Going Under: Quantum Gravity Book Three [Kindle Edition]

Well, to start with, you have to have read Books 1 (Keeping It Real) and 2 (Selling Out). And there has to be a Book 4!

Book 3 just leaps straight in, taking up exactly where Book 2 left off - in fact, I cannot imagine that Justina Robson even got up from her computer between finishing Book 2 and starting Book 3.

So - we start in Daemonia with Lila and her two husbands, Zal and Teazle. We don't stay there long, though. It's fairly obvious where the book is headed. The previous books were set in Alfheim, Thanatopia, Noomenon and so, finally, Lila reaches the land of Faery.

The 'plot' is too simple - rid Otopia of a plague of Moths - or Mothkin - creatures related in an animal way to the faeries. To do that, Lila must go to the land of Faery. But, of course, it's nowhere near that simple.

The same characters are here - Tath, Poppy, Viridia, Malachi, Sorcha, Zal (of course) and Teazle, Thingamajig and all. But more and darker sides of their natures are revealed, and more mythical characters come in. Actually, mythical is probably the wrong word - symbolic characters would be better, creatures from the beginning of Creation. They could almost be made of 'dark matter' and 'dark energy'.

This is such a strange book. It is full-on, non-stop, in the same way that the previous books have been, but it continues to get darker, harder, more elliptical, much deeper. It seems that the book is becoming more and more a fantasy novel, but it never gets there - where demons can hunt with 'Matter Vaporisators', magic can't really get a look in.

That's what's different about this series. Although ostensibly we are dealing with elves, demons, faeries, imps and all sorts of strange creatures, it's all tied together by the earthly realm of Otopia; you always get the sense there is some 'hard science' lurking under it all. It's not yer average 'let's zap the aliens' sci-fi tale and it certainly isn't sword and sorcery (although there are plenty of swords, along with the Matter Vaporisators) - so, maybe it's science fantasy. Whatever - it's a damn good read. Roll on Book 4!

This book is the latest (the third) in a sequence portraying events after the detonation of a "quantum bomb" that changed the nature of reality, opening up passages between the human world (now known as "Otopia") and those of elves, demons, faeries and so on. If that sounds a little twee, the books aren't like that all. They are relentlessly paced, action packed and centred on a heroine (secret agent/ spy/ detective Lila Black) who, following a magical attack, has been rebuilt as part machine (and is, by the start of this volume, married to both a demon and an elf).

I've been enjoying the series, finding it fun how Robson uses her hi-tech heroine to explore a different "mythological" realm in each book, painting each as a rich and vibrant society that both belies and reflects human legends. Things seemed to have settled into a pattern, and I wasn't, therefore too suprised when this volume took Lila (and the band of friends she has collected) to the land of the Faeries - a predictably tricksy place where, of course, nothing is as it seems and a Quest must be performed. There are loose ends still to be dealt with from the earlier books: no doubt these would eventually be dealt with.

But then... well, it would spoil things to give away too much about this book, but I will say that Robson seems to have knocked her whole scheme sideways. She doesn't just do this is a negative way, it's as if a whole new concept has been maturing inside the original framework, which hatches, almost imperceptibly but then shoulders everything aside, a kind of cuckoo. I don't know how that will turn out in the next volume - Chasing the Dragon - but I'm waiting even more impatiently for that (a year! another whole year!) than I did for this one.

It's anybody's guess what happens next, but I think it's going to be good.

Two final random thoughts

- this is the kind of book where every word spoken, every thought and encounter, is significant since each character has several agendas. You can't really know what's going on until the end (and only then on rereading). If you don't like that (I do) it's perhaps not the book for you.

- the blurb on the back of the paperback edition I read was so howlingly wrong it's actually funny. It described "Otopia" as the Faery world, when it is the future "Earth". At the risk of sounding like a pedant, I think that's about the most basic mistake you could imagine with this series - does no-one who writes these things actually read the book?

This series is quite simply one of the most unique, absorbing and most well-written sc-fi/fantasy cross breed set of novels around. Justina Robson has an extraordinary imagination, matched by a breathtaking ability to get right to the heart of diverse characters. She writes men equally well as women, feckless faeries equally well as monsters, and has a rare capacity to give both a convincingly tender and steel edge to both, depending on the situation. But it is also her use of language that soars: the depiction of the world of Faery in the last hundred pages of this novel, in it winter aspect with Jack in control, and within that the conjuring moment by moment of characters as intriguing as Gulfolyle, is pure lucid invention at its most stunning. I've been left on holiday having finished this book in a place I can't buy Chasing the Dragon for at least a week, and I can't decide whether that's bad because I can't read it or good because after I have finish it what then? Many of the finest writers alive focus on the sc-fi, fantasy and horror genres these days, but no one brings a personal vision to it more alluringly attractive than Justina Robson.