Welcome to Chromatacia, where the societal hierarchy is strictly regulated by one's limited color perception. In this world, you are what you can see. But Eddie Russet wants to move up. When he and his father relocate to the backwater village of East Carmine, his carefully cultivated plans to leverage his better-than-average red perception and marry into a powerful family are quickly upended. Eddie must contend with lethal swans, sneaky Yellows, inviolable...

While his father fights in the war for water, eleven-year-old Auden and his mother move to Cambridge, where Auden and his new friend Vivi discover his dead uncle's last, unfinished scientific achievement--a poetry-spouting robot seeking his purpose.