Liz Williams has already established in her short career as a novelist that she has the ability to be a fine one. She also writes original fiction, with settings not often found in sf novels. She has visited India with Empire of Bones and in The Poison Master, an alien world reminiscent in some ways of a Byronesque drug-centred society with an almost feudal serf-driven social structure.

In this novel we visit Russia, and we encounter Elena Irinovna, a former rocket scientist (in the days of the Soviet Union). In the new Russia she is an office cleaner.

Ilya Muromyets is a bogatyr, an 800 year old legend from Russia's past, one of the fabled Sons of Russia. As the legend goes nothing can kill a bogatyr except a fellow bogatyr. But the days of glory for Ilya seem very much in the dim and distant past. In modern times his star has faded and Ilya is a heroin addict, and longs for a death that he cannot have.

When Elena discovers a strange metallic object seemingly possessing unearthly power, it introduces an element of danger into her life. She is in possession of an item that many people would like to have, and it brings her into contact with Ilya.

He has been hired by a mysterious group, to track down this item, and to retrieve it for them. But when he meets up with Elena he must decide whether he will follow the desires of his employers or whether he feels he has one final chance to be a hero.

This is a monster of a novel in many ways. It is a long book, although nowhere near as long as some that fill the shelves in bookstores these days but it is very rich in detail, and intense in its pacing. This is a book that needs high concentration, very much in the vein of Williams's earlier books.

She makes you work for it when you read one of her books. But she does reward you. This is a great story, it's original, fast plotted, populated with fully realised characters fully rounded and bringing their own flaws to the table. With Elena's deep felt feelings of her life in Russia not having a future and her planning and longing to leave her homeland, and Ilya's addiction they are most definitely flawed.

This is a novel for anyone who has grown tired of a good deal of the trends in modern sf. If you do long for something other than endless space opera series following the increasingly far-fetched adventures of some single unbelievable hero or heroine, hen you might find Liz Williams to be the author you long to read. She will make you work for it though.