by Leigh Brackett, with an introduction by George Lucas

The revolution is here. In The Ginger Star and The Hounds of Skaith, mercenary Eric John Stark traveled to the dying world of Skaith only to find himself haunted by a dangerous prophecy that made him an enemy of the state. With the help of a beautiful wise woman, a handful of battle-scarred insurgents, and a pack of vicious telepathic hounds capable of killing with their minds, Stark rallied half a world to the cause of freedom. Yet not everything went as planned. Betrayed and left to die on a savage planet, Stark and his foster-father Simon Ashton must ally with cannibals and feral warriors to topple an empire and bring an enslaved civilization to the stars. But in fulfilling the prophecy, will Stark sacrifice that which he values most?

Talented enough to co-write The Big Sleep with William Faulkner and imaginative enough to pen the original screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back, Brackett never fails to deliver breathtaking worlds and fantastic adventure. In this stunning conclusion to her Skaith trilogy, Brackett brings her gritty vision of the galaxy to life as never before, and proves once again why she remains a reigning queen of science fiction.

“Leigh took science fiction and lifted it above the genre preconceptions. This is fiction at its most exciting, in the hands of master storyteller.”
    —George Lucas, Creator of Star Wars and Indiana Jones

232-page softcover trade paperback
ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-138-1

About the Author

Though Leigh Douglass Brackett (1915–1978) was one of the most prominent science fiction authors of her time, she was equally adept in both crime fiction and westerns. While many of her early stories, beginning with "Martian Quest" in 1940, were science fantasy with a strong adventure theme, her first novel, "No Good From a Corpse"(1944), was a hard-boiled detective mystery that so impressed director Howard Hawks that he had his staff call in "this guy Brackett" to help William Faulkner write the script for The Big Sleep. The film, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, is considered a shining example of film noir, and launched Brackett's scriptwriting career, which would go on to include such notable pictures as Rio Bravo, The Long Goodbye, and the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back, which was written shortly before her death and later revised significantly. During this time, however, she maintained her status as a pulp science fiction icon, writing numerous stories and occasionally collaborating with protégé Ray Bradbury or husband Edmond Hamilton. It was during this busy period that she created her most famous character, criminal and wild-man Eric John Stark, an anti-hero who allowed her to explore colonialism's affect on native cultures, a theme that pervades much of her work. Despite her death from cancer in 1978, Brackett's works live on today as some of the most important in the genre.