Going Under

Quantum Gravity #3

by Justina Robson

Book three of the Quantum Gravity Series sees Lila Black back from her adventures in Demonia and struggling to cope with the even stranger world of Faerie. And these Faeries couldn't be less like Tinkerbell. These Faeries are capricious, unknowable and dangerous. And they will be Lila's toughest test yet. Lila may have reached some sort of peace over the fate of her parents, she may have built some bridges with her sister but when you're half cyborg, when you contain enough high-tech weaponry to win a small war, when you don't know your heart, still love an elf and don't trust your bosses you can be capricious unknowable and quiter dangerous enough yourself. This is a fast moving SF fantasy full of thrills and adventures but informed with a ready wit and prepared to touch on serious themes of identity, reality and sexual politics.

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Urban Fantasy, Fiction, Cyberpunk, Science Fiction Fantasy, Magic

304 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2008

About the author

Justina is from Leeds, a city in Yorkshire in the north of England. She always wanted to write and always did. Other things sometimes got in the way and sometimes still do...but not too much.

Reviews

[Belinda Vlasbaard · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,5 stars - English Ebook

I have just finished the first three Quantum Gravity books and I have pre-ordered the fourth. Justina Robson is a marvel. In 40 years of reading SF, very few authors have delighted me or kept me guessing about what was going to happen next as Robson.

Robson hasn't so much blended SF and fantasy tropes as she's smashed them together in a supercollider. She has filled her story with myth, legend, deep metaphysical exploration, gestalt psychology, scientific speculation and sweet sexuality without slowing down the roller coaster ride.

[autumn]

dnf at 168 pages. these books are just so RIDICULOUSLY almost laughably complicated and there is some cool stuff, but they're just so hard to get through; i know if i try to keep at it i'll just end up in a slump

[Jason Pettus · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

So once again, it's time for me to pen a single essay concerning an entire series of genre books; because once again I'm tackling a combination of back-titles and a new title from our good friends at genre publisher Pyr, who earlier this year sent me an entire giant box full of cool-looking books merely because I asked them to. And in this case it's the latest three books by our old friend Justina Robson, whose classic artificial-intelligence primer Silver Screen really blew me away when I read it earlier this year (yep, it was yet another book in this big box from Pyr), and made me realize why she's considered by many to be one of the real shining lights of the so-called "British New Wave" of science-fiction authors in the early 2000s. But this time, though, she delivers something completely different: not a serious mindbending drama about "hard science" conceits, but rather a racy, darkly humorous grand fantasy saga, with not exactly a lot of actual sex thrown in but certainly a lot of sexiness. The name of the entire storyline is the "Quantum Gravity" series (consisting so far of 2006's Keeping It Real, 2007's Selling Out and 2008's Going Under*, with more maybe to come); and I have to admit that they quite literally charmed the socks right off me, despite me having barely any tolerance whatsoever for the fantasy genre in general.

Ah, but this isn't any ol' fantasy series, see; it's written in the style of a newish subgenre called "urban fantasy," a type of story that barely existed at all before the mid-1980s or so, but has suddenly exploded in recent years in a way rarely seen in the world of the speculative arts. And to understand what urban fantasy is, one needs simply to recall its two most popular examples, the Harry Potter series and Buffy the Vampire Slayer; they are stories where for one reason or another, tropes from the world of traditional fantasy (wizards, magic, trolls, ogres, etc etc etc) somehow exist within a contemporary, science-based society. And it's this and this alone that makes urban fantasy even tolerable to me at all; because to tell the truth, the thing about traditional Tolkien-style fantasy that drives me the craziest is all the flowery Medieval crap that comes along with it, all the endless stilted dialogue and pre-tech warfare and traipsing around the woods by candlelight and the rest. (And in an attempt to pre-emptively stop a rash of angry letters from coming in, let me make it perfectly clear that I don't think there's anything wrong with liking traditional fantasy, simply that it's not my particular cup of tea, just as there are lots of people who can't stand the silly neo-Victorian finery of the "steampunk" genre that I so adore.)

