From the introduction: A thousand years ago, the Great Flood was said to have swallowed up all of the land left on the Earth’s surface. Civilization’s infrastructure as we know it was lost to the sea, the only reminder of its ambition lying in the great spires that push up from the depths of the ocean, structures the drydwellers once called skyscrapers. But humanity rebuilt, this time atop the endless blue. From the twisted wreckage of the Old World, our ancestors made new homes on metal islands and ship colonies-- but none were as grand as the massive atoll of Icarus. A miracle feat of science and engineering, the city has grown from a place of refuge and safety to a place of envious luxury in an otherwise hostile world.