This combination of sci-fi and fantasy follows the struggles of guardians and fighters, two special groups entrusted with the defense of earth, here and off-world, Elsewhere, where a war rages against humankind's enemies, a war in which angels assist the fighters. The novel also follows the flight of a young man who knows a guardian's name-which has brought an enemy interrogator, who is not human, to earth for the first time. As the guardians hurry to hide him, and the fighters struggle to protect earth, off-world, Elsewhere, millions of fighters mass for what could be the final battle to save their poor, besieged home planet. Realm of Shadow is also the story of a rescue and an escape from a prison world, a vast charnel house known to fighters and guardians, feared and avoided by them; an escape on which the earth's fate and the war's outcome both depend.