Fairyland

Alex Sharkey is looking for the queen of the elves. Well - that's not quite true, but she's really not quite human. Thing is he thinks he loves her - though it might actually be a face full of nanobots, and not love. Maybe she's more than human, or human plus, or whatever you want to call it. Still, it becomes quite the quest for this overweight psychotropic virus engineer, and while there don't appear to be any dragons breathing fire down his neck, there are still some pretty big government and criminal organizations who would prefer it if Alex never gets as far as finding his new amour, which really amounts to the same thing, really. Conceptually, Paul McCauley has managed to create a story that does not actually need the fizz-bang technology that pervades it to be good. It would be good if the tech involved a stick and some semi-solid mud. The characters are real, they breathe, and you can almost smell the sweat from their overactive imaginations. They grow, and change a little, and you can see the little changes that show as much. He's also got this flow to his writing - it's a bit like dream sex - all smooth and warm and effortless, which is a nice contrast to the storyline, which is edgy, dark, and filled with foreboding. He gets a bit tied up towards the end - there's a late character introduction or two that I thought were unnecessary, but, quite frankly, this is such a good ride that I don't mind that little bump there the least.