Cirrus@Austlit

'August Seebeck is in his twenties, a man of average looks, intellect, and outlook. Then comes the claim of his great-aunt Tansy that she has been finding corpses each Saturday night in her bath which vanish by morning. August dismisses this tale as elderly fantasy until he stumbles upon a corpse being shoved into the second-floor bathroom of his aunt's house. Even that wouldn't faze him, but then someone steps out of the bathroom mirror.'

'August suddenly discovers he is a Player in the multiuniverse Contest of Worlds. He plumbs the secrets of a cosmos revealed as ultimately computational, learns of the bitter enmity between Vorpal Players and the vicious K-Machines, meets the Good Machine that killed everyone on one world, and brings himself back from the dead.'

(Source: Publisher's blurb.)

'A twenty-something student from a world not quite the same as ours, August Seebeck tumbled into a vastly larger universe, and learned that he and his turbulent siblings, and the breathtaking Lune and others still stranger, are Players in the Contest of Worlds. They are mysteriously transformed humans whose ancient task is an enigmatic battle with the dread, passionate K-Machines. Now crisis deepens. Empowered with a potent killing device of his own, August finds himself flung from world to world in a brutal and baffling game, with entire universes at stake and very little idea of the rules. Only two things are clear: his beloved Lune is not who she seemed, and August's pivotal role is no chance accident.'

(Source: Publisher's blurb.)

'It's late in the 21st century and bioengineering is now so common that people are able to modify their minds in any way they wish. It is an era which has been shaped by information systems so vast that security, in any form, is easily breached. Now, you can be whatever you want to be, and do whatever you want to do. On Earth anyway. One night, thirty three years ago, the stars went out. 'The Bubble' - a perfect sphere centred on the sun - appeared in the sky, isolating the solar system from the rest of the universe. For thirty-three years, humanity has lived with the religious cults and terrorism which spawned in the wake of the darkness. We are now alone. Humanity has been cut off: quarantined.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.