At the conclusion of the first book, Phaethon of Radamanthus House, was left an exile from his life of power and privilege. Now he embarks upon a quest across the transformed solar system--Jupiter is a second sun, Mars and Venus terraformed, humanity immortal--among humans, intelligent machines, and bizarre life forms, to recover his memory, to regain his place in society and to move that society away from stagnation and toward the stars. And most of all Phaethon's quest is to regain ownership of the magnificent starship, the Phoenix Exultant, the most wonderful ship ever built, and fly her to the stars

The third Phaethon Radamanthus vehicle (after The Golden Age [2002] and The Phoenix Exultant [BKL Ap 15 03]) starts with a battle for control of the starship Phoenix Exultant and ranges from the outer planets to the heart of the sun as Phaeton struggles to comprehend what's right and why and to prevent the destruction of the Golden Oecumene and his own near-utopian way of life. Meanwhile, the Golden Oecumene-Silent Oecumene face-off begins a war between the highly logical Sophotechs of the former and the machine minds of the latter, which are equipped to kill other AIs as a result of the refusal of self-aware machines to act as servants only, which makes them also capable of irrational behavior. The machine minds continue in some ways to be the most interesting characters in Wright's series, which is crammed with everything from bizarre high-tech space battles to the mental battles of obscure future philosophies. With this book, the first of Phaethon's trilogies concludes, freeing him to gallivant through the galaxy, spreading the Golden Oecumene