Alan Green was never meant to be a hero. He is a man of peace, an Earthman stranded on a backward, violent world where the line between man and demon is drawn by superstition and blood. For two years, he has survived by playing a dangerous game: serving as the personal favorite of the tempestuous Duchess Zuni, navigating the whims of a jealous nobility, and enduring the predatory gaze of a planet that seems to loathe his very existence.
But when whispers reach him of two other humans, fallen from the stars in a ship of iron, the crushing weight of hopelessness is replaced by a desperate, burning fire.
In this classic tale of planetary adventure, Philip José Farmer delivers a gripping saga of a man pushed to the edge of human endurance, proving that even the most ordinary man can achieve the extraordinary when the cost of staying is death.