Once the Queendom of Sol was a glowing monument to humankind’s loftiest dreams. Ageless and immortal, its citizens lived in peaceful splendor. But as Sol buckled under the swell of an "immorbid" population, space itself literally ran out. . . . Conrad Mursk has returned to Sol on the crippled starship . His crew are the frozen refugees of a failed colony at Barnard’s Star. A thousand years older, Mursk finds Sol on the brink of rebellion, while a fanatic necro cult is reviving death itself. Now Mursk and his lover, Captain Xiomara “Xmary” Li Weng, are sent on a final, desperate mission by King Bruno de Towaji—one of the greatest terraformers of the ages—to literally crush the moon. If they succeed, they’ll save billions of lost souls. If they fail, they’ll strand humanity between death and something unimaginably worse. . . . “McCarthy is an entertaining, intelligent, amusing writer, with Heinlein's knack for breakneck plotting and, at the same time, Clarke's thoughtfulness.”— “‘Imagination really is the only limit.’”— “The future as McCarthy sees it is a wondrous place.”— “A bright light on the SF horizon.”—David Brin “Wil McCarthy demonstrates that he has a sharp intelligence, a galaxy-spanning imagination, and the solid scientific background to make it all work.”—Connie Willis “In nearly every passage, we get another slice of the science of McCarthy’s construction, and a deeper sense of danger and foreboding . . . McCarthy develops considerable tension.”— “An ingenious yarn with challenging ideas, well-handled technical details, and plenty of twists and turns.”—