The nobles of Aureity have been breeding their children for psychic powers for generations. Women’s powers are mental, including psychic control and mind-reading, making them ideal rulers. Men have superhuman strength and can teleport to any place they have previously visited. Consequently, young noblemen make their fortune by competing in psychic gladiatorial contests to display their powers in the hope of being hired—and married—by women of high rank.

When Quirt, an older man with obvious skill but little known record, first enters the arena, the combat circuit is abuzz wondering who he might be. But his mystery is almost eclipsed by the young cub who has been entering competitions anonymously and winning them all. Barely in his teens, full of raw power but short on training or patience, Humate is so horrified when he’s bested by Quirt that he insists on finding out where he came from.

Unfortunately for Humate, the answer reaches far beyond his birth: back to the terrible wrongs done to Quirt’s mother and his new wife by one of Humate’s relatives, and back to Quirt’s sentencing, a doom which takes away his identity until he can bring the culprit to justice. Humate is in deep denial about this familial scandal generations deep, but Quirt must try to covince him to help, compelled by his doom and by the stirrings of a new love that cannot possibly be realized in his nameless condition.

No one ever said revenge was going to be easy.

"Complicated politics and family scandals twist through this tale of courtly intrigue from prolific fantasist Duncan (Children of Chaos). Rape and murder are almost unheard of in Aureity, where the female nobility cross bloodlines for strength: men's physical, women's mental. Aging gladiator Mudar of Quoin, shamed by the death of Mandragora, the woman he served, hunts for her killer. As he learns that his own father, Piese, slew Mandragora after she recognized him as a rapist, he schemes to arrange a fight with his half-brother, Humate, in psychic arena games. Mudar must convince Humate of their father's guilt, bring Piese to justice and reclaim his name, rank and lands before Humate can marry Mudar's beloved Tendence. Though made fresh by matter-of-fact female supremacy and its midlife hero's view of youthful warrior culture, the culture's obsession with degrees of caste and the absence of commoners may leave readers wishing for a more revolutionary resolution." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

A gripping adventure of revenge, political machination, and thwarted love from a master of invented-world fantasy

"Ill Met in the Arena" is a gripping adventure of revenge, political machination, and thwarted love from a master of invented-world fantasy.

Originally from Scotland, Dave Duncan has lived all his adult life in Western Canada, having enjoyed a long career as a petroleum geologist before taking up writing. Since discovering that inventing imaginary worlds is more satisfying than poking holes in the real one, he has published three dozen novels, mostly in the fantasy genre, but also in young adult, science fiction, and historical. He has at times written as Sarah B. Franklin and Ken Hood. He married his wife Janet in 1959 and they have one son and two daughters.