The world he’s created is a psychopathic nightmare, while Ella, by contrast, is a touchingly vulnerable heroine whose quest is fraught with both physical and psychological dangers’ Guardian The Demi-Monde is a high-realism computer simulation, designed to train the military for operations in places like Iraq and Afghanistan without the risk of real-life death. The simulation is peppered with computer-recreated psychopaths – Aleister Crowley, the pitiless Inquisitor General Torquemada, Robespierre, and Reinhard Heydrich, architect of the Holocaust – providing a powder-keg mix of racial, sexual and religious intolerances and perpetual internecine strife. Ella Thomas was sent into this veritable virtual Cyber-Hell on Earth to rescue Norma Williams, the President’s daughter, but it’s all gone horribly wrong, and now it falls to Norma herself to lead the resistance. But first she must come to terms with the knowledge that those she thought were her friends are now her enemies. To triumph in this surreal cyber-world she must be more than she ever believed she could be . . . or perish, in both worlds.