A continuation of the story started in Judgement on Janus. The nature-centered Ift are besieged by That Which Lies Beyond and it's ancient technology. As Ayyar penetrates into It's power center he discovers centuries of prisoners, used as the templates for robots.

re-read 7/10/2023 ( )

This book is actually slightly less mystical than the earlier book in the series, though it doesn't actually look this way initially as Ayyar, formerly Naill. is woken from his winter hibernation by a sense of dread traced down to the mass destruction of the Forest that sustained the reborn Ift. Rather strangely, the Garthmen and the people of the port appeared to be working together in defiance of the diehard beliefs of the former group. Ayyar and his fellow Ift find that this is a stratagem of THAT, their ancient adversary. After the final destruction of their last stronghold on the mainland, the Ift penetrate IT's heartland where they find that IT was creating robotic duplicates of the people IT had been attracting to IT. It's up to Ayyar and the buried memories of Naill and the human memories of his companions to defeat once and for all their ancient enemy.

There is a bit too much of Ayyar and his companions managing to barely survive by the skins of their teeth to mak ethis a fully convincing story but it was still a good read ( )