A boy from North Korea and a girl from East Berlin during the Cold War. A portal appears to both of them, and they both immediately walk through it. One leads to 'paradise' and the other to a punk-rock, ice-cold underworld. They both must get through these places before the actual devil takes the most potent hope away from the boy. By the end of book one, he does take it from the boy, and now the actual devil has the ability to rewrite history, past, present, and future. In book two, he is rewriting World War II.