Spanning six decades, from the halcyon 1980s to the grim 2040s, this is the story of Holly Sykes, who runs away from home and meets someone who offers her some tea and who makes a fateful deal. It's the story of a number of other people as well, not all of them particularly nice, all of whom will love Holly Sykes. But Holly's life is haunted by that encounter, and by the warring immortals whose battles will intersect with her lives, perhaps to threaten, perhaps to save.

With Iain Banks' cool evocation of the surfaces and neuroses of 20th and 21st century modern life and Jonathan Carroll's surreal and strange coalescing fantasy, Mitchell has written combining present day drama, chilling science fiction and mindbending fairytale. There aren't many that can carry that off, and he does. A riveting, brilliant, sometimes beautiful read, that, even as bleakness closes round our beleaguered Holly and her family, never loses its slender thread of hope.