A grand alternate history, science fiction adventure from multiple New
York Times best-selling author Eric Flint, creator of the Ring of Fire
alternate history series, the Jao Empire series, and the Boundary
series, and multiple Hugo award winner and science fiction legend Mike
Resnick.
Russ Tabor is one of the top security specialists in the galaxy. Much
against his will, he finds himself assigned to provide protection for
Rupert Medawar Narayan Shenoy - "Lord Shenoy," as he likes to style
himself - who is probably the human race's most brilliant savant. Shenoy
has become convinced that the race of ancient aliens known as the Old
Ones possessed powers unknown to any modern intelligent species. He
believes they had harnessed forces which may well have been actual
magic, giving the Old Ones the stature of gods.
Off Russ and Shenoy go to find the secret. Meanwhile, Occo, a member of
the alien race known as the Nac Zhe Anglan, returns to her religious
creed's home cloister to find that it has been completely destroyed -
and by means which suggest that the Old Ones were the perpetrators. Yet
the Old Ones, those ancient and inimical gods of the galaxy, were
thought to have perished eons before.
Occo is not a savant of any kind. She is a shaman castigant, a warrior
of her creed. Her purpose now is to seek revenge, not to uncover the
secrets of the Old Ones. But she cannot do the one without first doing
the other. So, she and her familiar Bresk set ought to track down those
long-gone deities.
Now human adventures and an alien shaman are on a collision course with
the truth: despite their many differences, only if they unite their
forces do they stand any chance of surviving the coming encounter with
the gods of Sagittarius.
