Life on Lynop isn't bad for Doug Laisault, though interrupted with nightmarish visions. It is big news when the aliens first show up; in a few years, they help solve hunger, disease, and promise to advance technology of the planet through continuous, peaceful relations.
It is also big news when the aliens decide it is no longer the time for peace.
Doug and a few others escape with a critical device, then discover the galaxy is far more complex and dangerous than even the invaders demonstrate. Star systems across tens of thousands of light-years are populated by dozens of other races, all of them under dire threat from the true power who seized Doug's world. With the exodus from Lynop, however, this terrible foe finds itself at its most vulnerable. It hunts for Doug and what he possesses as doggedly as it fights the host of races against it.
In a universe of strangers and peril, Doug must find his purpose and decide whether his loyalties lay with a great and righteous cause, his people, or only himself. Facing ineffable risk and uncertain futures built on hope, he and the galaxy resist a power swallowing up worlds- but one just as likely as its allied enemies to be destroyed by a war raging for centuries, emerging weaponry with unprecedented ramifications, new questions of allegiance, and the raw power of the universe itself when its most explosive moment arrives.