Spirit by Gwyneth Jones
Bibi (it means princess) is the sole survivor of a massacre. Lady Nef, the General's wife, stops the General taking her as a concubine, winning Bibi's eternal and passionate devotion. Years later, a diplomatic mission to a supposedly friendly planet ends in disaster. Bibi, now a junior officer in Lady Nef's household, is incarcerated with her mistress in the notorious high-security prison on Fenmu. Lady Nef, 150 years old when arrested, dies in prison; she bequeaths to Bibi her rank, her level of access to the AI systems that permeate the Diaspora of inhabited planets, and a highly secret set of 4-space co-ordinates. Bibi uses Lady Nef's death to escape from Fenmu, finds Spirit, an instantaneous-transit space pod, and follows Lady Nef's co-ordinates to a treasure beyond price: a virgin, perfect, uninhabited planet. Soon after this, the mysterious, fantastically wealthy Princess of Bois Dormant makes her debut in the high society of Speranza, the Diaspora's capital city. Thus disguised, Bibi sets out to discover why she and her mistress were condemned to a living hell; and to punish the guilty. Twenty years have passed: Lady Nef's enemies now rule Speranza. As she uncovers a forgotten, ruthless and far-reaching conspiracy, Bibi's vengeance is transformed into a project of world-changing reparation.
"A rollicking reengineering of The Counte of Monte CristoThis is also a serious, grown up novel that riffs on current concerns by, for example, casting as its outsider heroine a woman born into a fundamentalist tribal society." 4/5 -- Jonathan Wright BBC FOCUS "Noose-tight plotting and the author's characteristic, searching interest in biological science fiction. Jones's material is inventive... the plotting and pacing are well judged. With Spirit, Jones has inverted, and illuminated, the Count of Monte Cristo." -- Nic Clarke SFX
Gwyneth Jones lives in Brighton with her husband and son. She won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for BOLD AS LOVE; CASTLES MADE OF SAND was shortlisted for the Clarke and the British Science Fiction Award; four of her previous books have been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. She writes for children as Ann Halam.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780575074729 |
| ISBN 10 | 0575074728 |
| Title | Spirit |
| Author | Gwyneth Jones |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Orion Publishing Co |
| Year published | 2008-12-29 |
| Number of pages | 480 |
| Prizes | Short-listed for Arthur C. Clarke Award 2010 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |