This brand-new installment in John Norman’s epic saga describes the continuing rise to power of a backwoods warrior thrown into the maelstrom of ambition, treachery, and violence that is the galactic empire

In the fourth volume of the Telnarian Histories, John Norman continues the story of a fighter from a backwater planet in a galaxy-spanning empire, who rises to power by maintaining his strength of character and his will to fight, and triumphs despite huge and threatening challenges from rebels, enemies of the empire, and even the highest powers within the emperor’s court.

When Filene, a former noblewoman masquerading as a slave, attempts to assassinate the up-and-coming tribal king, Ottonius, she fails miserably and becomes fully enslaved. The story of her education in proper submission is told in counterpoint to the tale of the powerful but primitive warrior who dreams of an imperial destiny and pursues privately devious and publicly violent means to achieve his goal. The applications of power from person to person and on an interstellar scale show haunting resemblances.

Similar in scope and ambition to Piers Anthony’s Bio of a Space Tyrant series, this novel follows the latest adventures of a man who has fought and killed his way out of obscurity to become a newly crowned local king and is quick to make smart connections in the imperial court. Soon he will realize his most secret and nearly unadmitted goal: unseating the reigning emperor and truly becoming . . . the Usurper.

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