Some ancient legends have far too much reality behind them ... Maryama "Scorch" Stackpole knows that coming home to her native colony won't be easy, after 25 years in the Navy. Still, she wasn't planning to land smack-dab in the middle of a planet-wide civil war! Caught up in a revolution led by zealots dedicated to returning the Sky Goddess's breath-takingly beautiful world to its former isolation, the retired starship master chief soon finds herself battling not just those zealots, but--apparently--an angry Sagarmatha itself, as she fights to protect both of her families. The noble household from which she fled when, at 16, she couldn't stomach the marriages her mother had arranged for her; and the far less orthodox family she's created for herself, during her years away.
