Liffy Hawthorne has sprung eternal in the face of loss and death. An expert in rolling with life's punches, one night's malaise delivers a blow he can no longer ignore. Fearing his crafted bottle of carefully condensed emotions has started to crack and affect his sanity, he accepts an offer to spend the winter holiday with a friend's family in Alaska for some R&R.
At every unexpected turn, memories of his father and recently deceased uncle prickle at his consciousness enough that he begins to thaw just in time, but without coincidence, to discover a northern world where fractured disciplines oversee the human population.
In this northern world with the capital, Arctica, at its heart, nothing is merely ever a coincidence, and his exclusion from it? No accident. His discipline? Death. Structured, stark, vastly complex... and there's no time for a learning curve!
Political uprisings have sparked revolution for and against a yet identified army who seeks to overturn the governance structure at any cost, including taking out innocent northerners in the process, like Death's only known daughter, The Darkling.
A reaper of northerners, a rare thing, and ignorant of how he even IS as he is, Liffy is instructed to take The Darkling into a respite of time for safe keeping as the north stumbles into full-fledged war.
Reunited here with long-lost pals who are discipline neutral, they return to fight the uprising with only the oath of blood brotherhood and frayed childhood bonds to guide them through an outrageous tale of self-discovery, kinship, lore, and legend.
Liffy's on a roller coaster and we're along for the ride as the north reveals to him a power he does not yet understand, the unexpected reemergence of the heart to his childhood soul, and the limits to the laws of physics he knew to be true.
And hot chocolate.
Lots, uh... lots of hot chocolate.
