Will is an ambitious researcher whose radical ideas have earned him scorn among his peers. Ejected from the mainstream scholarly community, he is forced to embark on an expedition to rehabilitate his reputation. After accepting help from an enigmatic benefactor, he finds himself a political prisoner in a strange world where reason is subservient to dogma.
The Liberty of Heretics follows ten principal characters with overlapping points-of-view as they navigate an increasingly volatile environment where corruption, religious zealotry, financial instability threaten to bring multiple societies to the brink of collapse. The problems confronted by these characters are familiar: economic deregulation and inequality, failing democracies, and the distortionary power of ideology. Big ideas though they may be, they are conveyed through fast-paced interaction and glimpses into interlocking crises. It slowly becomes evident that global stability is not being undermined by happenstance, but by design.