Ariane Emory is the eighteen-year-old clone of an extraordinary woman who was both a preeminent research scientist and the leader of the Expansionist Party, which has controlled Union since its inception.

Everyone knows that she will one day follow in her mother's footsteps and take charge of Reseune, a sovereign Administrative Territory and the premier azi research facility in Union, one of the three spacefaring factions of humanity.

The murder of Dr. Sandur Patil, a top scientist recruited by Schwartz to head up the terraforming of Eversnow,[nb 1] turns out to be but one step in a plot by Emory's unknown enemy that shakes Union to its core.

[3] Nader Elhefnawy wrote in Strange Horizons that while Regenesis creates "a better sense of the fictional world" than Cyteen, he felt that it adds little to the concepts introduced in its predecessor.

Elhefnawy added that he "had little feeling that something fundamental had been decided, a turning point passed in the evolution of either the book's main character, or the larger drama of her world and her civilization".