The Three-Body Problem meets Annihilation in this epic science fiction novel by an astrophysicist, following an enclave of humans fighting for survival outside an alien megastructure, struggling to decode a cryptic language that will either return them to Earth or help them endure the savage, uncharted center of the sphere.

When a doctoral student makes the discovery of a lifetime, hardly anyone will believe her...until evidence of a signal from another star system becomes too much to ignore. When an alien starship arrives in Earth orbit, requesting ten thousand humans to board, a strange pseudo-mathematical language emerges that layers all five of the senses. Those who board the ship, bound for the signal’s distant origin, decode an enigmatic message: This Canon defines the divine will of the Makers.

One hundred years later, the descendants of those who took the trip are at a breaking point. Their home, Yomi, is on a desolate ring orbiting Inworld, a dangerous Eden at the heart of the star system. With their resources running dry, the city is divided between those who want to give up, those who have put all their hope in a rescue mission from Earth, and those who want to travel to Inworld—something forbidden by the punitive laws of the Canon. Laws they’ve spent generations trying to translate. Laws enforced by merciless sentinels.

When possible intelligent life is detected on Inworld, an elite group is dispatched in secret. Some make the journey to search for answers in the Canon. Others are there to contact other sentient creatures, in the hopes of understanding who brought them to this place, and why. No matter their mission, as the team cross the vastness of Inworld, facing predators, homicidal superbeings, and titanic forces of nature, they all must follow one rule. Obey the Canon, or face certain extinction.