In an England shattered almost beyond repair by the Great Catastrophe and the war that followed, Mark Norman is brought up in one of a few fertile Grounds, Grounds surrounded by land that is, at best, liable to cause sterility and, at worst, to be lethal to all who venture into it. His doubts about the truth of what he is taught increase and when duty calls him to sterile service in the Domain, ruled by a sterile but near-immortal nobility, he flees...