But this being Robson, of course, she's come up with her own jarringly unique twist on things, which in good "world-building" style starts with a seemingly simple conceit behind it all, which then gets more and more complex the further you examine it: namely, that throughout the entire course of human history, there have actually been half a dozen inhabited planets scattered across the universe, each of the others filled with the kinds of creatures we've only known before in fairytales (a world full of elves, a world full of demons, a world full of fairies, etc), and that a recent mysterious cataclysmic event (known as the "quantum bomb") ripped open an interdimensional gateway between the worlds for the first time. And right away, in fact, Robson does with this concept one of the most brilliant things I've ever seen a genre author do, which is to answer all the immediate questions one would have concerning such a quantum bomb with a simple, "Nobody knows;" that in fact one of the many side-effects of this bomb was to collectively wipe humanity's memories of life before the bomb (much less what caused the bomb itself), to such a profound extent that Earth isn't even called 'Earth' anymore but rather 'Otopia,' to signify The World That Is from The World That Was.

What these books mostly concern themselves with, then, are the ways these various races deal with each other, now that they can all travel freely between the worlds, as well as humanity's efforts to learn as much about these other planets as possible; and Robson does this in a way that harkens all the way back to Silver Screen, by presenting us with the delightfully neurotic main protagonist Lila Black, who is half big-hipped indie-rock nerd queen and half mechanized warrior robot, the result of a freak one-time bionics experiment by what is now Otopia's interdimensional spy agency, after a previous assignment that went bad and left her nearly dead. This is actually one of the things Robson is known for, in fact, addressing female body-image issues through the filter of some pretty astounding hard-science concepts; and just like the self-conscious big-hipped female heroine of Silver Screen, so too is Lila's preoccupation with her looks a running theme to the Quantum Gravity series, and so too does Lila spend quite a bit of time pondering how her semi-hideous half-mecha body** comes across to others, and how it does and does not affect her love life among all the various creatures out there in the interdimensional universe.

Because did I not mention that the whole thing is a raunchy sex comedy too? The whole thing is a raunchy sex comedy too; although please be aware that in the best tradition of erotic tales written by women for women, there are precious few actual graphic sex scenes in the series (only one or two per book), with Robson otherwise pulling off the Austenesque feat of filling the books with sexual tension and grown-up humor instead. And again, she does this in these sometimes infinitely clever ways, that rely heavily on the fantastical elements of the universe she's created; take for example her entire concept of 'aether,' which in the world of "Quantum Gravity" is supposed to be a sort of form of naturally existing energy that humans simply never knew about before the bomb, a sorta free form of electricity and an internet-style wireless communications network all at once, or perhaps it's better thought of like "The Force" from the original Star Wars trilogy, a kind of living energy that binds together all living creatures and affects their actions in subtle ways. It's a substance that can be detected and manipulated by the elves, who turn out to be the second most talked-about race in these books after humans -- creatures who look almost exactly like the elves from Lord of the Rings, only much more pissy if you can believe it -- and in fact the elves of Robson's universe actually have two different bodies, a physical one and then an aetheric one that sorta hangs around and inside and outside the corporeal one, and which actually feeds off this mysterious aether and can do things with it that seem to humans like old-skool magic (and by 'old-skool' I mean King Arthur).

So, to cite one of Robson's ribald examples of what can be done with such a conceit, consider this: that if you've ever in the past felt a sorta strange thing in the air whenever you've partaken in an intense flirtation with someone, something that feels almost like a kind of charged electricity between the two of you that moment, according to Robson you're not just making things up -- this really is the aether of the universe affecting the two of you, working in these incomprehensible ways to make that repartee a much more passionate, dangerous thing than it would otherwise be. And this is just one example I'm talking about, with Robson actually throwing in dozens of them throughout this plainly-written, easy-to-follow series -- from the demon etiquette of attending cocktail parties bathed in the blood of your enemies, to the druglike high humans get while having sex on one of the aether-heavy non-Otopian planets, and a whole lot more smart and kinda dirty stuff to boot. And this of course is to say nothing of the hundreds of nonsexual details about this universe that Robson layers in throughout, which in classic Tolkienian style exists not just of a series of exotic mythologies but even numerous mythologies within these mythologies; there is not just one race of elves but two, for example, with a complicated Indian-style caste system that defines both their relationship and their society in general, plus with an extinct third race whose genocide is a closely-guarded elvish secret, which may or may not have something to do with the quantum bomb that humans can no longer remember anything about. Now multiply this by a hundred, and you're starting to get an idea of the myriad of levels Robson builds into this mesmerizing, addictive universe.

