From Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award–winning author Ken Liu, the first in a high-stakes sci-fi thriller series following an infamous hacker as she attempts to unravel a virtual reality mystery in the near future.

Julia Z, a young woman who gained notoriety at 14 as the “orphan hacker,” is trying to live a life of digital obscurity in a Boston suburb.

But when a lawyer named Piers barges into her life after his famous artist wife, Elli, was kidnapped by dangerous criminals, Julia decides she must help Piers and Elli. Nor step away from the challenge of this digital puzzle. Elli is an onierofex, a dream artist, who can weave the dreams of an audience together through a shared virtual landscape, live, in a concert-like experience by tapping into each attendee’s waking dream and providing an emotionally resonant and narrative experience. While attendees’ dreams are anonymous, Julia discovers that Elli was also providing a one-on-one dream experience for the head of an international criminal enterprise, and he’s demanding his dreams in return for Elli.

Unraveling the real and unreal will lead Julia on an adventure that will take her across the country and deep into the shadows of her psyche in this fresh “marvel from a perennially innovative author” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).