Taking place in a futuristic Middle-Eastern setting, the series reverses some of the usual expectations of a future world order by painting the West in decline while Muslim countries seem to prosper.

The novel is told from the perspective of Marîd Audran, a young man from low origins (coming from the Maghreb, and being the son of an Algerian prostitute and a Frenchman), who is a small-scale operator and hustler in the Budayeen, the entertainment and criminal quarter of an unnamed Middle-Eastern city, probably somewhere in the Levant, based on several geographical references to other countries around the region.

Audran considers himself a freelance operator and is fiercely proud of his independence, both from others (including Friedlander Bey, the shadowy, paternalistic crime figure overseeing most of the Budayeen's business interests) and from cybernetic modification.

Where most others have their brain "wired", for work or play, Audran's almost superstitious dread of this modification has prevented him from doing the same, and so he cannot use "daddies" (from "add-ons", software chips providing skills like languages or accounting) or "moddies" (modules that contain whole new personalities, for example, those of movie stars or fictional characters).

He is then forced by the centuries-old Bey to become his investigator, and even worse, is made to subject himself to extensive, partly experimental cybernetic modifications; an advanced form of the brain wiring he has dreaded before.