It's hard for me to overstate just how great I found this series, and how like Silver Screen I found it an almost perfect example of its particular genre done right; or in other words, if you're the type of person who only reads one fantasy book a year, you could do a lot worse than to make it Keeping It Real (book 1 of this series) for 2009. An endlessly inventive hybrid of technology and magic, tied together with an internal logic as rock-solid as genre fiction gets, this is sure to be a much-loved treat to any speculative fan out there. The entire series gets a big recommendation from me today.

Out of 10: 9.3, or 10 for existing fantasy fans

*All that said, let me confess that I did not read book 3 of the series, Going Under; because no matter how well-written of fantasy books these are, they're still fantasy books, and I found my natural distaste for fantasy simply rearing its ugly head again by the time I was halfway through book 2. This however still does not change my opinion expressed above, that even non-fans of the genre should tackle at least the first book in the series, and that those who like fantasy in general even a little would be wise to gobble up the entire thing.

**And speaking of body-image issues, please be aware that the Lila described in the books looks profoundly different than the admittedly kickass illustrations by Larry Rostant gracing the covers of all these titles, and that this is a big part of where her neurosis comes in; how ironic, in fact, that one of her ongoing anxieties is over not looking like one of those Neil-Gaiman-reading pixie hipster cosplay hotties she's exactly depicted as on the books' covers.

[Barb in Maryland · Rating 1 out of 5]

And I got part way into this book and I realized--I just don't care anymore.

[Laura.has.too.many.books · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lila Black and her 2 husbands embark on another adventure when earth is overflown by soultrapping moths. As they press on through harsh Fae lands Lila notices more changes in her cyborg body and her friends go through some harsh changes too.

Pro's:
+ It is so incredibly easy to get lost in this book. Justina Robson is one of those authors that can write stories that suck you in ( even though the story doesn't really make any sense). I read this in the breaks at work and it was very hard to put it down everytime.
+ The concept of this whole series is amazing. A girl losing a big part of her body, getting a cyborg body from a secret department of the US goverment and then going on multiple adventures with her friends in diverse dimensions and meeting all kinds of creatures.


Con's:
- There is a mayor con to this story and that is because it is all over the place. I couldn't tell you, in chronological order, what happens in this story. It is very unmemorable and that is a big shame, as the concept of this series is pretty epic. You hop from place to event and it happened multiple times that I had no idea were I was anymore.

This book was a bit disappointing for me. Even though I quite enjoyed reading this, it was so unmemorable that I couldn't explain what happened in it on the same day I finished reading it. The 3 stars are for the concept of this story and the ease with which it can be read. I just wished it wouldn't be all over the place.

[Robin Duncan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like a lot about these stories. I like the main characters, and I like the ideas, the vivid imagination on display in the creation of the world, that seems to continue to expand with each chapter, let alone novel. I like the voice, the tone and the style, however, you can hear the big old 'but' coming, can't you? Frequently, I find it difficult to engage with events, character motivation and plot. I often find myself unsure why 'we' are going somewhere, or what the overarching goal of the action is, and that the payoff is...less satisfying than I was hoping. I think this story is a prime example, when the motivating factor ends up not being resolved (yet?), and almost is discounted at the end. It felt somewhat like an afterthought, to me. There are so many characters, and they seem to spend most of their time explaining background to each other. I found this third instalment, more than the first two, so dense with backstory and world-building that I struggled to find an emotional focus to invest in.

Maybe I could sum up by saying I always seem to end up with more questions than I had at the start, and wanting more character emotions, and personal interaction. Cards on the table, I must admit to being on the fence about continuing with the series.

[Kyllian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lila's adventure continues through new other worlds. I get the feeling that each new world is more alien than the previous one. In this book, the story takes you deep into the realm of the faeries. A realm where a time can be a place and a place can be a time. The weird fluid nature of the world makes the book fun to read, but it requires some extra attention to follow what is happening. Luckily, some characters are a bit confused about the faerie world, which helps with some of the explanations.

