First published 1995
Kileen watches as the machine called Mantis engulfs his captain's mind. The Family has fought many mechs before, but nothing like this manhunter. Mantis could wipe out the surviving humans with one blast, yet it chooses elaborate forms of murder instead. The machine collects living personalities and weaves deadly illusions from stolen minds. Kileen realizes this is no ordinary killing device. Somewhere inside Mantis lies a museum of captured human spirits, ghosts that power the machine's cruel intelligence. As organic life loses ground to mechanical forces across the universe, Kileen must discover why Mantis prefers psychological torture to quick annihilation. The answer waits in the machine's core, where defiled human consciousness drives its appetite for complex slaughter.
Genres: science-fiction, dystopia, adventure, thriller
Vibes: dark, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: complex-villain, man-vs-machine, psychological-thriller
Setting: Universe
Period: Future
336 pages · Paperback · Gollancz
Content warnings: violence