The year is 2164 and politics has become unrecognizable. Democrats have become conservative, Republicans have become liberal, and an upstart party called the Empathy Party blames all the world's ills on sociopaths. An assassination leaves the Empathy Party's candidacy wide open and a clown car of candidates vies for the nomination. One, hotel heir and failed comedian Jim Liu, stands out from the others when he chooses a genetically modified, super-intelligent, opium-addicted parrot as his running mate. This book follows his quest to become the Empathy Party's nominee for the 2164 presidential election. His campaign takes him through an America where most days are public holidays, psychedelic drug use is widespread, and the last uncontacted people on Earth are the unknowing subjects of a reality show whose fans have tuned it into a new religion.
A Song of Ice and Fire depicts a violent world dominated by political realism. What little supernatural power exists is confined to the margins of the known world. Moral ambiguity pervades the books, and their stories continually raise questions concerning loyalty, pride, human sexuality, piety, and the morality of violence.
The story unfolds through a rotating set of subjective points of view, the success or survival of any of which is never assured. Each chapter is told from a limited third-person perspective, drawn from a group of characters that grows from nine in the first novel to 31 by the fifth.
Year 1944. According to information received from a recruited German agent, the Nazis are planning a major act of sabotage in one of the Arctic ports through which the Soviet Union is supplied with food, goods and material of vital importance from the Allies under the Lend-Lease programme. Heroes Yelena Soley and Sergey Saburov, from the "The Black Sea" series, will have to disrupt the enemy operation and save the port from impending disaster