Iris and her various friends are stranded on the perplexing and magical world of Hyspero. Ruled over by the all-knowing and all-powerful Scarlet Empress, this is a place where seemingly anything can happen. As Iris and her faithful companion, Panda, are drawn into a nightmarish subterranean adventure, their friends are captured by the guards of the Empress herself for nefarious reasons of her own. Iris descends into memories of her bizarre childhood in a universe far from here... a dreadful place that the despicable poet Anthony Marvelle is trying to unleash, convinced that great riches lie in that mythical region known only as the Obverse...

Friends old and new are along for the ride — including Barbra the brave vending machine, Jenny the ex-traffic warden and Kelly, the Goth girl from the bookshop who discovers she has a strange destiny as the mystical key to unlocking the dimensions. Hyspero itself awakens memories inside her... of a magical book she once read as a child... or, perhaps a book in which she once had her own adventures...

And meanwhile on Earth — two or three dimensions to the left, in the realm of fictionality — Iris's fans and fanfic writers are gathering and quibbling at the curious turn the lady's adventures are taking...