The transdimensional empire, the Unity, has dissolved. Its rulers and agents have been exiled, stranded across a thousand planes of existence. Empires don't die gladly. The living planarship Ways and Means has ended the Black Death ravaging medieval Europe, but it has bigger plans for Earth. Someone is trying to kill former Unity agent Osia. Spy-turned-anthropologist Meloku becomes a target, too, when she catches the planarship hiding the extent of its meddling. While they fight to survive, Fiametta - Italian soldier, mercenary, and heretical preacher - raises an army and a religious revolt, aiming to split her world in half. File Under: Science Fiction [ Last Throes | The Saviour | Let It Burn | Crisis of Faith ]

In medieval Italy, Niccolucio, a young Florentine Carthusian monk, leads a devout life until the Black Death kills all of his brothers, leaving him alone and filled with doubt. Habidah, an anthropologist from an alien world racked by plague, is overwhelmed by the suffering. Unable to maintain her neutrality, she saves Niccolucio from the brink of death. Habidah discovers that neither her home's plague nor her assignment on Niccolucio's ravaged planet are as she's been led to believe. Suddenly the pair are drawn into a worlds-spanning conspiracy to topple an empire larger than the human imagination can contain. File Under: Science Fiction [ The Watcher | Darkness Comes | The Light of Faith | A World to Save ]