Oh yes, the boundary breakers. I'm talking of the work of such greats as China Mieville, Neil Gaiman and others who risk mapping the borderlands of their mental landscapes.

Liz Williams continues the tradition of exploring this new genre playground in a fascinating novel which combines the breathless excitement of a good space opera with the kind of thoughtful philosophising one might find in a harder SF book.

The story chiefly concerns the exploits of the alchemist Alivet Dee. She is a denizen of a strange and nightmarish world ruled by a sect of aliens called the Lords of Night. Years ago, Alivet's sister was taken by the Lords and she has been working to pay for her sister's release ever since.

As the novel starts, she is implicated in the death of one her 'clients', whom she has provided with various narcotic substances. Accosted by a man named Ghairen, she joins in a plot to overthrow the Lords, to clear her name and free her sister.

The novels strongest feature is in its depiction of the unique drug culture that permeates the world of Latent Emanation from which Alivet hails. Drugs are used on this world as a means of inner discovery, an attempt to locate the origin planet of the human race.

They do this in the belief that this information could somehow aid them against the Lords. Alivet's drug fuelled inner journeys are fairly unique in fantasy of this ilk. Williams describes the drugs themselves as having spirits, giving them minds and wills of their own.

Descriptions of these spirits lend the drugs a wonderfully mystical quality, the drugs themselves develop into key characters within the book and the process of alchemy becomes as much a spiritual struggle as it is a scientific exercise. It is in this wonderful blending of the practical and the numinous that the book manages to raise itself from what could have been a junkie's nursery rhyme into the realms of the sublime.

Alivet's strange world is contrasted by a land no less alien to us, a land that Williams depicts in a secondary narrative that runs parallel to Alivet's tale. It is set in Renaissance Europe, where a young scientist by the name of John Dee is attempting to make his far-fetched mathematical theories become a reality. In his initial experiments he actually succeeds in making a mechanical beetle fly around an auditorium at the climatic moment of Aristophanes play 'Peace'.

By the way, I reserve a special pat on the back for those of you who read the name John Dee and thought 'aha, there's a connection here, same name, both scientists, now I get it!' Please allow yourselves a minute or two of smug grinning while I beat myself with the pointy stick of shame.

I didn't figure the link out until about half-way through the book and then only because I was very, very, drunk.

This sub-plot is ingeniously woven into the whole. It is a humorous and tragic counterpoint that Aristophanes himself would have been proud to have written. In some ways, the world of John Dee is even more ferociously strange and magical than the exotic locales that Alivet visits.

Watch out for the links between the two worlds, both physically and culturally. The main plot can be read as the author's encoded ideas and the renaissance sections are the key to deciphering them.

My only issue would be with the occurrence of a moral ambiguity that surrounds certain issues within the novel. Alivet herself is a pusher essentially, who doesn't seem to agonise too much when she is (seemingly) responsible for the death of one of her clients. Also the character of Ghairen is an assassin, a merciless killer.

He is also the main love interest and the author does make some sacrifices for the sake of the romance. Ghairen often runs the risk of appearing as a little too gallant and attractive, as if his murderous tendencies are just a minor foible of his, like smoking cigars or not donating to charity.

Maintaining a social calendar that leaves room for only the briefest of friendships (say for instance the time it would take to say, 'Whoops! Sorry I seem to have placed a remarkably large hole in your chest') would not seem to me to be a contender for the number one slot in the 101 of things women find sexy.

This being said, Williams' book is of a rare breed and should not be passed over lightly. It enters your system like cocaine sniffed from the thighs of a virgin and leaves you coping with far fewer debilitating social consequences.

It's a cocktail of styles, flavoured by the fruits of an astounding imagination. My advice? Roll up and take a hit today. It's addictive.

Paul Skevington