The steps in Lila's character development are becoming more intense, and I'm interested to see where it is headed in the next books.

[Martyn F · Rating 4 out of 5]

i have a hard time explaining why I like this Quantum Gravity series so much. I think it is because of the interesting characters and worlds.

The stories always seem to head of into one direction and then suddenly go into a completely different direction. But somehow that does not matter.

There happen a lot of things that I do not completely understand. But somehow that does not matter either (even though it would bother me in most other books).

So it is probably the surprising nature of the story and the characters, the humor and the quick pace, that make me really like this series.

[Tracey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lila Black is a woman with a special set of skills. A special agent who has been rebuilt into a half - robot, AI, weapon.
In an attempt to figure out what is going on she enters the world of the fae .
This is the third book in the series and I have not read the previous two. You are able to get enough of a sense of what had happened prior to figure the story out.
Lila is an interesting character. The world building is complex. The action is there but I really struggled with the book.

[Karina]

It only took me a few pages to remember why I never moved beyond book 3 in this series. I got confused. I could cope with the two husbands (or so I'd like to think), the imp, the import soul, the fairy and the demon. But apparently I draw the line at moths.

So thank you Justina Robson, it's been sort of great. Still LOVE the idea of a robot-girl in a world where dimensions opened up and no human remembered how it was before.

[Ross · Rating 3 out of 5]

More confusing than her previous books, which I would guess is solely due to Faery influence. But satisfying nonetheless. Not sure where the series is going but actually as with her previous novels the plot makes you want to find out.

[Graham Carter · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book rushed to an ending that glossed over the Mothman problems, didn't satisfy the reader over other aspect of what was happening to Lila. If this is how the series will be continuing count me out as a reader1

[Eddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK, but a bit confused about what type of book it wants to be.

[Tony Castley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Travelling to the fairy or fey realm the story now gets deeper and more interesting. I am loving this series.

[Webcowgirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aaaaahh a glorious mix of cyberpunk and high fairy tale.

[Karissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the third book in the Quantum Gravity series by Justin Robson. There are supposed to be at least 5 books in this series. The fourth book "Chasing the Dragon" came out in August of 2009. This was a decent book, I liked it better than "Selling Out" book 2, but there are still some things that are a bit crazy about this book especially towards the end. I listened to this as an audio book and the quality was okay but not the best I have heard.

The book start with Lila Black in Demonia. Right away we find out she has married both Zal and the demon Teazle and they are honeymooning in Demonia. The honeymoon consists primarily of fighting off various demon assassins to prove herself worthy of her husbands. Then Malichi shows up and tells Lila that her and the boys are needed in Otopia to deal with the Moth Crisis that is going on. Lila and Zal end up being pushed into fairy before they are ready and then the whole gang is suddenly dealing with events in the realm of fairy that are way bigger than they are. Lila is also continuing to change as her machine and natural body parts become less and less separate.

This was an interesting book. If the first book in the series was about the elven world and the second was about Demonia, then this book is about the fairy realm. As has been the case with these books there is a lot going on and it seems like Lila (Or maybe Robson) looses site of what the main story plot is. The book is a bit slow to start as we get to watch Lila, Zal, and Teazle "relax" in Demonia. Once they get pulled into the Fairy Realm then things really pick up pace and get very interesting. This book is more linear than the last book was and doesn't switch viewpoint as much.

The biggest strength in this series is the world building. The characters are also very interesting. The biggest thing I have a problem is with the plot; it kind of skitters around everywhere. There are so many things that are mentioned but never really addressed. For example the worlds cracking apart is talked about but never really dealt with, getting rid of the Moths appears to be a major goal of the stories but is dealt with in passing, Lila and Zal's Game is brought up once but never really dealt with, etc. etc. I am still unsure about how I feel about Robson's writing style. It takes me a bit to get used to, but after I get used to it I am okay with it.

