All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu (Hardback)

Julia Z once lived in the spotlight as the teenage “orphan hacker,” a prodigy whose skills brought attention she never asked for. Years later she hides herself in a quiet Boston suburb, working hard to remain unseen in a world where privacy is almost impossible. She wants stillness. She wants distance from her past. Yet when Piers, a desperate lawyer, arrives at her door with a story of kidnapping, her resolve fractures. His wife, Elli, is missing, and ordinary tools cannot bring her home. He needs someone who can break into places others cannot reach.

Elli is more than a victim. She is an onierofex, a dream artist who connects hundreds of minds inside a shared virtual space. Through her performances she blends memories, emotions, and sensation, giving audiences a dream-state they can feel long after waking. But Elli also crafted private dream sessions, and one was for a man who runs an international criminal network. He wants exclusive dreams, and he wants them at any cost. If Julia cannot trace Elli through code, data, and subconscious signals, Elli may never escape.

Julia steps back into a digital world filled with glitches and illusions, where identity slips and reality is rewritten inside the mind. To save Elli she must move across cities, servers, and dreamscapes, facing memories she buried. Every answer she finds leads to a deeper question—what is real, and who decides?