In January 1945, fifteen-year-old Tygo Winter, a locksmith’s son who has been forced by the Nazis to loot abandoned Dutch homes, finds himself protecting a Jewish girl he has found in a villa, and in possession of information about a German super-weapon that the Nazi high command plans to use to defeat the Allied forces in the Battle of the Bulge–information that the Resistance wants.
In this graphic depiction of nuclear devastation, three survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima–Gen, his mother, and his baby sister–face rejection, hunger, and humiliation in their search for a place to live.
The once-great traction city of London is now just a radioactive wreck, a ruin haunted by electrical discharges and the dashed hopes of the people who once called it home – people like Tom Natsworthy. Twenty years after he fled, intending never to return, he discovers that something stirs in the remains of the old city.
Tom and his daughter, Wren, aren’t the only people interested in London. The desperate armies of the Traction Cities and the Green Storm are also closing in, certain that whatever is taking shape within the city holds the key to victory in their never-ending war.
But it may be too late. Even as Tom and Wren hurry to uncover the mystery of London, Hester Shaw – estranged from her husband and her daughter – tracks the resurrected Stalker Fang, who has found another way to end the war and all life on the planet once and for all.