A spaceship captain finds himself marooned for years on a bizarre, distant star system whose five inhabited moons are home to vastly different interwoven cultures and dangers.

Harry’s debut, high-adventure SF, begins with the humiliating surrender ceremony of the Melela Empire, bested in battle by the Relcor. Rez Cantor, an imperial guardsman valiantly loyal to the throne, considers the Relcor a bunch of murderous religious fanatics who deploy cyborg mercenaries. Cantor knows that the so-called peace treaty will just be a prelude to mass execution of the royal family, so he plans to flee the captive homeworld with the teenage Princess Leanna, the only hope of continuing the monarchy. Their advanced spaceship “with an inter-dimensional warp drive,” however, is hit by a Relcor nuclear volley and goes twirling through the galaxy. Rez awakens to find himself marooned on Tiiana, a gas-giant planet, orbited by five life-supporting moons that host, in ruined/hidden pyramids, a teleportation network. Over a span of years, Cantor careens throughout the moons, making new allies and enemies. His many escapades include becoming enslaved by fish-people on the water-dominated Urlena, fighting voracious bat-humanoids and tyrants on Boutal, and trying to solve the riddle of the mystic moon called Vashia. These planetoids once had technologically sophisticated, interconnected species and relations that degraded into savagery, predatory tribal wars, and lost wisdom. Can one hero set things right? And what of the fugitive princess (with whom the busy Rez is quite love-struck)? In his afterword, Harry pays tribute to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter Martian epics, cherished in the author’s boyhood, and readers who share similar nostalgia for the mix of futuristic blasters and old-fashioned warrior swordplay should be equally swept up. While the novel is breathless, it seldom feels rushed, slapdash, or overstuffed (well, maybe some more background on the nefarious Relcor might have helped). It’s a grand ride for SF and fantasy-genre readers questing after guiltless throwback thrills.

Blood-and-thunder interplanetary adventure in old-school style.