Steven has a new job, with an important-sounding job title: Australia's Regional Death. On a good day he thinks it has quite a ring to it, but on a bad day (that's most of them) it's more of a toll.

He's recently averted a Regional Apocalypse, but a huge national death count - instead of a normal, manageable death count - is still a big risk. And with barely a month to go until his first Death Moot, where the world's thirteen Deaths get together to talk, er, death, Steven feels a crisis is imminent.

People are dying in the unusually brutal summer heat. Monstrous Stirrers are on the rise as their dark god draws near. Someone is trying to kill him. And he has a conference to organise. Steven must start managing Death, before it starts managing him, or this time the Apocalypse will be more than Regional.