If the people of New Lithisle had been worth saving, sixteen-year-old Amy supposed she would have been sent to spy on them. But she’s been told her whole life they’ve made themselves less than human through genetic engineering; hair as yellow as the feathers of a gold finch, eyes as purple as the fins of a royal dottyback. So instead her father has sent her to evaluate the aegis dome that covers New Lithisle to determine if its impending collapse will harm their own civilization, a thousand miles away.
As Amy collects the data she realizes she may be able to alter its base computer code and avert disaster. Her father, after all, engineered the shield of fire before he was banished. But when her father concludes the collapse poses no threat to them, Amy is ordered home.
Amy’s perspective changes when she shares her first kiss with a New Lithisle boy and she decides he’s as human as she is. She’d like to do something to save the tens of millions of people living under the dome, but the coding is complex, and if she gets even one line wrong she’ll end up bringing it down on herself as well as all of New Lithisle.
