The Merdrun, cruel warriors blooded by thousands of years of slaughter, are gather in the void between the worlds. Their summon stone is waking, corrupting good people as well as bad, and turning arcane places into magically polluted wastelands. If it is not destroyed it will create a portal and call this marauding army out of exile. Sulien, a nine-year-old girl endowed with untold gifts, sees the Merdrun leader in a nightmare - and he sees her. Karan and Llian must stop the greatest warrior in the void, to save their daughter and their world.

Ian Irvine, a marine scientist who has developed some of Australia's national guidelines for protection of the marine environment, has also written twenty-seven novels. These include the internationally bestselling Three Worlds fantasy sequence (The View from the Mirror, The Well of Echoes, and The Song of the Tears), which has sold over a million copies, a trilogy of thrillers set in a world undergoing catastrophic climate change, Human Rites, and twelve books for younger readers, the latest being the humorous fantasy quartet, Grim and Grimmer.