In the perfect city of Lucasta life is easy, bountiful, and completely planned for everyone. New fashions and material goods abound. Everyone constantly communicates with hundreds of friends through their computing device, and benevolent corporations watch over people as good parents. To the new generation, hate and prejudice are just a fairy tale, and pain, disease, and cruelty are fading into a distant memory. So is personal choice.

Teenage Meliora feels as if Lucasta is suffocating her. Always an unusual child, she discovers the dark secret of a world where secrets don’t even exist any more. But what can be wrong with a perfect world?

The Bers have ruled Mierenthia with fire magic and an iron fist for hundreds of years, but now their magic is failing. The firepipes are dry. The firewells gape cold and empty, and the factories are shutting down …

Spring is coming to Mierenthia, yet coldness is still keeping a tight grip upon the world. Reinstalled as a mentor but considering himself to be the attempted murderer of his father-figure Maxim …

Spring is here, and there is a hint of summer in the air, but it is not a hint of warmth and abundance. All that people expect these days is failed factories and heavy rains splashing over Mierber’s broken …