The world teeters on the brink of hope and despair during the worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s. Out of the darkness come the Krush, brutal warriors and destroyers of worlds. Drawn by the Earth's glow, they seek death and conquest. Their genocidal invasion is halted in orbit by the last of the Theria, godlike protectors of the universe. Forced into an unsteady armistice, the two factions agree to a battle by proxy to settle the fate of Earth. Chris Donner, a jaded Great War veteran, is granted the divine powers of the Theria and strives to understand why he has been given such a gift. Li Chen, an idealistic Chinese peasant, is chosen by the Krush and becomes the fabled Dragon King. Both men irrevocably change history as they are drawn together in a final battle to decide the outcome of mankind.

In the parched twenty-first century Southwest, Carli D'Auber has made the most important discovery of the century. She has pioneered a new form of communications: It is now possible to send your consciousness across hundreds of thousands of miles, to be present in another country or in another world, through a remote device.

But powerful forces have seized control of her invention. A globe-spanning corporation has taken the credit for its discovery. And on a distant orbital platform, a secret hive of children, trained from birth to use the new technology, are using borrowed android bodies -- "proxies" -- to stage a stunning coup against an interstellar mission. But they need Carli to carry out their plan; they have sent a deadly cyborg to track her down.

An exciting and exotically imagined thriller melding a moving human story with the latest speculations in cloning, telepresence, and advanced biotechnology.