Xenia, a woman with an integrated artificial intelligence, embarks on a mission to repair a malfunctioning relay at the edge of the wilderness now called the Flood Zone. As the mission turns to disaster, Xenia and her security contractor find themselves confronting a greater mystery, one that eventually leads them to a strange town in the middle of nowhere, where nothing is quite as it seems.

The town, called Harmonie, has a long utopian history. Half-abandoned for years, it has been revived by a group of secretive scientists and artists, who are still dealing with the echoes of a long and complex American past. Its traces appear in a set of peculiar 19th-century documents that chronicle the life of a free-spirited woman, the long forgotten reformer and troublemaker Camilla Wright, which only deepens riddles lurking in the heart of the forest.

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The daughter of a much declined, highly affectionate St. Petersburg family, Irina Morozova senses death before it comes. Her arcane powers, unleashed with a few herbs and a candle’s flame, can summon the dead and bring them into the world of the living.Yet that is the least of the pretty aristocrat’s worries. When her brothers rise up against the new Emperor on a cold December morning, Irina and her sisters lose their good names, their prospects for marriage, and their limited means. Irina’s brothers are sent to prison in Siberia, and the despairing Irina resolves to stage her own rebellion, diving into the shady margins of St. Petersburg’s artistic and literary circles, until her mysterious abilities come to the attention of the conservative but brilliant Prince Pavel Pozharsky, close confidant of the tsar.

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