One seat on the intergalactic Sakien Empire’s
supreme ruling body, the Council of Seven, remains unfilled,
that of the Empress Apparent. The seat isn’t won by votes or
marriage. It’s won in a tournament of ritualized combat in the
ancient tradition. Now that tournament, the Empress Game, has
been called and the females of the empire will stop at nothing
to secure political domination for their homeworlds.
The battle for political power isn’t contained by the
tournament’s ring, however. The empire’s elite gather to forge,
strengthen or betray alliances in a dance that will determine
the fate of the empire for a generation. With the empire wracked
by a rising nanovirus plague and stretched thin by an ill-
advised planet-wide occupation of Ordoch in enemy territory,
everything rests on the woman who rises to the top.