With Elysium saved and an unofficial peace agreement with the ghosts, Ada has invited these unwanted refugees to live with her in Campus, the city where the friendly cat aliens known as Outers reside.

With some assistance of some of the older ghosts that recall some extra knowledge of forgotten technology, the Outers manage to send a distress signal to their home planet and hope they can be rescued. The problem is, will they ever get an answer? Or have they doomed Earth?

There is only one big problem: the humans in Glass Peaks are still very, very angry at Ada for helping the ghosts without taking the annoyance of asking her WHY and wish to attack Campus and along the way, also kill the Outers because they are a bunch of neurotic ignorant fools who are being led to a senseless war by a religious leader... and the leader is not Isavel.

Isavel doesn't really understand what the hell she is doing. She now has 4 gifts and no answers from the gods. Doubt seethes within when she discovers the humans that used to obey her are now taking matters into their own hands by a priestess named Yera. She disagrees with being bullied into this battle, but she ends up cornered to a wall when Ada stupidly destroys a bridge that partially ocean locks Glass Peaks as a childish personal vendetta.

Isavel knows Ada has screwed up big time, but she knows there is more to the hostile woman everyone seems to hate. Risking alienating her friendship with the young coder siblings Zoa and Ren, Isavel visits Ada for a talk... where more than some battle strategies to save as many people as they can becomes the topic of conversation. Yes! We have a romance coming! And it's absolutely delightful!

One thing that is a stark contrast from prior books is how Ada is no longer super powered by the technical knowledge of her spaceship Cherry which is currently in a secret place the whole book. She is forced to put up with an ancient submarine called the Chang'e (and offers a lot of very funny scenes because the ship constantly tells her it doesn't understand her commands in Mandarin... a language she is incapable of learning for some odd reason).

With fewer resources at her hand, Ada learns new applications for her code to make it more offensive whereas Isavel begins to have a change of heart regarding her blind loyalty to the gods that Ada finds to be intolerable at best. The book is quite good, we wonder whether the scant audio replies to the Outers from outer space are good guys or bad guys, and Hail is feeling jealous Isavel likes Ada just a tad little bit more than her. Hail is cool, I definitely like her a lot.

I think the really big issue with the book is how frustrated I feel that most of the conflict of the book is all Ada's fault. Still, the ending is real great... and sooooooo touching. :'( ( )