The usual cast of characters is brought into the book and sometimes I found them overwhelming. Now we are not just dealing with Lila and Zal, but Lila, Zal, Teazle, the imp, Malichi, and Tath...not to mention all the side characters. I guess I just feel like this book could have been tighter and a bit better planned. I won't include any spoilers but the end of the book left me kind of confused and dissatisfied, not to mention it didn't really sum up anything.

Overall, I am still fascinated by Robson's world and her characters. I am disappointed in the plot and how it goes all over the place bringing up a million new issues but resolving none of them. Will I read the fourth book? Probably. This is a very creative and intriguing series and that draws me to it, but I may not read any more after that it the plot is still scattered.

[Paul Perry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Justina Robson's Quantum Gravity series is a romp of an adventure with some depth to it. Following the 'Quantum Bomb' event, alternate worlds of Elves, Demons and Faeries are opened up to ours and humanity has to come to terms with this new reality. The central character is Lila Black, a former foreign office worker who, following a terrible accident, has been rebuilt s a kick-arse cyborg but is also increasingly effected by the magic (or aether) of the other worlds, to which humans are largely oblivious.


It is a strange mix of sci-fi and fantasy that nonetheless works well. There is an obvious debt to fantasy role-playing games; I suspect, for instance, that Robson may have played the wonderful Shadowrun game which similarly links technological sci-fi, magic and folkore, and explores some of the same themes.


And this is not just an adventure tale, there are multiple themes examined and explored - culture clashes and personal identity, the assumption of universality and cultural relativism. Robson is particularly good at portraying Lila's gradual realisation of how utterly alien these other worlds are and the shattering of her cultural assumptions.


This, the third installment, takes us from Daemonia into Faerie, the most purely magical of the worlds. Robson brings together different threads of legend and folklore to construct a shadowland that is recognisable to anyone familiar with the tropes of Celtic legend - a land where time moves differently than our world, where the land and the seasons are aspects of the king and every interaction is predicated on trades and deals that seem designed to trick the unwary - and yet alien. As Lila and her companions moved deeper into this winter world I was reminded of the great Robert Holdstock's utterly sublime Mythago Wood cycle.


While not as good a writer as Holdstock (and that is no slight; I would rank him as one of the greats of modern fantasy) Robson can be a very good writer indeed. She draws character well, especially the facets of these ancient people as they move into a situation that leads to self discovery. There is the occasional clumsiness in the generally good prose, which feels like a drafting or editing problem.


I was a little torn on my rating between 3 and 4 stars. I don't feel I can quite give 4, although I do admit that part of that is that I am comparing this to Robson's earlier work; before the Quantum gravity books she wrote some very hard and very, very good SF ad I kind of would like her to return to that, but I suppose that is simply my personal preference.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd say that the theme if this one is secrets, those everyone is keeping from each other and those they're keeping from themselves. It starts off somewhat lighter, with Lila just worried about telling Zal and Teazle that she's not happy in Demonia and that she wants to get back to Otopia and get to work. But a dangerous situation quickly spirals out of control, and when someone they love gets hurt, anger and regret leads to more secrets and blame. And Zal has secrets about what he's doing with his music. Mal has secrets about what he did to help Lila. Thingamajig has secrets but he can't remember them. Tath is a secret from everyone except Lila and Zal. Lila's boss Sarasilien is a lot older than he seems and more in love with Sorcha than he should be. Lila won't admit how she feels about anything, which is how she got attached to Thingamajig, she's fooling herself about everything from Zal to work to how rapidly her body is changing without anyone having any idea why or how to stop it. The secrets pile up and influence every aspect of the story.





As for the story, it could have been a bit more focused, but it was generally quite good. I like how complex the worlds and people's have become, I just could use a bit of focus in telling a through story. I still don't understand anything about the ghosts and so far the mentions of them and the stuff with that ghost hunter Jones have just confused me. I assume it will be more relevant in future books. There are some other things that felt either confusing or just got dropped, but again, maybe they'll be addresses in future books.



But what's really great, other than Lila herself, is the way that the author has turned what started out in book to to look like a very generic picture of human, elf, demon, and faery worlds and turned it into something that has elements that we recognize from many popular ideas about those groups, but turns them and gives them unexpected depth and interest and interactions. The people aren't the only ones with secrets, not by far! And the secrets the worlds have to give up will change everything.



