The final novel in David Wingrove's brilliant epic.
The Empire has gone: now not a single stack remains of the great city of ice that once covered the habitable earth. Europe is DeVore's, America a brutal dictatorship, while the rest of the globe groans beneath the rule of callous warlords.
Li Yuan, once the most powerful man on earth, is now an exile in America.
DeVore bides his time: blockaded in space by the Americans, he must break their cordon or see his own scheme - no less than the seeding of the entire galaxy with his own kind - come to nothing.
But it is Kim Ward, the Star-Seeker, who holds the key to the future. He has left earth to found a new world in the infinity of space: but will he leave Chung Kuo to its fate? Or will he turn his great fleet around and return to fight one final battle against DeVore and the endless evil he has so nearly achieved?
