Eight hundred years after two suns were exploded in order to end a war, "light from the first explosion is about to reach the Masaq' Orbital, home to the Culture's most adventurous and decadent souls. There it will fall upon Masaq's 50 billion inhabitants, gathered to commemorate the deaths of the innocent," and on Major Quilan, an emissary from the war-ravaged world of Chel.--Jacket.