The Garden City of Chad was an oasis in a barren land, too rare and precious to escape the predation of someone like harry Jess. But the Barbarian made a mistake when he brought, along with his silver-studded cavalry, his concubine. Because when the bedslave teamed up with a nuclear engineer to rescue from Harry's evil clutches the last scion of the royal house of Chad the results were, literally, devastating. The paths of the protagonists lead from the palace at Chad to the enigmatic convent-fortress of Oracle, from the chill wastes of the Ice Desert to the secret reserves of the human psyche. The stark, often brutal, drama of conflict and consequence is relieved by small triumphs of humour, courage, endurance and love.