The Guardian

In the year 2737, Earth is mostly depopulated in the wake of a massive super volcano, but civilization and culture are preserved in vast orbiting ring stations. Tem, the nine-year-old son of a ring station anthropologist and a Happdal bow-hunter, wants nothing more than to become a blacksmith like his uncle Trond. But after a rough patch as the only brown-skinned child in the village, his mother Car-En decides that the family should spend some time on the Stanford ring station. Tem gets caught up in the battle against Umana, the tentacle-enhanced Squid Woman, while protecting a secret that could change the course of humanity and civilization.

The Guardian, the sequel to The Sky Woman, is a story of colliding worlds and the contested repopulation of a wild Earth.