The Demi-Monde: Summer by Rod Rees

“The Demi-Monde is a computer-generated steampunk horror-pit of a virtual world, ruled by history’s choicest psychos.”

The latest volume in the series by Rod Rees, The Demi-Monde: Summer, is due out next week on Jo Fletcher Books (£20):

“Eight-thousand years ago the Deluge destroyed the empire of the Lilithi, setting the race of super-warriors known as the Grigori loose in the outside world. They have lain hidden until now when – thanks to the creation of the dystopian virtual reality that is the Demi-Monde – they at last stand ready to achieve mastery of the Real World – and to cull HumanKind in the Final Solution.

Three girls stand between them and victory: Norma Williams, trapped in the nightmare that is the Coven Sector of the Demi-Monde; Ella Thomas, enslaved by the spirit of Lilith-come-again; and Trixie Dashwood, consumed by her hatred for Heydrich and his evil ForthRight.”

Major US rights deal for Rod Rees

Emma Thawley, Rights Director at Quercus, has sold US rights in two novels by UK novelist Rod Rees, The Demi-Monde: Winter and The Demi-Monde: Spring, to Gabe Robinson of HarperCollins, in a significant deal. The books will be published in hardback on the Morrow imprint. World rights in Rod’s series, The Demi-Monde, were acquired pre-emptively by Quercus (who publish the first volume in January 2011) from agent John Jarrold for a major advance in 2009.

"The Demi-Monde is set in a wonderfully imagined virtual world – the Demi-Monde of the title. Originally conceived by the US military as a training ground for their troops in the twenty-first century facing street fighting and enemies who use guerrilla tactics, rather than modern technology-based armies, the Demi-Monde was created by the world’s first quantum computer. Young singer Ella Thomas is sent there to rescue a VIP (she ticks all the boxes to blend into the world, which has a late-Victorian technology base) and discovers the world and its thirty million inhabitants, or ‘avatars’, are all too real. Especially those who run the world’s city-states, based on famous human monsters such as Reinhard Heydrich, Shaka Zulu, Empress Wu, Godfrey de Bouillon, Selim the Grim and Lavrentii Beria, with whom the world was seeded to make it more of a test…and that is only the beginning."

There is already a fascinating website -- pop over there now.

The Demi-Monde by Rod Rees

Look out for The Demi-Monde by Rod Rees: "The Demi-Monde is the most advance computer simulation ever devised. Thirty million people ruled by history's cruelest tryants, locked in eternal civil war. The intention: to create the closest thing to hell, preparing soldiers for the nightmarish reality of war. But something has gone badly wrong inside the Demi-Monde...

Heydrich. Beria. Torquemada. Robespierre. History's most notorious mass-murderers -- or at least simulacrums of these monsters -- plot to escape their virtual world; their sights are set on the real world."

The Demi-Monde is due in January 2011 from Quercus in trade paperback (£14.99) and hardcover (£16.99) editions.