popular book “Cave of Dreams, Cave of Fate” (Astrel, 2001), is known to many . And here's a new book. By the will of the author (and with his light hand) it is genre designated as a novel. However, if we approach from the strict standpoint of defining a genre, what we have before us is rather not a novel, but rather a very complex and whimsically constructed work, incorporating into its literary fabric a variety of genre examples - from a short story, a short story, a landscape sketch, a tourist tale “in the form of light chatter” to drama, one-act plays, letters and essays. The plot of the novel is no less whimsically constructed - it either flows like a calm river, then suddenly rushes, spinning wildly on stormy rapids, to a waterfall, and then suddenly disappears, hiding behind a bend or breaking off immediately behind a rock... But something (or rather - someone!) still holds the “patchwork canvas” of the book, not letting it, not allowing it to unravel, “sewing” the parts into a single harmonious whole. This is the main character (read - the author himself). The distance between them is almost leveled, blurred, although it exists. The most amazing thing is that the reader does not care about these nuances, he is simply endlessly interested in the main character - WHAT he sees, HOW he thinks, WHAT feelings and sensations he experiences. Because the main character is endowed with an amazing gift - to see Beauty in all its manifestations, be it a river, or a cave, or flowing water, or the northern lights, opening half the sky, or “mental turmoil,” or the light in a woman’s eyes... Tirelessly trying to “get there” to the very essence" in search of the Path, the main character found an incomparable treasure - and now, easily opening his hands, he generously scattered it before the readers. Following the above, one can also pick up the musical allusions of the author, who in the subtitle slyly designated his work as “a well-tempered clavier" in the key of F minor, but the essence remains the same - one instrument leads all the others. This is such a “concerto for piano and orchestra.”