The back-stage people must be so used to not only seeing beauty but also constructing it that they never seemed to even glance at Kristen and the other models. But with Michelle it was different. With her, one didn’t see beauty, but rather felt oneself in the presence of the Beautiful itself. The truth of beauty. For a long while, in human consciousness, beauty, truth and the good were so associated with one another as to be the same thing. Hah. Well, we now know that beauty can be deceptive, the good situational, and the truth as ugly as hell.

And the truth is about to get a lot uglier than even the veteran heroes could have imagined. With the now sisterless Seraphim returned and out for the blood of the world, with the inhuman future of sentient machine-souls archiving the vast billions of surplus spirits washed up on their post-historical shores, and with the major nations of the world gutted and paranoid, the beloved comrades embark on a climactic series of adventures that will take the very presence of the future to resolve the future of the present.

Completing a major narrative arc for Kristen-Seraphim, book seven careens forward into the very crucible of human vanity and desire: immortality. That the enduring cast and crew that readers have come to know take into their ambit the world leaders themselves, is not even the most stunning event. The heroes had never known exactly what their lives really meant, thus providing the truer mystery that must be solved, lest all, including themselves, be lost.