Belis Khladovin flees the giant megacity of New Krobyuzon. As an experienced linguist, she finds work as a translator on a ship bound for Nova Esperium. But the ship is captured by pirates, and Belis’s new life begins not in a distant Krobyuzon colony, but aboard the Armada—a floating pirate city made of thousands and thousands of ships, roaming the Rising Ocean for more than one century, and governed by a couple of sadomasochists known as the Lovers.
Like New Krobyuzon, the Armada is populated by humans and bug-headed hephris, mermaids and water spirits, handmade mutant remakes and cactus-people, as well as strew-makers and vampires. Refusing to accept that she will never see her hometown again, Belis is ready for anything—just to uncover the nature of the deeply classified project being worked on by Dr. of Biology Johannes Tiardflay, the best hunter in all. Bass-Lage Tintinnabulum, the Lovers, and their bodyguard Uter Doul…