The Demi-Monde: Winter: A Novel (The Demi-Monde Saga)

Review “Explosively creative barely defines Rod ReesвЂTMs The Demi-Monde Winter. It blew me away as the novel skated on the razorвЂTMs edge between where we are today and where weвЂTMre headed tomorrow. As much a cautionary tale as a gripping thriller cut from a digital cloth.” (James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author of The Devil Colony ) “Strong characters, along with the clever interweaving of seemingly disparate plot threads, make this a standout selection for fans of high-tech sf and cyberfiction.” (Library Journal.com (starred review) ) “A brilliant, high concept series that blends science fiction and thriller, steampunk and dystopian vision. If Neil Gaiman, Neal Stephenson, James Rollins, and Clive Cussler participated in Suzanne CollinsвЂTMs THE HUNGER GAMES, the result might be something akin to the dark and ingenious madness of ReesвЂTMs THE DEMI MONDE: WINTER.” (BookReporter (starred review) ) About the Author Rod Rees has spent his life traveling throughout Africa, the Middle East, Bangladesh and Russia, and consequently found himself living in Qatar, Tehran and Moscow. He has built pharmaceutical factories in Dhaka, set up a satellite communication network in Moscow and conceived and designed a jazz-themed hotel in the U.K. Now a full-time writer, he lives near Derby, England, with his wife, Nelli, and their two children. “You can’t help getting caught up in the smartly-paced story...which is served up with lashings of steampunk relish.”—SFX (UK)“Rees makes the book work: the world he’s created is a psychopathic nightmare.”—The GuardianIn the Demi-Monde, author Rod Rees has conjured up a terrifying virtual reality, a world dominated by history’s most ruthless and bloodthirsty psychopaths—from Holocaust architect Reinhard Heydrich to Torquemada, the Spanish Inquisition’s pitiless torturer, to Josef Stalin’s bloodthirsty right-hand man/monster, the infamous Beria. The Demi-Monde: Winter kicks off a brilliant, high concept series that blends science fiction and thriller, steampunk and dystopian vision. If Neil Gaiman, Neal Stephenson, James Rollins, and Clive Cussler participated in Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, the result might be something akin to the dark and ingenious madness of Rees’s The Demi-Monde: Winter. The Demi-Monde is the most advanced simulation ever devised. Thirty million people ruled by history's cruellest tyrants, locked in eternal civil conflict. The intention: to create the closest thing to Hell, and prepare soldiers for the nightmarish environment of war. But something has gone badly wrong. Reinhard Heydrich - or at least a simulacrum resembling the Nazi monster - has kidnapped the President's daughter from the Real-World and concealed her within the Demi-Monde, making it impossible for the program to be switched off. This achieved, he has cut off all contact with reality. It falls to Ella Thomas, a young jazz singer, to infiltrate Heydrich's virtual domain and rescue the missing girl. But once inside she will discover that everything in the Demi-Monde is not as it seems, and that the Real-World may be in more danger than everyone outside realises The Demi-Monde, a computer-simulated military training world, begins bleeding into the real world when the U.S. president's daughter becomes trapped inside and enlists the assistance of a reluctant teenager to escape