For two years, Phoenix Jones lives with the idea that he drove his father away with his own selfishness. Phoenix searches the cobblestone roads and salt rivers of Charleston, South Carolina, for any clue about his dad, but he has no way of knowing about his father's secret world-a place of psychic espionage and devastating magic. Phoenix teeters on the brink of despair until his father's secret world comes crashing in around him one day at band practice. A gang of snake-people, giants, and witches abduct his mom, his best friend's dad, and the hot new singer's brother. Phoenix and his friends pursue the attackers in the belly of a glass whale. They travel through a wormhole ten thousand years in Earth's past to a vastly different world where magic exists and music offers its most powerful expression. They find themselves in a war between magicians so powerful they can transform into dragons. Phoenix's friends learn to make magic easily, but Phoenix is blocked. He can't even conjure a spark. In order to save his family, Phoenix will have to overcome the darkest parts of his own soul to release his magic and resurrect the one dragon that can restore balance to a world on the brink of annihilation-his father.