Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning author Ken Liu's first sci-fi thriller, his most commercial, accessible, and action-packed outing yet. Julia Z, a young woman who gained notoriety at 14 as the "orphan hacker," is trying to live a life of digital obscurity in a Boston suburb.
But when a lawyer named Piers, whose famous artist wife, Elli, has been kidnapped by dangerous criminals barges into her life, Julia decides to put the solitary life she has painstakingly recreated at risk as she can't walk away from helping Piers and Elli, nor step away from the challenge of this digital puzzle. Elli is an onierofex, a dream artist, who can weave the dreams of an audience together through a shared virtual landscape, live, in a concert-like experience by tapping into each attendee's waking dream and providing an emotionally resonant and narrative experience. While attendees' dreams are anonymous, Julia discovers that Elli was also providing a one-on-one dream experience for the head of an international criminal enterprise, and he's demanding his dreams in return for Elli.
Unraveling the real and unreal will lead Julia on an adventure that will take her across the country and deep into the shadows of her psyche. This is the first in a near-future science fiction thriller series.
