This Virtual Panopticon is made possible through the use of surveillance cameras, centralized databases, RFID-like tags for each citizen, and assorted spy gear.

The Travelers are individuals with a special gift which allows them to detach from their bodies and journey through elemental barriers to other realms.

Fulfilling her father's last wish, Maya takes a flight to the States supporting Shepherd, the last American Harlequin.

Together they are able to find an ally, Hollis, a Capoeira trainer from Los Angeles and a former member of the Isaac T. Jones Community.

The Brethren show up at his house and try to kill him with a new weapon called “Splicer," some kind of genetically engineered animal designed to search and destroy, but Hollis defeats them.

If his body on earth dies, his soul, called the light, is condemned to stay forever in the realm it visits at that time.

David Pitt in his review for Booklist said that John Twelve Hawks is "a gifted storyteller, makes this surreal and vaguely supernatural good-versus-evil story entirely believable."

About the novel he says that the "pace is fast, the characters intriguing and memorable, the evil dark and palpable, and the genre-bending between fantasy and thriller seamless".

There are echoes of Stephen King, Michael Crichton, Joseph Campbell, Jeremy Bentham, various samurai stories and (could it not have been thus?)

"[4] On March 23, 2012, Deadline Hollywood announced that Warner Bros. acquired film rights to the Fourth Realm Trilogy.

[5] In October 2014, British DJ and Bedrock Records producer John Digweed and his partner Nick Muir released an album inspired by The Traveler.

Eighteen months later Digweed found an email from Hawks in his junk folder and they finally arranged to collaborate.

Digweed and Muir met with John Twelve Hawks in the UK and recorded his voice as he read passages from the novel.

Music critic Rich Curtis called it "a very engaging and superbly crafted meeting of artistic minds.