Six months have passed since the reappearance of the starship Phoenix -
the same ship which brought humans to the world of alien atevi nearly
two hundred years ago, leaving a small and vulnerable colony to struggle
for survival in a hostile environment. During these six months, the
alien atevi have striven to reconfigure their fledgling space program in
a breakneck bid to take their place in the heavens alongside humans. But
the return of the Phoenix has added a frighteningly powerful third party
to an already volatile situation, polarizing political factions in both
human and atevi societies, and making the possibility of all-out
planetary war an even more likely threat. On the atevi mainland, human
ambassador Bren Cameron, in a desperate attempt to maintain the peace,
has risked alienation from his own people by communicating with the
staff of the Phoenix as spokesman for the atevi, and has arranged for
one human representative from the Phoenix to take up residence with him
in his apartments, and for another to be stationed on Mosphiera,
humanity's island enclave. Now, Bren has the difficult task of
indoctrinating Jason Graham, a young man who has never before set foot
on a planet, in the intricate, delicate, and potentially lethal
maneuverings of the human-atevi interface. And this at a time when,
thanks to the assassination of an atevi lord who had been one of Bren's
primary adversaries, and the near-collision of Bren's personal plane
with a jet manned by an unknown pilot, the relationship between atevi
factions is becoming more strained by the minute.
