Alastair Reynolds redefines Hell in this award-winning novel that confirms him as "the most exciting space opera writer working today"(Locus).

The once-utopian Chasm City--a domed human settlement on an otherwise inhospitable planet--has been overrun by a virus known as the Melding Plague, capable of infecting any body, organic or computerized. Now, with the entire city corrupted--from the people to the very buildings they inhabit--only the most wretched sort of existence remains. For security operative Tanner Mirabel, it is the landscape of nightmare through which he searches for a low-life post-mortal killer. But the stakes are raised when his search brings him face to face with a centuries-old atrocity that history would rather forget.