A SMALL AND DISTANT GALAXY
BOOK 1: THE FOURTH QUADRANT
After many years lost in space, very far from Earth, human explorers arrive in an unknown galaxy and settle in an uninhabited corner of it. We find the human colonists divided and living on different planets, over five hundred years later. A young farmer and his telepathic animal friend team up with a bioengineered detective to retrace their hidden history, venturing into the remotest part of the galaxy against all advice. They find unexpected answers on an ancient world under a dying red sun, but the greatest challenge remains - how to heal the splintered cultures and reunite the xenophobic colonists after so many centuries of separation...
BOOK 2: THE THIRD QUADRANT
A science crew surveys the Third Quadrant, a desolate wasteland left by ancient asteroids. Scenes from their home planets are woven through the story. They find a desert planet and intervene in the shunning of a young cave dweller; surveying an unexpected gas giant, they lose a crew member to its toxic gas cloud. The expedition crew moves on, not knowing he survived. The third planet is too massive to approach, but the debris orbiting it proves to hold important clues. The different threads of narrative in the book come together as a shift in the currents of time and space, leaving people with very different memories of shared reality. The crew return home, but there are several surprises on the way.