The Mindaru are dead. Or so John Bandicut and company believed, when they returned to Shipworld after saving the Orion Nebula and countless inhabited worlds. But their victory could be short lived. Now this ancient and malicious AI has begun escaping forward in time from billions of years in the past. The cause: a temporal disturbance centered on Li-Jared’s homeworld of Karellia—a disturbance that happens to be crucial to Karellia’s defenses. The situation is urgent, and the company must act quickly. But Ik goes missing, and then Antares—and Bandicut and Li-Jared, teamed with Ruall, the oddest alien Bandicut has met since the shadow-people, must leave without them for Karellia. Separated from the others, Ik finds himself teamed with another human of Earth, one Julie Stone—on another mission, one that will take them far back in time, to the birthplace of the Mindaru. Can they stop the Mindaru at their source? Can they tap the wisdom of the yaantel, otherwise known as the Translator? Perils, obstacles, heartbreak, and unexpected joy: The Chaos Chronicles returns at last with its growing cast of characters in The Reefs of Time, part one of a two-part adventure. To be concluded in Crucible of Time—coming in September from Nebula-nominated Jeffrey A. Carver.

The story begun in The Reefs of Time continues. The time-tides caused by Karellia's defenses have brought the malicious Mindaru AI out of the deep past into the present, threatening Bandicut and Li-Jared, who have arrived at the backwater planet—Li-Jared's homeworld—to find it on the brink of interplanetary war. Somehow they must forge a peace between Karellia and its neighboring world if the Mindaru threat is to be broken. Back on Shipworld, Ik and Julie Stone risk their lives a second time to stop the Mindaru at their source: a planet near the galactic core, a billion years in the past. Can Antares, the beautiful humanoid who also loves Bandicut, help them? What of Bria the gokat? And Amaduse, the most influential librarian in Shipworld? And in the deep time of the galaxy's early history, by the light of a million suns, the Mindaru do hideous things to an innocent species. The Mindaru plan for the altered creatures bears momentous possibilities even the deadly AI cannot predict. Time is critical. Time is elastic. And time is running out. Conclusion of the unmissable two-part "Out of Time" sequence begun in The Reefs of Time, from Jeffrey A. Carver, Nebula-nominated author of Eternity's End.