The end of the book was definitely one of those cliffhangers at the midpoint in a series that just makes you nuts when you don't have the next book immediately handy. Lila ends the book completely stripped down emotionally and almost alone; for various reasons she quickly goes from having a solid group if supportive companions and loved ones to being almost entirely alone in an almost completely foreign place, and of course she's in danger and limping away... Ack! Boy do I hope that book comes into my library early this week! I'm first on the waiting list at least.

[Raj · Rating 3 out of 5]

The third in the Quantum Gravity series, this one starts nuclear-powered cyborg Lila Black married to an elf and a demon and enjoying a honeymoon in Daemonia. This starts to go sour as more and more demons try to duel Lila for her power and prestige in having married a scion of one of the most powerful families in the land. Although with her AI-assisted reflexes and battle-technology she is easily able to defeat these challengers, the senseless waste of it is getting to her, so it's a relief when she is recalled to her own world for a new mission. A type of faerie called Mothkin are infesting Otopia (what Earth became after the Quantum Bomb broke the barriers between realities) and the Agency is sending her to Faery to try and find a solution.

There's a lot to this book but I found the first half somewhat hard going, mainly due to Lila. In previous books, Lila has been a sassy, fun and kick-ass character, in this one she seems to mope a lot. The last third of the book, when she and her gang eventually get to Faery, the pace picks up. This isn't the Faery of fairy tales or even of courts and intrigues, but a deeper, scarier place which Robson describes wonderfully.

By the end, Lila has been stripped of almost everything she had, her friends, her lovers, her place in the world, even her sense of self, as her magically charged machine components slowly start encroaching on her organic parts.

The final twist is a bit harsh, considering everything else that's gone on and I'm not entirely sure if it's a good decision on Robson's part, but that won't stop me from getting the fourth book anyway.

[Michael Mcclelland · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only made it to this, the third book in the Quantum Gravity series, on the potential indicated by the preceding two. While the genre clash and multiverse setting were definite pulls, they were almost outweighed by the push of an uneven pace: alternatively dizzyingly breakneck through action sequences and achingly slow in getting to the grist of a series-spanning story arc.



Whether it's through the confidence gained in being well into what must now be a relatively successful (critically if not commerically) series, or for some other reason entirely, the writing is far better balanced this outing; more mature, it could be said.



Briefly, our cadre of super friends established in the preceding works are finally confronted with a mission befitting their substantial talents. Er, well, no, not really. So it's just as well they don't particularly dwell on that and instead have a series of interesting and relevant personal crises before being waylaid by fate and thrown into the world of Faery.



Sound good so far? It is, but don't get too settled. In Faery land, to lend the appropriate hippy mystique, the author succumbs to the worst feature of the fantasy genre: they start getting poetic. Withstand this onslaught of bullshit though and it's full steam ahead to a cracking finale.



Best writen of the series so far. So much so that it's not only the potential promise leading me to the next book, but my own interest.

[Literary George (For Your Literary Pleasure Blog) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally reviewed at For Your Literary Pleasure
Because my comments for the last three books in the series are similar I'm cheating and making them have one review - sue me. In all honesty, this series could have been shorter. There were many scenes that dragged on despite having one of the more intricate plots I've read in a Sci-Fi/Fantasy book. My drive to finish the series was pushed by my inability let characters go with no resolution - I NEEDED to know what happened to Lila, Zal and Teazle. I was disappointed Teazle always got the short end of the stick and we never truly explored his dynamic with Zal and Lila. He was my favourite character, especially after Zal had his accident because Zal never quite returned to the quirky guy I adored. The final book was paced faster than any of the others and despite reading ALL of the books over 3 days I still managed to lose track of what was going on. I ended up reading the last chapters of the last book multiple times just to get the plot threads straight... Argh. My overall conclusion is that while I enjoyed the series overall it was a challenge that wasn't always entertaining.

xxx Literary George
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[Nev Percy]

Justina Robson is on top form with this Lila Black series. Don't be put off by the genre-crossover 'pitch' of cyber-babe meets elves and fairies and magic and what-not -- it's really good stuff!

The writing is incredibly tight, and the various otherwordly goings-on are so well thought out I'm just jealous!

