This sequel to Inversion forces a pacifist society in a pastoral, isolated universe to wrestle with the cost of self-defense.

The people of Germinal live on a tiny, verdant planet where evolution has traced a slightly different path. For centuries, they have peacefully coexisted amid an ecosystem where an advancing wall of fire consumes all in its path, a perpetual cycle of destruction and renewal. That is, until everything they knew of their history was violently upended by the arrival of colonizers.

Months after the events in Inversion, the people of Germinal are rebuilding, reckoning with the brutality of the invasion, and striving to absorb newcomers. But young Char, earning a reputation among her people as a capable new conciliator, wrestles with the trauma of those events and tries to rally her community to defend themselves against future attack. Her friend Graft, formerly an aide-de-camp of the invading forces, is adrift. Though finally safe, he has nothing left but the stories of his lost home and grows increasingly haunted by visions of the past—including of the mysterious creation of Germinal. But calm in their changed world is short lived.

A pair of warriors arrive from a militant culture on the far side of the flamewall, violating a great taboo that forbids one side from meeting another. They insist on being brought to the survivors, to deal with as they see fit. As the situation escalates, Char and Graft struggle to do what is right. To keep each other safe. And to ready themselves for what they both know is true: The invaders will try again.

Aric McBay's Germinal trilogy is the spiritual successor to Ursula Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson, posing large moral questions of justice inside a lush, wholly unexpected world.