The Restoration Game

Description

There is no such place as Krassnia. Lucy Stone should know - she was born there. In that tiny, troubled region of the former Soviet Union, revolution is brewing. Its organisers need a safe place to meet, and where better than the virtual spaces of an online game Lucy, who works for a start-up games company in Edinburgh, has a project that almost seems made for the job: its original inspiration came from The Krassniad - an epic tale, based on Krassnian folklore, concocted by Lucy's mother who studied there in the 1980s. As Lucy digs up details about her birthplace to slot into the game, she finds her interest in the open secrets of her family's past - and the darker secrets of Krassnia's - has not gone unnoticed. When a Russian - Georgian border war breaks out, Lucy has to move fast - and return to Krassnia herself, to the heart of the mountain that holds Krassnia's darkest and oldest secret. But nothing Lucy has discovered can possibly prepare her for the crucial role she is destined to play in The Restoration Game . . .

Since graduating from Glasgow University in 1976, Ken MacLeod has worked as a computer analyst in Edinburgh. He now writes full-time.

Sly humour, deftly drawn characters and intricate plotting . . . this is a writer at the peak of his powers - SFX This is one of the great ironies of contemporary literature: the books that ask the deepest and most profound questions tend to be situated in the most marginalised of genres... Ken MacLeod's [novels] are works of science fiction so worryingly close to rea - SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY