America has fallen, Mars is a ruin and in Africa a brutal war has devastated a prosperous continent. Chung Kuo, once an unchanged and unchanging world where the Seven Emperors ruled an obedient forty billion, is now in dangerous turmoil.
Chung Kuo's most bitter enemies marshal their armies - human and superhuman - against its last emperor Li Yuan. And the rigid Chinese-ruled world of the twenty-third century comes finally to its Armageddon, the Last Battle which will shape its future for good or evil.
