Cette saga épique suit le parcours du Prince Roger MacClintock, qui passe d'un rejeton gâté à un leader réticent au sein d'un empire vaste et instable. Échoué sur une planète hostile après un sabotage, lui et sa garde réduite doivent affronter une faune dangereuse et des sociétés primitives. La série mêle magistralement action trépidante, manœuvres politiques et thèmes profonds de devoir et de survie sur fond de conflits interstellaires.
Roger Ramius Sergei Chiang MacClintock is young, handsome, athletic, an excellent dresser, and third in line for the Throne of Man. But that's before his mother the Empress packs him off to a backwater planet, a saboteur tries to blow up his ship, and he finds himself shipwrecked on a jungle planet filled with damnbeasts, killerpillars, carnivorous plants, and barbarian hordes with really bad dispositions.
Prince Roger MacClintock was a spoiled rotten, thoroughly useless young pain in the butt. But that was before the Royal Brat and his guards were marooned by an assassination attempt and had to march half way around the planet. Under the right circumstances, even a brat can grow up fast, and it turns out that under his spoiled exterior, Prince Roger is a true MacClintock like his warrior ancestors.
"Roger Ramius Sergei Alexander Chiang MacClintock has had a really bad year. Bad enough to be the spoiled rotten fop of a prince no one wanted or trusted."--Jacket.
Prince Roger MacClintock was an heir to the galaxy's Throne of Man - and a self-obsessed spoiled young brat...until he and the Royal Marines sent to protect him were stranded on Marduk with only their feet to get them half way around the entire planet. So far, they've traversed a continent, crossed a sea full of ship-eating monsters, taken over an enemy spaceport, and hijacked a starship. But they're not home-free yet, because home is no longer free. In Roger's absence, a palace coup by enemies of the MacClintock family has seized control of the Empire. His mother the Empress is a captive in the palace and even in her own body, drugged so that her will is not her own. Roger's brother, the heir to the throne, is dead. And Roger himself has been branded an outlaw and traitor. Roger and his faithful band of human marines and native allen warriors have beaten the barbarian planet Marduk. Now they must re-conquer an interstellar empire. But they aren't about to give up, and once again a lot of power-hungry people are going to learn a hard lesson: You do not, ever, mess with a MacClintock!