Humanity has never before encountered a world like Kiln: seething with deadly lifeforms and littered with the ruins of a vanished intelligent species, the planet poses an immense challenge to science.
But it also serves as the perfect prison.
Professor Arton Daghdev, specialist in alien ecologies, is about to get a brutal lesson in the rigors, mysteries and, ultimately, the transcendent possibilities of Kiln.
Back on Earth, under the authoritarian Mandate, Arton was a dissident. Not an outspoken hero, or a fighter, nonetheless, he’s been sentenced to exile in the off-world labour camps. His dream of studying alien life has come true in the worst way.
Now Arton will be forced each day to meet the alien life of Kiln face-to-face. Rampaging monsters, infectious microbes, shoddy equipment and the merciless regime of the camps will test him to his limits. But Arton is about to uncover the ultimate secret of Kiln—and in doing so, threaten the very stability of the Mandate. But victory will entail an almost unfathomable cost. And is political victory worth the loss of one’s very humanity?
