Publisher’s Blurb
It is the summer of the Great Year on Helliconia. The humans are involved with their own affairs. Their old enemies, the phagors, are comparitively docile at this time of year; yet they can afford to wait, to take advantage of human weakness – and of the king’s weakness. How they do so brings to a climax this powerfully compelling novel, in which the tortuous unwindings of circumstance enmesh royalty and commoners alike, and involve the three Helliconia continents.

Brian Says

In this second Helliconia volume, attention is focused mainly on the nation of Borlien, its tortured king, and the Queen he divorces for dynastic reasons. The dramatic sequence of events is watched by observers on Earth, where existential questions are being resolved.

FIRST EDITION: Jonathan Cape, 1983

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