The Missionary

An Adept of the Promised Land, a theocratic society that has turned its back on Earth's turbulent history, is captured by Wolverton, a man from the outside world who carries the forbidden knowledge of what humanity once was. As his broken leg heals in captivity, the missionary finds himself drawn into an increasingly dangerous argument: Wolverton believes their isolated civilization is stagnating, victims of overpopulation and cultural decay, and that only the rejected technologies of the old world can save them. What begins as a test of faith becomes something more unsettling, the slow, seductive realization that the enemy might not be evil at all, merely right. The Adept must choose between the certainty he was raised to protect and the troubling possibility that conviction itself can be a form of blindness. Bone writes with the cool precision of a philosopher who understands that the most terrifying battles are the ones fought inside your own skull.