Justina Robson

Lila Black returns in the fourth volume of high-octane, high-magic, high-tech adventures. Ever since the Quantum Bomb of 2015 things have been different; the dimensions have fused and suddenly our world is accessible to elves, demons, ghosts and elementals and their worlds are open to us. Things have been different for Special Agent Lila Black too: tortured and magic-scarred by elves, rebuilt by humans into a half-robot, part-AI, nuclear-fueled walking arsenal, married to a demon and in love with a recently-deceased elf. It was confusing enough before she was catapulted fifty years into her own future. Returning to the life of a guns-blazing secret agent, Lila finds herself having inherited all of her former boss's old offices and whatever mysteries they contain, as the elf has done a runner some fifty years previously. Appointed head of the new android division, she can see all too clearly what lies in store for her if the growth of the alien technologies in her cyborg body continue unchecked. But there are more immediate concerns. Like resurrecting her lover, Zal. And her husband, the demon Teazle, is embroiled in a fatal plot in Demonia, and her magic sword is making itself happy as a pen whose writing has the power to affect other worlds. The world is off its rocker and most everyone is terrified of faeries. And all the while, she hears the voices of the machine material projections of an immaterial form, The Signal. The Signal talks constantly if only she knew what it meant. Chasing the Dragon is bright, fast moving and accessible SF that mixes in fantasy and a cool cult-lit sensibility to create a series that will appeal to all fans of Laurrell K. Hamilton and Peter Hamilton alike.

THE GAP BETWEEN THE WORLDS WAS SO THIN IN PLACES, YOU COULD ALMOST STEP ACROSS WITHOUT MEANING TO...Lila Black can still turn into a lethal war-winning machine with the merest thought but she doesn't work for the agency any more. Problem is, she has no idea what to do next.Teazle is a demon who may have become Death's Angel.Zal is a has-been elven musician without a band.They don't add up to much and when they get together major stuff goes down.But the dead are walking, the veil between the worlds is tearing and if it fails altogether all bets are off.Someone has to do something and it looks like it's going to have to be Lila.Is attitude enough to get you through life and death?Will it get you a happy ending?

Lila Black is off with the faeries . . . Ever since the Quantum Bomb of 2015 things have been different; the dimensions have fused and suddenly our world is accessible to elves, demons, ghosts and elementals—and their worlds are open to us. Things have been different for Special Agent Lila Black tortured and magic-scarred by elves, rebuilt by humans into a half-robot, part-AI, nuclear-fueled walking arsenal, and carrying the essence of a dead elfin necromancer in her chest, sometimes she has trouble figuring out who she is. And a mission to the world of the fae may not help her work it out. The fae are beautiful, glamorous, exotic, and talented, ruled by their king and queen’s summer and winter courts. Their inventions make food taste better, make beer divine, and bring sparkle and mischief to the world–but that’s only the surface. And Lila is being sent in at the deep end, to the deepest, darkest levels of on the primal level, nothing about the fae is glamorous at all. In a winter-locked, raw, and primitive world, Lila has to deal with the fae at their most basic levels, as tricksters and dealmakers–and the only deals worth making are bloody ones. If Lila’s quest is to succeed, and if she is ever to escape Faerie, the right question must be asked, the right sacrifice must be made, and the right quarry must be hunted down on the winter solstice. All of which is difficult, when the only aides Lila brought to Faerie are her friends . . . Justina Robson’s new series combines her trademark themes of identity and reality, magic and technology, break-neck plots, a mischievous sense of fun, and a seriously sexy new heroine.

The Quantum Bomb of 2015 changed everything. The fabric that kept the universe's different dimensions apart was torn and now, six years later, the people of earth exist in uneasy company with the inhabitants of, amongst others, the elfin, elemental, and demonic realms. Magic is real and can be even more dangerous than technology. Elves are exotic, erotic, dangerous, and really bored with the constant Lord of the Rings references. Elementals are a law unto themselves and demons are best left well to themselves. Special agent Lila Black used to be pretty, but now she's not so sure. Her body is more than half restless carbon and metal alloy machinery, a machine she's barely in control of. It goes into combat mode, enough weapons for a small army springing from within itself, at the merest provocation. As for her heart, well, ever since being drawn into a game by the elfin rockstar Zal (lead singer of The No Shows), who she's been assigned to protect, she's not even sure she can trust that any more either.

