Three years after the events of "The Phantom Menace," Anakin Skywalker and Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi encounter a mysterious world and are swept up in a swirl of deadly intrigue and betrayal.

"In the last years of the Forerunner empire, chaos rules. The Flood--a horrifying shape-changing parasite--has arrived in force, aided by unexpected allies. Internal strife within the ecumene has desperately weakened Forerunner defenses. Too little, too late, the legal rate of Juridicals is only now investigating possible crimes by the Master Builder and others. Evidence-gathering agents known collectively as Catalog have been dispatched to collect...

After five people wake up in a crippled ship that has gone mad, they must figure out how they came to be there and where they are going, all while struggling to survive.

Bear's work contains sweeping futuristic vistas populated by creatures spawned from a decaying universe. The young heroes, each assigned to protect a fragment of the universe's history, must survive long enough to pass that knowledge onto the new universe that is being born.

The ship of the Law hunts Planet killers while 84 teenage volunteers and robot moms live invented society aboard the ship.

"The year's best science fiction and fantasy selected by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America".