Anda com Durrel, heir to an entertainment dynasty, has gone rogue. Having helped secure the escape of the son of a League of Free Spirit’s matriarch from the prison planet Ghuraj, com Durrel is owed.

However, he quickly realises that few of the wonders he is offered will pass Confederation customs. So when he comes across the means to achieve a kind of godhood, he takes matters into his own hand, setting himself up to rule over the humanoid inhabitants of the gaming island of Velasia.

Betrayed and impoverished, down-at-heels crime lord Narovy Sarok and his team – including the kidnapped anthropologist, Dr Irvan Sentain, and the precocious convicted murderer, Elian Omadanan – must join their LFS hosts to bring the deranged com Durrel to account. But by the time the fellowship is ready to embark on its quest, the self-declared God-Sorcerer has built an army of evil ready to overwhelm all of Velasia.

After escaping a maximum-security prison world and then facing artificial zombies, gene-enhanced sea monsters, voracious ‘orcs’, and a sadist with a magical staff, Sarok and his party rapidly learn that gaining freedom from obligation doesn’t come cheap. .