Madeleine Fell is a rebellious, romantic teenage girl in Victorian London, a familiar setting except that, in this London's universe, the ancient cult of Ishtar survived the overthrow of the Chaldean Empire, flourished underground for millennia as the true power behind the world's thrones, and was exposed a century ago by Adam Weishaupt, founder of the Illuminati.

The locus of Ishtar's power is "Modern Babylon", a gigantic city located on another planet and reachable only through "transdimensional gates". Every year, Britain and other nations send a tribute of young virgins to Babylon, where they are trained as whores, eventually to return to Earth Prime, ensnare susceptible males, and serve the purposes of the Herr Weishaupt's successors.

The story follows Madeleine, a willing tribute maiden, as she travels (not by the conventional route) to Babylon, learns of the secret war between the Illuminati and the mysterious, murderous "Black Order", chooses a side in the conflict, and proceeds to a strange simulacrum of immortality. Readers will probably divine the motives and goals of Lord Azrael, her aspired for lover, long before the heroine does, but they have the advantage of having lived through the 20th Century.

While far from perfect - the political situation is muddled at times, and Madeleine occasionally has to act stupidly to keep the plot on track - Babylon is an imaginative and evocative picture of a bizarre variation on the universe. ( )