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I was browsing a bookseller's stock one day when I saw a signed set of Paul McAuley's books. I'd heard about him but he'd yet to be published in North America. I was mulling over whether to buy a signed/limited edition by a favourite author of mine (and many, many others). The price of the McAuleys were the same as this single volume. I went for the McAuleys. Boy, was I ever glad I did. Terrific stories, brilliant plot, intriguing characters, peculiar technological notions, I became a fan. So too did a couple of American publishers. They've published many of his titles.

Alex Sharkey is a pudgy, socially inept designer of soon-to-be-illegal psychoactive viruses. He's getting his butt kicked around by a bent cop, the gangster to whom he's in debt, the gangster's minions, his landlord, in fact just about everybody. He's not happy. One day he meets Milena, who looks about eight, acts about ninety and who wants him to design an enzyme. With her contacts and his work, they can convert a new toy of the age, gene-engineered slave dolls, into living beings, fairys. So, he figures, why not? What can it hurt? He'll get out of debt, annoy those who torment him and have a bit of fun. As you can guess, things don't quite happen that way. It begins a quest through Europe, from the Magic Kingdom outside Paris (Disney will not like what he does to EuroDisney) to the Library of Dreams, which may or may not be real (nobody can decide) to Albania where war has made a mockery of western civilization.

McAuley's prose is so striking, his science is so ingenious, his characters are so vivid, that I can't begin to describe his ideas and to do them proper justice. The depth of detail just swept me away. I'll bet that you'll be hooked like I was.

Rodger has read a lot of science fiction and fantasy in forty years. He can only shake his head and say, "So many books, so little time."