A civilization of carriages and corsets, powered by the most advanced artificial intelligence on earth. It is 2176. The United States no longer exists. Between 2040 and 2070, the nation tore itself apart in a catastrophe known as the Shattering. Seas rose, cities drowned, and states dissolved.
Britain stepped into the vacuum, reconstructing the original thirteen colonies and offering enough safety and stability that most people don't recognize it for what it is: an occupation. The instrument of control is The Sovereign: an AI that oversees the economy, the military, and the loyalty of the provincial subjects.
When the Governor-General of British North America is assassinated at a state dinner, the murder ignites a revolution. Across the flooded coastline, the wild Appalachian frontier, and the surveillance-laced cities in between, a guerrilla commander, an underground schoolteacher, an Irish spy, a rogue architech, a dockworker who has never broken a rule in his life - all must decide whether to unite or die separately.
And at the center of it all, the Governor-General's daughter, who has inherited the encryption keys to The Sovereign itself, and must decide whether to preserve the empire or burn it down.
The Restoration builds toward July 4, 2176, and a Second Continental Congress that will either refound a nation or be destroyed before it begins.