technology. The Worldwheel is ruled by six factions, or clades, each responsible for a key function: water, weather, agriculture, procreation, defense, and the sun itself. With Everett's help, Kaz defeats her rival and secures her position as heir to the Sun Throne of the Sunlords. Meanwhile, Charlotte Villiers is still hunting the Everness and the Infundibulum. She leads a strike squad into the airship expecting to face only the crew, but the Genequeen clade of Jiju attack the Everness as well, forcing Charlotte to flee and leave her team to be massacred. E4 Everett begins to settle into the life of his E10 counterpart after destroying the Nahn he brought with him from E1. Though he hides his Thryn abilities as best he can, some of the changes do not go unnoticed, giving Everett a bevy of female admirers and ultimately forcing him to admit to E10 Everett's best friend Ryun that he is E4 Everett. On the Worldwheel, Kaz brings E10 Everett and Sharkey to the Sunlord capital to meet her mother, the Empress of the Sun. After copying the Infundibulum, the Empress uses it to begin an invasion of billions of planes in the extended multiverse, and prompts the Worldwheel's sun to go nova, sanitizing the world and exterminating all of the other clades. The Everness escapes just in time. E10 Everett has a plan: since the Empress copied the Infundibulum exactly, Everett can control it with his smartphone. With Kaz's help, the airship crew infiltrates the Empress's city-ship over E10 London, and Everett sends a signal that jumps all of the Jiju ships into random planes, and then erases all copies of the Infundibulum. Charlotte returns to her true home plane, which she has dubbed E3A. She longs to be reunited with her lover Langdon, who is trapped in the rift between planes after going through an early iteration of the Heisenberg Gate. Kirkus Reviews described Empress of the Sun as "endlessly fascinating and fun." Stefan Raets of Tor.com deemed it the best novel in the series so far, and praised its dynamic characters. References 2011 British novels 2011 science fiction novels British science fiction novels British young adult novels Novels by Ian McDonald Pyr books