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"Remember the Fates, those ancient Greek spinners, weavers and snippers of life's threads? They're back in McCullough's original and outstanding debut, and still ruling destiny — but with their own digital web, based on a server called the Fate Core. Power-hungry as ever, they've coded a spell to eliminate human free will. Unluckily for them, one of their demigod descendants is a cheerfully rebellious hacker-sorcerer named Ravirn who, when not studying for college midterms, likes to mess around on their web with the help of his familiar, Melchior, who can change from a goblin to a laptop. Ravirn and Melchior, let loose in McCullough's delightfully skewed and fully formed world — much like our own, but with magic, paranormally advanced technology and Greek gods — set out to thwart Ravirn's 'great-to-the-nth-degree aunt[s],' careening from one discovery to another, enlisting unlikely allies and narrowly evading destruction at the hands of both Fates and Furies. McCullough handles his plot with unfailing invention, orchestrating a mixture of humor, philosophy and programming insights that give new meaning to terms as commonplace as 'spell checker' and esoteric as 'programming in hex.' Though a preponderance of techie-talk may put off some readers, this is the kind of title that could inspire an army of rabid fans; it's a good thing a sequel is planned for 2007." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Ravirn is a computer hacker/sorcerer extraordinaire in 21st-century digital magic. When one of the three Fates uses a computerized spell to erase human free will, Ravirn opposes her--and all hell breaks loose in this first title of an all-new contemporary fantasy series. Original.