"Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission-and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company....

""Space opera the way it ought to be . . . Bujold and Weber, bend the knee; interstellar adventure has a new king, and his name is Walter Jon Williams.""—George R. R. MartinThe Praxis, the empire of now extinct Shaa, has again fallen into civil war, with desperate and outnumbered humans battling several alien species for survival. Leading the human forces are star-crossed lovers Gareth Martinez and Caroline Sula, who must find a way to overcome...