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Amazon.co.uk Review
Having already made the final shortlist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award with his SF novels Eternal Light and Pasquale's Angel, Paul McAuley finally won this coveted prize with Fairyland. The title's hint of fey fantasy is blackly ironic: this is a streetwise cyberpunk future, replete with gene-hacking, instant designer drugs, and mind-warping viruses that function as "love bugs" or "loyalty plagues". One spinoff of genetic tailoring is a slave race of blue-fleshed "dolls", modified baboons made bright enough to do society's dirty jobs--until they're liberated by the unholy alliance of an idealistic child prodigy and a biologically savvy nerd, boosting them to thinking, evolving, breeding "fairies". And indeed the night becomes full of unwholesome magic and fanged terrors again, as this new race steps into the old mythological niche of the dark elves, attacking venomously from the trees and setting up their private fairyland in the decayed remains of a certain Magic Kingdom outside Paris... Though occasionally obscure and not quite plausible in all its plot details, Fairyland is a creepily effective nightmare of a world becoming increasingly chaotic under the stress of runaway biotechnologies, excessively deadly toys in the hands of people with no more common sense than children. Vivid and viscerally compelling. --David Langford --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Book Description
When gene hacker Alex Sharkey helps a super-smart girl turn a genetically-engineered doll into a new species he accidentally gives history a dangerous shove --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Eternal Light by Paul McAuley  (1)

Players by Paul McAuley £5.49

Secret Harmonies by Paul McAuley  (2)

Pasquale's Angel by Paul J. McAuley  (2)

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5 Reviews 5 star:  (2) 4 star:  (2) 3 star:  (1) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:    (0)           Average Customer Review (5 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews   6 of 6 people found the following review helpful: An Enjoyable Science Fantasy Loses It’s Way, 31 Dec 2003 By  dogbarkssome (England) - See all my reviews    This review is from: Fairyland (Paperback) For two-thirds of its length Fairyland is an enjoyable character-driven science fantasy, but unfortunately it falls at the final hurdle with an overly obscure and anticlimactic ending. The central idea seems to be an expansion of McAuley’s earlier short story ‘Karl and the Ogre’ (collected in The King of the Hill) with it’s setting of a seemingly fantastic landscape created out of technology. The story centres around the evolution of genetically engineered dolls into fairies – part one showing the creation of the first fairy, with part two dealing with an early colony set up in the remains of the old Disneyland Paris. Both of these are expertly paced as the sympathetic characters draw the reader deeper into the mystery of fairy ‘Queen’ Milena, and paint a disturbing picture of a world where nanotechnology is capable of changing people’s perception on a massive scale. This is excellent stuff, but unfortunately it all falls apart with a confusing finale concerning Milena’s quest for immortality. This muddled and unclear ending ensures the novel ends on a low point, which is a shame for a novel that promised so much. Fairyland also suffers in comparison with Richard Calder’s Dead Girls – another novel that tackles the idea of engineered dolls gaining their freedom, only with a lot more style and emotion. Fairyland is patchy and rather staid in comparison, but this is still an interesting read for sf fans.  Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this)   2 of 2 people found the following review helpful: Alex in Nano-land: Cyber-opera and our cultural origins., 3 Aug 2001 By  Jess (jez@vesicapisces.fsnet.co.uk) (London) - See all my reviews This review is from: Fairyland (Paperback) This book blew my mind. Without giving too much away.. it started like a detective novel, snaked its way through cyber-punk and blossomed into a treatise on the very nature of what it really means to be alive with our need for hopes, fears, symbols and myths. In the not too distant future the boundaries blur between technology , mythology and magic. This is science fiction at its heady best and although somewhat slow to get into, I guarantee that by page 60 you'll never want to put it down. This book lives with you. Fabulous. If you enjoy it (and i know you will) also try Ice People by maggie gee and Child Garden by Geoff Ryman.  Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this)   1 of 1 people found the following review helpful: Very Dark, Very Confusing, Very Good, 8 Dec 2001 By A Customer This review is from: Fairyland (Paperback) An amazingly vivid and colourful read about the future, the dark imagery used for places you can imagine or even know really come to life in a decaying near future set up. The 3 Stories in one are very cleverly interlinked exploring the Birth, Rise and Fall of the free thinking slave robot's called Fairies or Fays. You shoot from London to Paris to Albania in a chase for knowledge and survival against the government and the corperations. I loved it, i will be reading more of his books.  Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this) › See all 5 customer reviews...		Most Recent Customer Reviews My 100-word book review Set in a dystopian near future, Fairyland is filled with exotic and sinister technological wonders. Designer drugs, mind-altering viruses, savage "warewolves", personalities... Read more Published 13 months ago by A. J. Cull A sprawling synthesis of decadence, nanotech and wonder. McAuley has added to the small set of books which add a new paradigm to SF. His atmospheric nanotech-dominated world, infused with the culture of global immersive web-space,... Read more Published on 14 Feb 1999 Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews › See all 5 customer reviews...