"Elizabeth Bear won the John W. Campbell award for Best New Writer in 2005 and has since published 15 novels and numerous short stories. She writes in both the SF and fantasy genres and has won critical acclaim in both. She has won the Hugo award more than once. She lives in Massachusetts. Visit her on Twitter @matociquala"-- Provided by publisher.

Haimey Dz thinks she knows what she wants. She thinks she knows who she is. She is wrong. A routine salvage mission uncovers evidence of a terrible crime and relics of a powerful ancient technology. Haimey and her small crew run afoul of pirates at the outer limits of the Milky Way and find themselves on the run and in possession of universe-changing information. When authorities prove corrupt, Haimey realizes that she is the only one who can protect her galaxy-spanning civilization from the potential power of this ancient technology--and from the revolutionaries who want to use it for terror and war. Her quest will take her careening from the event horizon of the supermassive black hole at the galaxy's core to the infinite, empty spaces at its edge. To save everything that matters, she will need to uncover the secrets of ancient intelligences lost to time--and her own lost secrets, which she will wish had remained hidden from her forever. -- From dust jacket.