The year is 2454. The sun is setting on a hard-won golden age. For three centuries, humanity has enjoyed peace and prosperity fuelled by technological abundance, oracular data analytics, careful censorship... and just a little blood. In a world dominated by seven factions, or 'Hives', the price of peace has been a few secret murders, mathematically planned to ensure political and economic balance. But now the secret is out, the balance is slipping and war beckons. Convict Mycroft Canner knew this war was coming - he committed his terrible crimes to forestall it. Now, he has just one card left, a wild card no degree of statistical genius could have predicted: a thirteen-year-old child with the power to work miracles. Turning thought into matter, matter in life, this child has the power to save the world, or to doom it.

The second episode in the ambitious Terra Ignota series from a Hugo-shortlisted author.

About the Author
Ada Palmer is an author, historian and composer. She did her PhD at Harvard, teaches History at the University of Chicago, blogs at ExUrbe.com, composes close harmony folk music and performs with the a capella group Sassafrass.

Reviews
Provocative, erudite, inventive, resplendent -- Ken Liu
The kind of science fiction that makes me excited all over again about what science fiction can do -- Jo Walton
Bold, furiously inventive, and mesmerizing... The best science fiction I've read in a long while' -- Robert Charles Wilson



Book Information
ISBN 9781786699541
Author Ada Palmer
Format Paperback
Page Count 480
Imprint Head of Zeus
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC