Reviews

In this grandly scaled space opera from bestseller Williams (Hardwired), swashbuckling computer scientist Aristide explores pretechnological "pocket" universes in search of interesting "implied spaces," the unintended regions that come into existence between deliberately designed structures. Then he uncovers evidence of a dark collective that's kidnapping people and sending them to pockets where a virus co-opts their minds and turns them into willing spies and assassins. Evidence implicates one of the Eleven planet-sized quantum computers, somehow corrupted in spite of its "Asimovian safeguards." Armed with a wormhole-edged broadsword and accompanied by his sidekick, Bitsy, an avatar of one of the Eleven in the form of a talking cat, Aristide finds himself hunted, brainwashed, killed and resurrected more than once before he learns the truth. Williams tells the tale with enthusiasm and a crisp, dry wit well suited to this entertaining blend of high adventure, intrigue and postsingularity technology. (July) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

In a distant future where artificial intelligences care for humans' needs and death is curable, computer scientist-turned-swordsman Aristide, along with his talking AI cat, Bitsy, explores the pocket universes created by machine intelligences, searching for the implied spaces--pieces of sculpted reality created out of necessity to support these worlds' architecture. On a primitive pocket world called Midgarth, he encounters evidence of a plot that could destroy civilization, and his travels suddenly take on a desperate importance. The versatile author of Voice of the Whirlwind and other hard sf and cyberpunk novels now uses the trappings of fantasy to explore some of science's most sophisticated ideas. Ever surprising, ever provocative, Williams's latest sf adventure belongs in most sf collections. Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.