After being pushed back several times due to internal turmoil at Harcourt Trade Publishers, it was scheduled for release on April 14, 2010, but the distributor shipped it in late March of 2010.
[1] Young Wizards Kit Rodriguez and Nita Callahan become part of a team investigating the mysterious, long-sought 'message in the bottle' that holds to the first clues to the long-lost inhabitants of Mars.
However, strange events start to unfold when the 'bottle' is uncorked and life emerges once more to shake the Red Planet with its own perilous and baffling brand of magic.
However, the bad news is that now they're free to pick up where they left off on a long-dormant plan that can change the shape of more than one world, and they don't mind using their well-intentioned rescuers to achieve their goals.
Kit's long-standing fascination with all things Martian unexpectedly enmeshes him in an age-old conflict—turning him into both a possible key to its solution and a tool that in the wrong hands shortly threatens the whole human race.
Nita's determination to find the truth - and Kit - soon sends her into a battle against an implacable enemy who may not be conquerable except by violating wizardry's most basic tenets.
She has a lot on her shoulders, having to deal with grief after her mother's and Ponch's death, as well as her sister Dairine, who, after the loss of Roshaun is behaving oddly as well as being sullen and unresponsive—and Carmela is taunting her about her middle name as well, which she hates, though it gives no reason why.
She was initially uninterested in the "Martian thing," but gets caught up in it quickly as Carmela uncovers an ancient prophecy and Kit starts acting strangely and then disappears completely.
She develops an elemental affinity with water, which proves important later, along with her friendship with the whale wizard S'ree, and uses the Gibraltar Pass through (a powerful wizardry developed by the hydro mage Angelina Pellegrino) to save her life, along with several other wizardries, though they cost her vast amounts of energy and power.
Ignoring Kit's reluctance to allow her on the trip, she travels with Nita and S'ree and manages to decode an ancient prophecy using her strange gift with languages.
She has been amply repaid for the service she did in Wizards At War, by being allowed on a nearly endless shopping spree at the Crossings on Rirhath B.
She is ultimately the reason Nita is able to save her own life later in the book: She discusses the possibility that Nita has an elemental affinity with water, and tells her about Angelina Pellegrino, the last great hydro mage, who designed the dangerous and powerful Gibraltar Pass through, used to move and manipulate large quantities of water under precise control.
S'ree is familiar with this, and while discussing with Nita ways to stop the threat of still-hazardous underwater mines safe, tells her also about the uses of the Gibraltar Pass through and about Pellegrino.
Dairine Callahan Not as major or involved as the others, she is shown to be noticeably weakened in her power levels, but still defiantly working to find and save her friend Roshaun.
She looks at this as a possibility of finding him and continues to work towards that, without showing much concern toward her Earth family and spending more time with Roshaun's father, Nelaid, who is teaching her stellar wizardry.
The prophecy is said to named as 'the Red Rede' and is in a form of a poem : The one departed | is the one who returns From the straitened circle | and the shortened night, When the blue star rises | and the water burns: Then the word long-lost | comes again to light To be spoke by the watcher | who silent yearns For the lost one found.