This book blew my mind.

Warning: it’s not a light read. She literally has physics equations scattered throughout the text, and she goes into a ridiculous amount of minutiae–to the point where I almost gave up toward the beginning. But as I kept reading, I began to understand, in a vague way that I could never quite put my finger on even when I finished, that this is an incredibly important work. It touches on the concept of what life is, not just in a philosophical but in a physical, biological, and quantum mechanical way. It describes how life must be a coherent system, in the sense of communication at almost light speed (which defies the generally understood biochemical explanations), and suggests that the crystalline water inside cells (referencing The Fourth Phase of Water, Gerald Pollack) plays a fundamental role in this communication. Not only that, but this structured water can thus refract light shone through it into a rainbow, hence the title–but only when the organism is alive. The moment it dies, the rainbow vanishes, suggesting that order and life are, in some way, synonymous.

Ho wrote for her peers, not really for the general public, and she didn’t seem much bothered with making herself easily understood, But it’s well worth the effort… I’ve since found myself going down the rabbit hole, trying to find similar books to give me a firmer grasp of her ideas, since she herself didn’t seem to publish much else.

My rating: *****

‍