A daring and original new novel from one of sci fi's most provocative voices, Natural History is a stunning work of bold ideas, unforgettable characters, and epic adventure as one woman seeks to explore what may be the greatest mystery of all. . . . "Idiosyncratic and unpredictable . . . a novelist of real vision."-Zadie Smith, author of White Teeth Half-human, half-machine, Voyager Isol was as beautiful as a coiled scorpion-and just as dangerous. Her claim that she'd found a distant but habitable earthlike planet was welcome news to the rest of the Forged. But it could mean the end of what was left of the humanity who'd created and once enslaved them. It was on behalf of the "unevolved" humans that Professor Zephyr Duquesne, cultural archaeologist and historian of Earth's lost worlds, was chosen by the Gaiasol military authority to uncover the truth about this second "earth." And her voyage, traveling inside the body of Isol, will take her to the center of a storm exploding across a spectrum of space and time, dimension and consciousness. On an abandoned planet, in a wrinkle of time, Isol and Zephyr will find a gift and a curse: a power so vast that once unlocked, it will change the universe forever. With civil war looming, Zephyr's perilous journey will lead her to a past where one civilization mysteriously vanished . . . and another may soon follow."[Robson's] strongest novel yet, reminiscent of Moorcock, Banks, M. John Harrison, and MacLeod . . . and should assure her position as being one of the most exciting genre writers at this present time."-SFRevu