It all starts to fall apart, though as is often the case, the seeds of destruction have been germinating for a while. The internal contradictions of a utopia kept stable through murder and corruption and vulnerable to the non-physical 'weapons' of a past age may have been decomissioned but were not put beyond use. Mycroft Canner, the mass murderer turned religious zealot thinks a boy with the power of a God and a God with the powers of a boy can come together and save the world from impending war, but there is deception and there is self-deception, and a lot of truths are about to be exposed.

This second book reads like the final act of the first, all momentum and plot or character resolutions, so I would definitely suggest the two be read back to back. It has the epic grandiosity of an operatic adaptation of a Greek tragedy staged as science fiction spectacle full of pomp and power brought low by venality, invoking fate at every aria and intermezzo to give their downfall an aggrandising universality. Whether that universality is noble and foreordained or that of pure human folly remains to be seen.