"Six months have passed since the reappearance of the starship PHOENIX -- the same ship which brought humans to the world of the alien ATEVI nearly two hundred years ago, leaving a small and vulnerable colony to struggle for survival in a hostile environment. During these six months, the alien ATEVI have striven to reconfigure their fledgling space program in a breakneck bid to take their place in the heavens alongside humans. But the return of the PHOENIX has added a frighteningly powerful third party to an already votatile situation, polarizing political factions in both human and ATEVI societies, and making the possibility of all-out planetary war an ever more likely threat.
On the ATEVI mainland, human ambassador Bren Cameron, in a desperate attempt to maintain the peace, has risked alienation from his own people by communicating with the staff of the PHOENIX as spokesman for the ATEVI, and has arranged for one human representative from the PHOENIX to take up residence with him in his apartments, and for another to be stationed on Mosphiera, humanity's island enclave.
Now, Bren has the difficult task of indoctrinating Jason Graham, a young man who has never before set foot on a planet, in the intricate, delicate, and potentially lethal maneuverings of the human-ATEVI interface. And this at a time when, thanks to the assassination of an ATEVI lord who had been one of Bren's prime adversaries, and the near-collixion of Bren's personal plane with a jet manned by an unknown pilot, the relationship between ATEVI factions is becomng more strianed by the minute.
On Mosphiera, the PHOENIX's delegate, Yolanda Mercheson, faces an explosive situation of her own. For archconservatives, who hate their alien overlords and wish to bar the ATEVI from space, have recently gained power, and now these extremists threaten the lives of Bren's family and government supporters.
Unable to return home for fear of being arrested or assassinated, responsible for a terrified overwhelmed young man, and desperately trying to keep abreast of the political maneuverings of the ATEVI associations, how can Bren Cameron possibly find a way to save two species from a three-sided conflict that no one can win?"