Going Under, specifically, is 'the faerie one' -- but these are truly timeless creatures rather than twee expressions of mediaeval whimsy, a point made real by their relating to the modern (just slightly future) world as well as their own realm. Telling a tale of faerie that has the right 'feel' without just being a derivative retelling is quite a tall order, but she pulls it off with panache. This vision of Faerie rivals Mythago Wood, but has the added twist of quite how deep the faeries' timelessness goes! Read it and see what I mean.

I make only the most flattering criticism: that it was too short. The crowd goes wild. More! More!

But the story arc of the whole series is coming into sight now. Revisiting Faerie will have to wait, as we plunge onward.

[CD · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly, I can't imagine where Robson will take us next. This third installment in the Quantum Gravity series is the best I think. She bring together Teazle and Lila in a totally unique way, explaining Teazle's background and motivation in such a way as to naturally include him in the mix. Zal and Lila continue to play out their game, and still pine for just a few minutes alone to see where the relationship is going. This book has the crew going into Faery and deep into a game played by the Others. I won't go into more detail for fear of spoiling the book. Suffice it to say that Robson takes some legends and turns them on their ear. She is brilliant at taking an idea and making it new, fresh and completely her own. And she ends the book in the most exciting way that literally leaves you breathless for more.

[Micheline · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wish there was a 3 1/2 star rating, but there's not, and nobody reads these anyway, so I probably shouldn't fixate on it. Her previous two quantum gravity books involved the complicated and often sexual relationships between elves, fairies, cyborgs and demons having adventures throughout multiple universes. They were weird and completely groovy. Justina definitely took it one step weirder in this book, and a really enjoyed it, and it satisfied my secret fantasy of being a super-hot homicidal cyborg with a demonic elven boy toy. Fun stuff.

[Traci · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a great series so far.
it brings together multiple dimensions that are open for anyone to travel(demons, fairies, elves, elementals, ghosts, and others), and the world as we know it now is completely changed. the main character was tortured and magic-scarred by elves, rebuilt by humans into a half-robot, part-AI, nuclear-fueled walking arsenal, not to mention that she has the "spirit" of a dead elfin necromancer "living" in her chest. if you like science-fiction you'll love this series.

[Larry Kenney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once again, I had fun reading this book. It struggles with some of the shortfalls of the earlier books in the series, such as a weak plot and and not having a lot of depth in the characters.

However, compared to the first two books, you finally get to see more sides to a few of the characters.

The main strength of this book, and this series in general, is the setting. Her richly imagined and unique take on the world of the Fey is reason enough alone to read this book.

Looking forward to reading the next book!

[Tanya · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a little over halfway through this book and enjoying it more and more. The beginning was a bit heavy on explanations, but it has really picked up. The back cover labels it as "Science Fiction & Fantasy" and it's correct. It truly is a mixture of both, with Lila's AI and partially mechanical body and the involvement of elves, demons, faeries, etc. Ms. Robson has an amazing imagination and I highly recommend all three of the Quantum Gravity books.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quantum Gravity series is a fun series that blends fantasy, sci-fi and a touch of steam punk. Its unique combination of genres provides something that cannot be found in other series. The main protagonist Lila is an amazingly complex and believable character. The mythology used by the author brings in authenticity as well and plenty of new twists. I am very happy and sad to see the fifth and final book come out last month

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

GOING UNDER suffers less than SELLING OUT from the difficulty of separated protagonists. Lila, Teazle and Zal come together and then go spinning off into faery, learning more about themselves in the process. Faery did not have as distinct a flavor for me as Alfheim or Demonia, though everyone's regression to their older forms was interesting.

Where SELLING OUT dragged for me, GOING UNDER has restored the series momentum, itching to get to book four.

[John Owen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very disappointed in this book. Previous Justina Robson books I've read have been good, but this really doesn't work for me. The base problem is its cross-genre nature -- it's a mix of fantasy and cyperpunk, with most of the worst features of both. When anything can happen, the reader has to rely on the protagonist to be an anchor point in an ever-changing landscape, but for the most part Robson's main character hasn't got the foggiest what is going on either.