THE SUNDAY TIMES REVIEW

Good review in The Sunday Times yesterday (03/04/11). Writing in the 'Culture' section, this is what Alison Flood had to say:

Rod Rees provides a delectably dark addition to the growing subgenre of science fiction about virtual reality in his debut The Demi-Monde: Winter. Dreamt up by the US army to prepare their soldiers for the nightmare of war, the Demi-Monde is a computer game peppled by simulations of the worst tyrants history has to offer: Nazi psychopath Reinhard Heydrich, Spanish inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada and their ilk. When the president's daughter is lured and trapped in the virtual world, Ella Thomas - desperate for money - is recruited to enter the rabidly racist, psychotic and increasingly self-aware Demi-Monde to rescue her. Rees is a little too enamoured of his puns (HerEticalism is a religion based on female supremacy etc.) but overall this is a feisty and nightmarishly enjoyable debut that bodes well for his Demi-Monde series.

Pretty damned good! Just a word about those puns. There are eight religions in the Demi-Monde and a number of sub-cults so when I was originally writing the books it was a bit of a bugger to remember what each one stood for so I came up with the punning-mnemonic. It seems to have worked: even the reviewers remember them.