A World Too Near

In this sequel to Bright of the Sky, Titus Quinn returns to the Entire with a new task: to enter and destroy the impregnable fortress of Ahnenhoon. The fortress, called the Repel, is replete with eons-long Tarig secrets and a most disturbing personal one for Quinn: a special prisoner resides there and will perish with the Repel.

To reach Ahnenhoon, Quinn journeys across the Entire and down the River Nigh in the company of a subversive godwoman, a renegade Tarig Lord, a mad navitar, and Anzi, a woman of the Chalin people, who guides him with her wit and a deepening love.

He is pursued by an assassin sent by his own daughter, Sydney, who now counts the Entire as her home. Formerly a slave, she now has at her command a transforming and revolutionary power. Not only that, but Sydney has a strange ally, a person from earth who has her own plans for the Entire, enabled by a powerful machine sapient.

Weighing into this dance of power are: A Tarig queen who once loved Quinn, the alien Paion, and a Hirrin servant of the Magisterium whose growing disaffection can bring down the whole house of cards.