Alnos Chronicles, Volume One

In The Alnos Chronicles, human visitor Raymond Diaz and O'bonne scientist Dragon Ashewe document the struggles faced by the Alnese as their frozen home world warms to a more pleasant climate. The end of Alnos' ice age soon attracts new fortune-seekers whose activities bring them into conflict with the locals. With Alnese family ties and Alnese children, Raymond and Dragon have more riding on the outcome of the conflict than professional success.

In The Chronicler's Arrival, Raymond Diaz is brought to Alnos after committing suicide on Earth, convinced his half-Alnese infant daughter had died. During his recovery, Raymond's preternatural visions about Alnos' frozen past bring him to the attention of Lady Alnos Ciani, the planet's ruler. She asks him to become her "Chronicler" or personal historian, and asks visiting explorer Dragon Ashewe to become his guide. Raymond learns to live again in a new world undergoing as momentous a transformation as he is, a world headed into an escalating conflict over its new riches as it emerges from a deep ice age.

The simmering conflict between natives and immigrant settlers on Alnos erupts into full-blown violence and a massacre in Winter Schisms. New Chronicler Raymond documents and his mentor Dragon mediates as local justice Eden of Pallas House, the subject of Dragon's ethnographic case study, is put in charge of containing the conflict with help from kinsman Pallas Alexander, a powerful Alnese war lord. Raymond and Dragon cannot avoid getting drawn in as Alnese factions jockey to impose clashing solutions.