A Conspiracy of Stars introduced readers to Octavia: a young woman whose lifelong dream is to become a scientist studying Faloiv, the planet humanity has occupied for 40 years. When restrictions preventing students from entering the jungle are lifted, she and her friends, Rondo and Alma, venture inside, but what they find contradicts everything they know about their people. Octavia witnesses the assault and kidnapping of a Faloii — one of the planet's indigenous population — by human agents. With Rondo and Alma's help, Octavia begins to investigate what the Council — the humans' governing body — actually plans to do with Faloiv and its people.

