***SPOILERS AHEAD***
A wild ride...
This book is about the dastardly plan to kill the emperor of the seven worlds and place the blame on the barbarian king Lord Valeron of Branarius. As the back cover describes "Villainy most foul."
Okay so right off, this book obviously takes place in a spin-off world of Robert E. Howard's Conan universe. That was in the beginning...
However as you read you find very peculiar things are going on in this universe. In the time and place of the story apparently we (now) are the ancient race that had perished long before their time. When they talk of the Kings arriving on ships I was thinking like Viking long ships. NO! Not at all. They meant SPACEships!!!! And as hard as the author tried to explain how it is that they come to use these spaceships, his explanation seemed to falter a bit as it came up short for the reader that these people are able to maneuver these ships but not know how they are doing it. They just press buttons. Have you ever seen the movie Krull? It's a lot like that. Ah, but I digress.
The story was pretty typical of a barbarian epic fantasy, which is a point that I definitely loved. The beginning sucked me right in but I have to say that the ending was a little less than satisfactory. And while the fighting scenes were very well described, some other scenes, such as the romantic exchanges, were lacking very much in detail. Some just cut clean to the chase without any detail at all.
As surprising as it was, this still was a very fun read for me and I would be happy to recommend it to those who enjoy epic fantasies and adventure stories. ( )

This free-standing sword-and-planet novel is fun enough, although its greatest virtue may have been to provoke its Boris Vallejo cover art. The far future historical frame has no conscious relationship to ancestral earth, and the interplanetary civilization that forms the setting is just surfacing from a medieval dark age. There is a post-apocalyptic theme of the rediscovery of ancient technologies. The barbarian of the title is a newly-crowned warlord of one of the "Six Worlds," and the tale concerns imperial intrigue touched off by the prospect of his possible betrothal to the daughter of the Emperor.

Although the setting and action are very much in line with Edgar Rice Burroughs, the running commentary on "barbarism" makes for a more interesting comparison to Robert E. Howard. Both emphasize the heroic virtues of men who succeed in conditions of barbarism. Offutt's protagonist Valeron is rather embarrassed to be considered a barbarian, which Howard's Conan never was. (Conan would simply take advantage of the way in which it would cause civilized folks to underestimate him.)

There are some consistent verbal affectations: "it seemed not deep," "Maybe Darcus could have done defeat on the Sungoli," etc. But the prose is fast-paced nevertheless, as is the sequence of events. The end of the story is abundantly foreshadowed, but not hopelessly predictable.