A young troll appears from the wildwood on the day he is born and abandoned by his father, at the command of the Old Ones. Taken in and raised by a wealthy plantation owner who's also a lover of troll lore, Ogden the troll grows into full maturity within the span of three seasons, turning Hapstead Manor upside-down in the process. As he learns the ways of humans from Drowden Erebus and his family, he also begins to learn about his fated role to choose between life and death for them all. But these lessons come from the song of the stars whose lyrical light co-creates the world, and from the surprising creatures of the faerie realm.

The Spirit of Nature has sent Ogden at the infancy of industrialization. As humans prepare to enslave Nature and all its elemental parts with its smelted machines borne from black magic and belching black smoke into the air, they seem to be sleep-walking their way toward a split in the world's timeline, after which they will depart from the natural world into a hell-world of catastrophe for people and nature. As they seek unnatural dominion over an Earth, they will forget the bonds they once had with Nature, and she will abandon them to the world of once was. The Spirit of Nature knows the future but has sent Ogden as its proxy to decide humanity's fate.

Will it be survival or extinction for this upstart creature? Can humanity survive when Nature is the judge?