Two years after their escape aboard the airship (the Jenny Haniver), Tom and Hester find themselves the twin objects of attention of a terrorist organisation called Green Storm In the misguided belief that the grotesquely incomplete preserved body of their hero, Anna Fang, can be resurrected to ensure their anti-traction goals, they cite Tom and Hester as essential capture targets But when Tom and Hester take shelter aboard the once-magnificent city of Anchorage, they encounter a new set of problems The ice city is heading disastrously towards America, the fabled Dead continent, under the guidance of the fraudulent explorer Pennyroyal