Oliviana has all four of the supernatural Gifts, yet power means nothing if everyone around you has a hidden motive.
Those born with one of the four Gifts are treated as social outcasts, yet they walk like Gods among mortals on the streets on London, Paris and Moscow. The Gifts grant power, but also a curse; religious zealots hunt those born into the powers and many die before their years.
On top of the social conflict created by the Gifts arrival almost a century ago the world has become a volatile cauldron, ready to bubble over into war at any moment. The west has unified, Europe and America now rally under the same banner while on the opposite side of the world Russia, China and India ready their countries for a world war.
Between the two super powers Britain has imperial ambitions once more; holding land in Africa for the first time in two centuries yet that has brought them to the attention of the closed bordered Muslim states where to be born with a Gift is to be put to death.
Amidst the political upheaval and a darker plot of racial supremacy Oliviana must chose her friends carefully and her enemies even more so, because when one has a Gift one invites death, and she has all four.