Raised to adulthood during the end of the war between the human Polity and the vicious arthropoid race, the Prador, Ian Cormac is haunted by childhood memories of a sinister scorpion-shaped war drone and the burden of losses he doesn’t remember.
In the years following the war he signs up with Earth Central Security, and is sent out to help either restore or simply maintain order on worlds devastated by Prador bombardment.
There he discovers that though the old enemy remains as murderous as ever, it is not anywhere near as perfidious or dangerous as some of his fellow humans, some of them closer to him than he would like.
Amidst the ruins left by wartime genocides, he discovers in himself a cold capacity for violence, learns some horrible truths about his own past and, set upon a course of vengeance, tries merely to stay alive.
- ISBN10 0230738591
- ISBN13 9780230738591
- Publish Date 3 April 2009 (first published 1 May 2008)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 30 August 2011
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Pan Macmillan
- Imprint Tor
- Edition Unabridged edition
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 304
- Language English