A young playground director in Newark helplessly witnesses his schoolboy charges fall to a polio outbreak against the backdrop of World War II.

In this sequel to THE MAGICIANS, Quentin and his friends are now kings and queens of Fillory, but a life of royal luxury goes wrong when a magical ship brings Quentin back to his parents' house in New England.

In the far future, humans have colonized a distant planet. Avice Benner Cho, a human colonist, has returned to Embassytown after years of deep-space adventure. She cannot speak the Ariekei tongue, but she is an indelible part of it, having long ago been made a figure of speech, a living simile in their language. When distant political machinations deliver a new ambassador to Arieka, the fragile equilibrium between humans and aliens is violently upset. Catastrophe looms, and Avice is torn between competing loyalties: to a husband she no longer loves, to a system she no longer trusts, and to her place in a language she cannot speak --- but which speaks through her, whether she likes it or not.