Interesting take on the possibilities of immersive technology, staged against the backdrop of impending climate disaster. There's a good juxtaposition between the intimidate personal motivations of our lead heroine Zel, and the wider society issues of having fun, and then the global issues of population control and the climate. It's quite well done.

The world set-up is that nearly everyone has an immersive technology implanted in them, living in their own simulated world, but still active in bodies, telepresence is possible but less common. So the catch is then who controls that environment? You do to some degree if your anti-virus is good enough, but there is the corporate body who originally owned the technology, and of course many criminal enterprises too.

Zel just wants to look after her daughter, being high functioning aspergers she's extremely good with numbers, which apparently gives her an extraordinary ability to hack computers and bypass people's defences. In this she's aided by a semi-autonomous AI called Pandora that she wrote using some code from her father. Quite why this makes it more powerful than normal isn't clear, but it does aid her otherwise lacking interpersonal skills, and coincidentally allows her to digitally hide from people by adjusting the reality their inbedded systems display. It doesn't work against the very rare 'real' who chooses not see the digital overlay.

In the first book we follow Zel and a few other characters as they try to work out why there has been such an increase in nationstate tension, and the rise in the likelyhood of war. In the 2nd Zel becomes embroiled in a plot to restart the previous failed environment altering technologies. In the 3rd religion plays it's part in reducing global population levels as Zel seeks revenge.

Although Zel is the linking character many more are scattered through the books. I did like the premise, that sometimes very hard decisions need to be taken, but I'm not sure the solutions Carpenter uses are quite right. Likewise there was just something missing from the technology explanations that didn't quite ring true. Fun though, and much better than the other book of his that I've read. ( )