This is the third novel, after Sun of Suns and Queen of Canndesce, to be set in Virga, a bubble universe artificially separated from our own future universe.Chaison Fanning, the admiral of a fleet of warships, has been captured and imprisoned by his enemies, but is suddenly rescued and set free. He flees through the sky to his home city to confront the ruler who betrayed him. And perhaps even to regain his lovely, powerful, and subversive wife, Venera. He has not seen her since she fled careening off into the air of Virga before he was captured, with the key to the artificial sun, Candesce, at the centre of Virga. Schroeder sets a whole new standard for hard SF space opera.