Iconoclastic eco-SciFiThey were summoned here to save the world. But humanity may wish it had stayed silent.For millennia, a secret has been held in the ice of the North and the rainforests of the South: a way to call ancient travellers from the deep past. And as the permafrost thaws and the Amazon burns, a blind shaman fleeing loggers and a dying Inuit elder both trigger the beacon using rituals older than memory.An answer comes quickly from the stars.

But when the alien leader, Chasmaultash, arrives at Earth with an armada, she is greeted with a shocking crime scene. Rescuing the human race is forgotten, the mission now is to save Earth itself.Horrified and repulsed by humans' desecration of this sacred Temple of Life planet, the aliens issue a threatening ultimatum upon humanity.

Yet as Chasmaultash starts finding complex beauty and redemption in the very humans she is here to judge, a dangerous mutiny brews. To extremist aliens in her ranks, humanity is a rapacious parasite that must be purged—and their own leader has become infected.As the countdown approaches for the species that is destroying the planet, can Chasmaultash rescue them, and Life on Earth, but still survive herself?