Returning to the memorable setting and characters of the bestselling, Hugo Award-winning the Snow Queen, Joan D. Vinge was nominated for another Hugo Award for this blockbuster epic that transports readers back to Tiamat and the other planets of the human-populated Hegemony. Interstellar politics, star-spanning criminal cabals, a millennia-long secret conspiracy, and a civilization whose hidden machineries might still control the fate of worlds all form the back-ground to this spectacular hard-SF novel.