It is, in part, a coming of age story set in the World War II siege of Leningrad.

It follows the adventures of two youths as they desperately search for a dozen eggs at the behest of a Soviet NKVD officer, a task that takes them far behind enemy lines.

One night while sitting on the roof of his apartment building with his friends, they spot a German soldier falling from the sky in a parachute and run down into the street to investigate.

When the German lands in the street, the friends loot the corpse, with Lev taking the man's knife.

Russian troops arrive and nearly arrest the group for looting but they all escape except for Lev, who is taken to a prison called the Crosses.

There, Colonel Grechko tasks them with finding a dozen eggs to make a cake for his daughter's wedding.

The following morning, Lev and Kolya investigate a rumor of an old man keeping chickens on a roof.

As they walk, Kolya shares more about The Courtyard Hound and they discuss Lev's father, a famous writer who was killed by the NKVD.

That night, they hide at a safe house where Kolya confesses to Lev that he was actually accused of desertion because he spent New Year's Eve searching for a woman to have sex with, and failed to return to his unit in time.

He kills Abendroth and a soldier fighting Kolya, losing his left index finger in the process.

When the lieutenant realizes that Kolya and Lev are working for Colonel Grechko, he loads Kolya and Lev into a truck and heads quickly for the hospital, but in sight of the hospital the truck's path is blocked by tanks and materiel transports.

The book was well received by most critics, including Jesse Berrett of SFGate and Boris Fishman of The New York Times.

[5] However, Donna Rifkind of Los Angeles Times wrote that while the book "features a snappy plot, a buoyant friendship, a quirky courtship, an assortment of menacing bad guys, an atmosphere that flickers between grainy realism and fairy-tale grotesquerie and a grim but irrepressible sense of humor," it left her "thoroughly and discouragingly unmoved.

Abby, later in the game, meets a boy named Lev, who then becomes a major protagonist in her narrative arc.