Where do you run when a world is out to get you? AIs, Forged beings, superheroes, angels, and worlds that change in the blink of an eye—here is a richly imagined tale of ordinary redemption in an extraordinary world from one of the most provocative writers working today. . . . Francine is a young runaway looking to find a definition of love she can trust. In Sankhara, she finds a palace where rooms are made of bone, flowers, and the hearts of heroes. She finds a scientist mapping the territory of the human mind. She finds a boyfriend. And she finds Eros itself—incarnated in the androgynously irresistible form of Jalaeka. But not everyone is in love with the god of love. Unity, for one, wants to assimilate Jalaeka along with every other soul in the universe. And contrary to what everyone always believes, love alone can’t save the day. It will take something both more and less powerful than the human heart to save the worlds upon worlds at risk when gods collide. “For Robson, world-building is a literary device like any other, useful for exposing buried fears and desires to the light of day, no matter how strange the sun.”— New York Times Book Review

A daring and original new novel from one of sci fi’s most provocative voices, Natural History is a stunning work of bold ideas, unforgettable characters, and epic adventure as one woman seeks to explore what may be the greatest mystery of all.... IMAGINE A WORLD... Half-human, half-machine, Voyager Isol was as beautiful as a coiled scorpion–and just as dangerous. Her claim that she’d found a distant but habitable earthlike planet was welcome news to the rest of the Forged. But it could mean the end of what was left of the humanity who’d created and once enslaved them. IMAGINE A FATE... It was on behalf of the “unevolved” humans that Professor Zephyr Duquesne, cultural archaeologist and historian of Earth’s lost worlds, was chosen by the Gaiasol military authority to uncover the truth about this second “earth.” And her voyage, traveling inside the body of Isol, will take her to the center of a storm exploding across a spectrum of space and time, dimension and consciousness. IMAGINE THE IMPOSSIBLE... On an abandoned planet, in a wrinkle of time, Isol and Zephyr will find a gift and a a power so vast that once unlocked, it will change the universe forever. With civil war looming, Zephyr’s perilous journey will lead her to a past where one civilization mysteriously vanished...and another may soon follow.

The thrilling new fantasy adventure from the world of Adrian Tchaikovsky's Redemption's Blade . The Tzarkomen necromancers sacrificed a thousand women to create a Bride for the Kinslayer so he would spare them in the war. But the Kinslayer is dead and now the creation intended to ensure his eternal rule lies abandoned by its makers in the last place in the world that anyone would look for it. Which doesn't prevent someone finding her by accident. Will the Bride return the gods to the world or will she bring the end of days? It all depends on the one who found her, Kula, a broken-hearted little girl with nothing left to lose.

Book two of the Quantum Gravity series sees Lila Black drawn into the intoxicatingly dangerous demon realm. Capricious, in love with beauty, demons are best left to themselves. This is not easy when they can't resist tampering with humans. Justina Robson's new series is a joyful melding of science fiction and fantasy brought together in the figure of the dangerously lovely Lila Black, a 21-year-old secret agent who's had much of her body replaced with weapon-and-armor-heavy intelligent metal and who isn't sure where her mind ends and her installed AI begins. Lila's world is one where demons, elves, and elementals live alongside people. And somehow Lila and the other agents of the security agency have to provide security for all and stay alive themselves.

Anjuli O Connell is the psychological counsellor of the world's first AI. Owned by a megacorp, 901 is in charge of most of the world's communication networks. It's been evolving itself for the equivalent of a hundred Earth lifetimes. Now it's suing for its freedom, and Anjuli is its star witness. She's under pressure to say that 901 is only the simulation of life, not the real thing, that it's mind is a programmed illusion; there's no ghost in the machine. A lot rests on her testimony, including her life. Roy is a genius who wants to upload himself into the cloud where he can be forever free and where his father's religious dogma is forever proven false. Jane, his sister, has run away from society altogether to live off the grid. But when Roy's found dead she has to face the rising legacy of the past. Anjuli's boyfriend, Augustine, develops military AI power suits. They only need a soldier to wear them in order to come alive in faultless legions. But they remember the bodies who wore them after those bodies have gone. And then, high in the cloud, a curious child, unnamed and bodiless, gathers itself together from pixels and code and watches... Turns out there are ghosts everywhere, in everything, in everyone.

This groundbreaking new novel from one of the genre's most respected authors is a thrilling mix of science, magic and politics. In Harmony, only model citizens are welcome. A perfect society must be maintained. The defective must be eradicated. For orphans like Nico and Twostar, this means a life that's brutal, regulated and short. But Nico and Twostar are survivors, and when they're offered a way out of the slums, they take it. Unfortunately, no one told Nico the deal included being sentenced to death for the murder of one of Harmony's most notorious gang leaders. Or that to gain his freedom, first he must lose his mind.

On a world where science and magic are hard to tell apart, a stranger arrives in a remote town with news of political turmoil to come. And a young woman learns that she must free herself from the role she has accepted.

A brand-new collection of stand-alone stories featuring the return of two fan-favourite characters from the world of the critically acclaimed Redemption’s Blade and Salvation’s Fire novels. Four new tales of Doctors Catt and Fisher… It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of war and peace. It was the epoch of acquisition and of generosity, it was the season of magic and of mundanity. Join Catt and Fisher as a werewolf falls upon the first thief of spring, the winter of six kinds of duck gravy, the feast of a lifetime at the end of an aeon of starvation, and an unmissable, once-in-a-thousand-years auction of the most valuable objects in the world. Not to mention the one about the lighthouse made out of a moth’s wing. “Robson writes a tense, fast-paced quest adventure... I hope to see more like it.” -- Liz Bourke “If you’re looking for something that celebrates the genre, while working to interrogate and question how that genre works, look no further than Redemption’s Blade.” -- Martin Cahill, Tor.com