Helliconia Winter

On Helliconia, where one year lasts two and a half thousand earth years and winter is seven centuries long, snow is falling. As Helliconia moves on its elliptical path away from the warmth of the sun Freyr, crops fail; and the growing harshness of the climate is matched by the harshness of government under the Oligarch. Now too, mankind's ancient enemies, the phagors, begin to leave their mountain fastnesses to war upon human civilization.

Here is a magical story of journeys, strange transformations, and the world of events that paralyze or alter the lives of men and women. It is the story of a great battle, whose victors are betrayed and exterminated. The story of a beautiful woman who falls into the hands of her husband's slayer. The story of Luterin Shokerandit, who undertakes a pilgrimage of breathtaking peril through the gathering winter to the farthest polar reaches of the planet, and enters the Great Wheel of Kharnabhar, where the prisoners of the Wheel are believed to row their planet back to light.

Involved in this drama are other dimensions: the world of the dead; distant Earth – also undergoing winter – and the deities that preside over the life of both planets.