The Game of Empire

A fairly short novel about tigeries, God, winsome waifs, crocodile/centaurs, xenophobic lizardmen and interstellar intrigues. Targovi, a tigery intelligence officer, has a bad feeling about Olaf Magnusson - a war hero turned barbarian at the gate of the Terran empire. With his young, beautiful female companion and her religious researcher Wodenite friend, they go in search of evidence that could change the course of human history.

This story is readable, but it is not really Flandry in the sense of having Dominic Flandry as the hero. Flandry appears in a few scenes, is captured by the villain and sits out the rest of the book until he is rescued at the end ad promises rewards to the real heroes. The focus of the book is Flandry's daughter Diana, daughter of Flandry and a now-dead Amerind named Maria Crowfeather. Since her mother's death, Diana has grown up largely on her own on the world Imhotep, where the Tigeries and Seafolk of Starkad were resettled after Dominic discovered the approaching destruction of their world (in Ensign Flandry). Diana is clearly intended as a female equivalent of Kipling's Kim, very streetwise. She takes up with Azor, a dragonlike show more Wodenite (a race which appeared in the earlier Polesotechnic League period) , a priest seeing evidence of ancient beings who may once have dominated the galaxy (and, he believes, have known more of Jesus (or strictly the Logos) as a universal savior). They travel with a Tigery, Targovi, son of Dragoika who was Flandry's ally in Ensign (Targovis himself is a low-level Impeial Intelligence agent, though outwardly a tramp spacemerchant). Just as their adventure begins, there is a sharp turn in the plot -- the charismatic Imperial Navy hero Admiral Sir Olaf Magnuson revolts against the cruel emperor Gerhart (a sort of Domitian to Emperor Hans, the Vespasian-like ruler Dominic had helped install) . The revolt leaves the three travelers stranded on Daedalus, a planet where one large island has been settled by the Zacharies, a family of genetically designed superior humans. One of the Zacharies, Kukulkan, sets himself agreeably to trying to seduce Diana (a virgin but not naive). In another sharp plot twist (Spoiler warning), Targovi finds that the Zacharies and Olaf are in a plot with the Merseians. He manages to break into their (improbably) lightly guarded base, kill the one(!) guard on their master computer, download the complete files of the computer (despite having no password and only minimal knowledge of the Merseian language) and escape with the files, and the guard's head, to join Diana and Azor; the three manage to capture the (again, improbably lightly guarded) Merseian spaceship, escape back to Imhotep and reveal Olaf's treachery, which his own forces, with minor exceptions, believe, and promptly kill him. Meanwhile Dominic had suspected Olaf's treachery, but had been arrested without a fight during a parley with Olaf himself, so as noted he effectively sits out the story. The carefully inbred Zachary colony is split up, so presumably its people will no longer cherish their dreams of ruling the inferior humans as Merseian viceroys. show less

If you are a serious fan of the Flandry series, then read this book. Otherwise, don't bother.

Dominic Flandry has only a minor part in this story, most of the focus being on his daughter, but in fact, not much really happens in this book.