Chasing the Dragon

"... an immensely entertaining mixture of rock and roll, introspection, and action."

Booklist

"This is a fun adventure tale with a healthy mix of fantasy elements
with science fiction elements.... The momentum credibly builds to a
final climax with a suitably metaphorical ending full of faerie glamour
and mystery."

Book Spot Central

"The third outing for Lila Black (Keeping It Real; Selling Out) tackles the
elusive world of Faerie, a place far from the stereotypes of legends.
Robson's (Mapper Mundi) mercurial style suits her quick-witted heroine
in a fantasy/sf adventure that is a good addition to most fantasy or sf
collections."

Library Journal

"Lila Black is one kick-ass bionic woman ... impossible-to-put-down,
the series stays quite interesting and I'm waiting for the next tale."

Weekly Pressl University City Review

"It's good. It's really very good indeed. I loved it."

Peter F. Hamilton

"Fast, lucid, and engaging throughout, vivid with inventive detail and
sharp with unexpected twists snagging the unwary reader.... I can't
wait to see how they'll tackle what comes next."

SF Revu

"You get pulled in by the novel's sheer energy. The cross-genre pollination of various ideas makes for a quirky read."

Deathray

"Entertaining fusion of SF and fantasy spiced with sex, rockin' elves,
and drunk faeries."

Publishers Weekly

"This is by far the most entertaining book Robson has written, a novel
packed with memorable characters and ideas but that doubles as
holiday-reading escapism."

SFX

"Think an enthusiastic melange of Laurell K. Hamilton's Meredith
Gentry, Tad Williams's War of the Flowers, Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat,
a touch of Marianne de Pierre's Parrish Plessis, even The Bionic Woman or
The Transformers, and you get an idea of how much fun this book is."

SFF World

OLSO BY JUSTIN PORSON

Siluer Screen

Mdppd Mundi

keeping It Real: Quantum Grauity Book One

Selling Out: Quantum Grduity Book Two

Going Under: Quantum Grduity Book Three

JUSTINA ROBSON

Lold winds blew off the north shore and gave Lila a burning slap as
they snatched foam from the rim of her coffee cup and flung it into
her face. She let the scalding black stuff run down her skin without any
reaction save a slight narrowing of her eyes.

The drink was cheap and it would have needed a faery cup to make
it worthwhile, but just as the beans and the roast had been skimped on
so had the cheap pulp cup. She swallowed what was left in three gulps
and threw the cup into the trashcan next to her. It wasn't like they
were queuing down the block to get the stuff.

The snack stand guy gave her a disturbed look as he pretended to
ogle the latest copy of Succuperb! on his Treepod, but his attention was
pulled away by another customer too hungry or broke to walk a block
to a decent outlet. Lila took a final long look at the ocean and let the
coffee soak into her skin. The taste taken this way was pure information, not involving tongue and nose or the beautiful crafting of a brain
that created flavor out of molecular detection. As raw data she identified coffee. She knew it was bad, but at least her guts didn't feel
offended. She briefly considered drinking all his coffee that way in the
future but, then again, no. Pain was pain and the medicine had to go
down the right way.

In her palm she ran her fingertip over her plastic cash card and read
off the amount. It was so low. She would have reorganised a few zeroes
with ease, but getting tagged for fraud didn't appeal to her sense of
privacy. They could track the card position by satellite and pinpoint
her in seconds. Then they'd find out she wasn't a registered citizen and
send agents to collect her, or the rogues would read the signals and try
to get to her first. Staying a step ahead of both of them was worth more
than all the digits she could have fitted on the card.

She closed her fingers over it again and slipped it into her pocket,
wondering for the millionth time what she was going to do about it.
The lodgers in her old house just about paid for the bills and what food
she had to have, but there was no extra. It mildly amused her that she
would think of savings, of age, of the future when the present was so
uncertain.

"Hey, aren't you cold, lady?" someone said behind her, not pleasantly, so she started walking back the way she'd come, down onto the
hard sand and along the bay, aware that she made a distinctive and
somewhat fey picture: a young woman with a pale tan and some
freckles on her bare arms and legs, her dark and oddly patterned scrap
of a dress blowing around her knees. The scarlet swatch in her
unkempt lanky hair lifted on the breeze to show a scarlet shape like a
paint splash on her neck and shoulder. It was far too bright to be natural. She was barefoot. It was February, and in Bay City that meant
onshore gales and bursts of chilly rain or even sleet. Normal people,
whoever they were, disdained chiffon and silk cocktail gowns and wore
coats and boots at this time of year. Sensible people added a hat. The
person calling to her was not wearing a hat.