The dark design

The third novel in Philip José Farmer's Riverworld series returns to a planet-spanning river valley where every human who ever died on Earth has been mysteriously resurrected — and where the truth behind the god-like "Ethicals" who engineered it all remains elusive. Milton Firebrass leads the construction of a giant airship meant to fly to the enigmatic tower at Riverworld's north pole, the suspected seat of the Ethicals' power, with Jill Gulbirra and the historical Cyrano de Bergerac both vying to pilot it.

Elsewhere, explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton assembles his own expedition — alongside Mark Twain and England's King John — to cross the polar sea by riverboat and reach the tower by a different route, all while suspecting that an agent of the Ethicals has infiltrated their ranks to sabotage them.

The stakes sharpen when resurrection itself begins to fail: the dead who die again on Riverworld no longer return, making death permanent once more and racing the clock on the coalition's search for answers.