Awards
2008 Hugo Award nominee Best Novel
2008 Locus Award nominee
Synopses & Reviews
Now in paperback?from the author of Saturn?s Children.In the year 2018, a daring bank robbery has taken place at Hayek Associates. The suspects are a band of marauding orcs, with a dragon in tow for fire support, and the bank is located within the virtual reality land of Avalon Four. But Sergeant Sue Smith discovers that this virtual world robbery may be linked to some real world devastation.
Review
"Stross again displays his genius for envisioning a complex future society that appears all-too-inevitable." Booklist
Review
"This is his tightest-plotted novel to date, a detective story with a million perfectly meshed moving parts, and a hundred magnificent surprises that had me gasping and shouting YES (to the general alarm of the guy in the next seat on my airplane)....[A] book that will change the way you see the way the world works." Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing
Review
"[A]nother winner for Charles Stross, a writer who has more than ably grabbed the high-tech baton from last century's forebears...and is still running laps with it, without any sign of tiring." SFReviews.net
About the Author
Charles Stross was born in Leeds, England in 1964. He holds degrees in pharmacy and computer science, and has worked in a variety of jobs including pharmacist, technical author, software engineer, and freelance journalist. He is now a full-time writer.