In the Valta, no matter what month you were born, everyone is assigned the same birthday. November 1st. It's the anniversary of the day when the government declared war on the Eastern Order. The day you turn seventeen, the Recruiters come to take you away. And no one ever hears from you again. In the year 2042, in the middle of a brutal foreign invasion, Kress and her friends are all that's left of their isolated mountain town. When Kress and the other seventeen-year-olds are taken away by the Recruiters to aid in the fight against the dreaded Eastern Order, they find themselves in a military training camp that's turning more mysterious and deadlier by the day.