Places
Naples and Pozzuoli
A city in a volcano’s hollow, on ground that’s rising
Naples and Pozzuoli are the setting of Book 2. Beneath them lie the Campi Flegrei, a volcano without a mountain: a hollow with the city standing in it. The ground is rising, the earth shakes in shallow swarms, and the gas readings at the fumaroles are changing. Lena Voss has been asked to assess whether the region is prepared for an evacuation. She sits in the Prefecture’s conference room, where the heat has already settled in by midmorning. West of Naples, Pozzuoli lies in a shallow basin between hills and water, with a harbor, an empty old town on the rock, and the red zone, which is lived in like anywhere else. The alert level stands at two out of four.
First encounter
- First noticed: heat and a faint mineral smell, “like a match someone had blown out hours ago in another room”
- Object: the water glasses on the meeting table, whose rims of light tremble during the first quake
Connected to
- Lena VossOceanographer at the ICRU in Hamburg, following a falling line
- Sofia EspositoVolcanologist at the Osservatorio Vesuviano, grew up in Pozzuoli
- Lorenzo De SantisRegional civil protection, chairs the meeting at the Prefecture
- Matteo RinaldiThe nursing home’s daily routine all runs through him
- Kai SörensenFS Nordmark captain, eight years without a word to Lena
Spoiler-free. This describes the starting point of the book named, without its major twists or resolutions.