Having returned from the Refuge, Ivan realizes that the Earth is ruled not by lawfully elected rulers, but by several mega-corporations (the Syndicate, the Eighth Heaven), and thousands of “Black Blessing” sects have already entwined the whole globe. Ivan tries to enlist the support of his old friends and find Guug Hlodrik the Boisterous. But that isn’t easy, because for the past few years Ivan has been spending his days in the underwater penal colony of the bleak planet Girgeya. And it is into this inferno that the novel’s main hero goes—without knowing that someone far more terrifying than convicts lives on Girgeya…