booklist

“It’s elegantly constructed, skillfully written, and absolutely impossible to stop reading.”  

I don't know about you, but a sentence like that?  Interest piqued.  However, Booklist (in it's *starred* review!) of The Demi-Monde: Winter, has more praise to give…

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“Already published to acclaim in the UK, this highly imaginative novel, the first in a projected series, blurs the line between reality and computer-generated fantasy until the line simply ceases to exist. Ella Thomas, an 18-year-old jazz singer, is recruited for a dangerous and mind-boggling job, to go inside the Demi-Monde, an elaborate computer program designed to train combat soldiers, and bring out the daughter of the president of the U.S., who has become stranded inside it. Like Philip Jose Farmer’s classic Riverworld series, the novel features an assortment of historical characters from various eras (its primary villains are the Nazi Reinhard Heydrich and black magician Aleister Crowley), and the Demi-Monde, a computerconstruct with its own geographical, political, religious, and social structure, may remind some readers of the film The Matrix. Despite similarities to genre classics, the book stands on its own two feet. It’s elegantly constructed, skillfully written, and absolutely impossible to stop reading. It ends on a beauty of a cliffhanger, too, pretty much guaranteeing that readers will be biting their nails until the sequel appear.”

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You know what I hate?? When the series isn't finished and you desperately HAVE to read the next book immediately.  Talk about #firstworldproblems.  That is the case with this book, but please find out for yourself.  Read an extract of the UK edition here, and then make it your New Years Resolution to read it!

– Annie