Rod Gallowglass's son, Magnus, needs to get away. He needs to find his own identity and determine who he is and what he stands for. Most importantly, perhaps, he needs to get away from Gramarye in an effort to find love. So Rod gives him Fess and sends him out among the stars. Magnus, though, feels the need to start at the beginning, so he heads to the ancestral home, the asteroid Maximus. There, he is beset with political intrigue and the bonds that family tends to enmesh each other with - and he finds no love there. In his reverie after escaping the madness of the d'Armand clan, he gets approached by SCENT, the organization that sent his father Gramarye in the first place, who wants to recruit him. But they don't know who he is, only that he's honorable, smart and a good fighter. To Magnus, this is enough - a way to stand on his own and live outside his father's shadow. Eventually, though, all good things come to an end and this scenario was no exception.

I really rather enjoyed this book. I had been away from this series for quite awhile (aside from the not-so-good "Here Be Monsters") and this volume seemed to have everything I remembered getting from the Warlock series: good action, some political statements, and a little sexual tension. I really wish more had been done with Allouene and Siflot - although much of the story got spent on Maximus, which didn't seem as fully fleshed out as it might have been made to be. ( )