The world is perfect. Humanity is not. Across the continent of Eryth, war has ended, poverty has been eliminated, disease is easily cured, and every practical problem has been subjected to reason, productivity and progress. Society has achieved what generations once considered impossible: stability without scarcity, order without conflict, and a life in which almost nothing remains unsolved. And yet, despite having everything they were taught to want, people are unhappy.
Told through the perspectives of eight individuals living entirely different lives within Eryth's technocratic society, the novel follows the small disturbances that begin to appear beneath its perfect surface. As people search for meaning in a society that has eliminated almost every reason to suffer, they begin to imagine a figure known as the Shepherd. He appears in dreams, stories, music, memories and symbols, yet no one can agree on who he was, where he came from, or whether he ever existed at all.
When humanity has solved every problem except the question of why it exists, what happens when it creates its own answer?
The world is perfect. Humanity is not. Across the continent of Eryth, war has ended, poverty has been eliminated, disease is easily cured, and every practical problem has been subjected to reason, productivity and progress. Society has achieved what generations once considered impossible: stability without scarcity, order without conflict, and a life in which almost nothing remains unsolved. And yet, despite having everything they were taught to want, people are unhappy.
Told through the perspectives of eight individuals living entirely different lives within Eryth's technocratic society, the novel follows the small disturbances that begin to appear beneath its perfect surface. As people search for meaning in a society that has eliminated almost every reason to suffer, they begin to imagine a figure known as the Shepherd. He appears in dreams, stories, music, memories and symbols, yet no one can agree on who he was, where he came from, or whether he ever existed at all.
When humanity has solved every problem except the question of why it exists, what happens when it creates its own answer?