It is the aftermath of civil war in the vast pageant of planets and stars known as The Spin. Three years since he crushed the rebellion, Viklun Haas, industrialist and leader of the Hegemony, is eliminating all remnants of the opposition. Starting with his own daughter. But Fleare Haas, fighter for Society Otherwise has had a long time to plan her next move. Sprung from her remote monastery prison and reuniting with a team of loyal friends, Fleare's journey will take her across The Spin to the cluster of fallen planets known as the The Catastrophe Curve - and from exile, to the very frontiers...

It is a hundred millennia after Iron Gods. The Spin is nearing the end of its life. Its inhabitants are divided between those who live unknowingly in the relative paradise of one of hundreds of Virtual Realities - vrealities - and those who scrape a living in what remains of the real world. The massive servers needed to maintain the vrealities are draining the resources of the Spin. And an escalating, desperate and seemingly futile war has begun between those who tend the servers and those who believe they should be shut down, killing millions. But one amongst these unwitting...