scifi, paris & new orleans, woman turned into bee/human hybrid

the book starts in new orleans. there's a bit about people joining something like the singularity, where they shed their human bodies. it ends up in paris, which has been covered with plants/flowers and a woman, who was an artist or a model, someone close to the protaganist, has been turned into a bee/human hybrid by her own volition and becomes a sort of queen of the new paris. suspense, scifi, political intrigue.

This sounds like one of Kathleen Ann Goonan's nanotech quartet, which has cities covered in flowers and humans changing form. I've only read the first book, Queen City Jazz, which is set around Cincinatti, but I know that later books in the series move to other cities, so might be worth checking out.

If my suggestion is wrong then I hope someone else comes up with the answer as this sounds like a book I'd want to read!

yes! crescent city rhapsody! i've been trying to remember this for years, thanx! sorry if i've given away a bit of the ending...

#3 Don't worry about giving away spoilers, the only thing I recognized from the book was the bees. :-)

I'd recommend starting with Queen City Jazz and going through the series in order.

Glad to have helped! Now I need to find the other 3 books in the series.