"Shadows moved in the flames, hundreds of miles tall. They had incandescent eyes and mouths and carried poles which they jabbed into the planet's crust, prising up country-sized slabs to be consumed in the fire..."
Marrakech 1925. Following the events of THE STAR TSAR, Banjo and Alexandra are fugitives hiding in Morocco from Stalin's agents. While the ex-commissar loses herself in opium dreams, the Yorkshire engineer hunts through ancient ruins for a means to return to the stars. They soon find themselves hunted by an alien assassin that slaughters without mercy, Where will they find a safe haven - in a fortress deep in the Atlas Mountains, at the end of a deadly trans-dimensional labyrinth, or as the captives of deranged Italian Futurists seeking to build a new Utopia of blood and steel in the forests of Caporetto? Whatever actions they take may ultimately decide the fate of the entire Solar System.