THE MILLENNIAL WAR LEFT A SULLEN VOID WHERE CIVILIZATION ONCE STOOD..But then the whales began their song--a mysterious song that resounded throughtout the polluted seas & told an ancient hearbreaking tale that moved the survivors to revive an honored ritual..And at the vanguard stood Takahashi, self-appointed Death Lord--a man gone mad in the wake of the chaos. He saw himself an artist whose greatest creation was a living haiku, w/a last line as exquisite as it was final--the end of all human life. Only one chance remained for josh Nakamura, for his younger brother Didi, & for Ryoko, the beautiful daughter of a high minister of Japan. They must take the whale's legacy & leave the planet before they too became part of Takahashi's terrible poetic vision.