This strange novel takes place a thousand years in the future: man has spread throughout the galaxy, and discovered only one planet - Celestis - with intelligent life.
There are two coexisting intelligent races on Celestis, and Homo Celestis - the dominant one - has enslaved the other.
Once man arrives in force, the destruction begins: Homo Celestis is hunted to near extinction, while their slaves are surgically and chemically transformed into humanoids who co-exist, however uneasily, with their human neighbors, as long as they have the medicines that make them compatible with man.
Finally, a revolt breaks out and the "abos," as the humans refer to their semi-captive natives, go berserk.
The last few members of Homo Celestis, meanwhile, reappear and once again take control of the minds of the abos.
The sense of being privy to another way of looking at the world is uncanny, and unsettling. When Park lets us ride along in the mind of Homo Celestis and the abos, we get just a sense of how narrow our angle of vision really is, compared to the spectrum of what's really out there.
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