Mack Bertolt is a hunted man. The rebellion has failed, and a desperate battle at the rebel headquarters in the Caucasus Mountains has scattered the last of their forces.

Now he has to get off Earth, and that means one of the three colony planets. The first is a paradise, the second a barren rock, and the third a hellhole where everything is trying to eat you - which sounds like the perfect place to hide.

As Mack uses his training to get past the spaceport guards and onto a freighter going in the right direction, he wonders where Alice is. She may be the daughter of the rebel leader, but their romance has grown strong in the fire of rebellion, and he hopes that she - and the rebel inner circle - are safe.

But Challi, and the town of Little Amani that the settlers have carved out of hostile forests, bring dramatic surprises of their own.

The author's previous trilogy (the Navscar Trilogy) has GOODREADS ratings of 4.3 (33 reviews), 4.4 and 4.6 (Oct, 2025).

A huge, sprawling epic with 125 thousand words per book.