A thrilling alternate history adventure from the Philip K. Dick Award-winning author of The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack. Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli is a diplomat, an author, a philosopher and historian. An immortal. Touched by a malevolent alien intelligence with a vampiric lust for sensation and misery, Earth stands at a crossroads as many worlds have before it. When a rival species sends a warning to Earth, Machiavelli is transformed into a protector of mankind. Travelling the ages, an unlikely hero immune to death, he must stop the corrupted, from the Borgias to Friedrich Nietzsche, before we destroy ourselves for the watcher's pleasure.