“Under the Blood is Dirt” is the second novel in A. Zolotko’s “Observer” trilogy. The blood that once washed away the gilding and destroyed the decent life of ordinary people is not justified either by the Office’s confidence that everything is being done for the good of the “people” and in support of official power, or by the Executioner’s conviction in the right to punish by order, or by the desire of commercial structures to protect themselves and their business from "attacks". There is blood under the gilding. What's under the blood? Under the blood there is dirt, horror and... emptiness.