Back Cover Blurb — Virgin Publishing Edition
'Bernice Summerfield seemed to hold the key. She was in it up to her neck, and she was the one person left who could tell me what I needed to know. I rather hoped it wouldn't be necessary to snap said neck and kill her.'

The planet Dellah was once one of the cultural centres of the galaxy. Now, it lies in ruins and things walk through the barren landscape, twisting the unfortunates who live there to their unholy will.

The tragic effects of the cataclysm have been felt throughout local space, from cruel and draconian Thanaxos to the multiplexal chaos of the Proximan Chain Rifts. All know the ultimate result: a war is coming — is inevitable — and is set to blow the fragile stability of the galactic sector apart.

Only one person has the pieces of the puzzle that might prevent the coming collapse — Bernice Summerfield. The problem is, she's missing, and what's more she's not feeling precisely herself. And if Benny doesn't find out exactly who she is, and how she can fit into her newly shattered world, there isn't going to be a world for her to come back to at all.

Cafe Press Synopsis
The planet Samarah was once one of the cultural centres of the galaxy. Now that culture lies in ruins and things walk through the barren landscape, twisting it to Their unholy will. Only Pandora Delbane has the pieces to the puzzle that might prevent the coming collapse — the problem is, she's missing, and she's not feeling entirely herself...

Back Cover Blurb — Virgin Publishing Edition
'All right, let's start with the basics. The world ended on the twelfth of October Nineteen Seventy...'

I don't know why I'm writing this. It's not as though anybody's going to read it. At least, nobody who cares about the fact that I'm a desperate 23-year-old human being who's just had the whole of history taken away from her.

To whoever's out there, to whatever's left, this is the way things were, just before the end. This is the story about the last days of London, about London, about murder and love and waking up in the ruins, about all the people buried in the wreckage...

I'm lying obviously. This is my story. This is what I was doing when October the twelfth came. Because, let's face it, I'm the only one who really matters.

I'm the only one who got out alive.

Back Cover Blurb
'Benny, you're ill. Let us help you. We want to help you. Really we do. This paranoia, these delusions. What you've done — it's driven you insane. Nobody wants to hurt you. We're your friends.'

On Dellah, the shattered home of Bernice Summerfield, only the Advanced Research centre survives — the last remnant of the once famous university. But it's under seige from fanatical groups of religious inquisitors, searching for new converts or dangerous heretics.

Benny would have to be mad to go back.

Jason Kane, Benice's one-time husband and all-time opportunist, has found the ancient remains of the Oracle of the Lost on an obscure planetoid known only as KS-159. Or so he says.

Benny would have to be mad to believe him.

The mysterious Irving Braxiatel is looking for somewhere quiet to house his huge collection of...everything.

The Oracle of the lost, legend says, can answer any question. But the cryptic answers she gives are never helpful, and often dangerous.

Benny would have to be mad to reawaken her.

Or ask a question.

Or believe the answer.

Back Cover Blurb
I gazed up at the smoking hole the bomb had made — and then I realised something was wrong. Benny lay beside me, slack and tangled like a discarded rag doll, unnaturally pale, and unbreathing. She was dead.

Nothing is ever simple, and nothing ever ends. Feed some drugs to laboratory rats and, two hundred generations down the line, the monsters start being born.

The fragile stability of the Dellahan quarantine has been compromised and something has escaped. Now, a man in the incipient stages of identity-collapse and a dying Bernice Summerfield have to search the byzantine cities of the Proximan chain for an entity that killed his lover and her friend — an entity that will turn the chain into its own version of hell.

Back Cover Blurb
'Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes...it's worse than Samuel Beckett.'

Benny has had enough. Enough of the angst and the heartache. Enough of Jason and the others. She needs a holiday, and so she's heading to the Eastern Rim, a part of the galaxy where there is still a frontier, and adventure to be had. She's packed her trowel. She's off.

Her friends are concerned. Drug Barons, war lords, criminal cartels and outlaws have fled to the Rim from Authority and order. There's a distinct risk of getting into trouble, not to mention life-threatening peril. It's not so much that Benny might come to harm; she might find she likes it out there.

But Benny finds the Eastern Rim almost suspiciously ordinary: no violence, no action, no excitement. So when she is asked by a shady curio dealer to help him find Dorpfeld's Prism, it seems just another cursed relic to recover before retiring to the bar. In a place this dull nothing dangerous can possibly happen. Can it?

Back Cover Blurb
'Oh, why not,' Benny said. 'After all, I've died before and it never did me any harm then.'

The once peaceful planet of Dellah lies in ruins. The god-like beings who infest the place have lured the inhabitants into holy wars, suicide cults and genocidal pogroms. As they run out of victims, the deities plan to invade more planets — and other races are preparing pre-emptive strikes to stop them. Humankind's small sector of the galaxy is about to become the battleground of leviathans.

There is just one hope. Professor Bernice Summerfield is, surprisingly, alive and well. And she's coming home. Bernice and her friends are determined to dispose of the gods once and for all — at any cost.