It is the year 2167 and Simon Shadow leaves an overpopulated Earth on a personal quest for freedom; his target is Reetar, a distant planet recently colonized. What he finds upon arrival is a city bristling with rival religions. Within a matter of days, Simon offends the Unholy Mass, the colony's most sadistic and powerful religion. His life threatened, he realizes the only way to save himself is to become a rival faith--Shimmerism--while on the far side of the planet, a lone starship has crash-landed. The survivors begin their own quest, searching for a fabled city of spiritual purity; their trials in the wilderness unfold in parallel with Simon Shadow's, while above them all, in orbit around Reetar, an all-powerful military force guards over the colony, laying waste to anyone foolish enough to threaten the balance of the Great Experiment--the ruling philosophy that governs humanity's colonization of new worlds. Visit the author's web site at www.shimmerism.org